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realize that some reconsideration and restatement of the Christian position is inevitable. In such enterprise valuable data would be furnished by the results of scientific psychical research. One of our best known psychologists has indeed gone so far as to declare that no other power than psychic research can hope to stop the advancing forces of materialism. In the second place, psychical research is, in the view of many, already able to endow with a measure of precision and certainty those vague and tremulous promises of a future life which are offered by the churches. Because of the rapid decay of religious forces in the Western world, this vital doctrine of a personal survival has for the vast majority even of so-called Christians lost any real significance. In answer to the query, "Do you desire a future life whatever the conditions may be?" which appeared in a questionnaire circulated by the American branch of the S. P. R. in 1900, the noes numbered no less than seventyeight per cent of the total replies received (3321), many taking the form of "not at all," "not in the least,' "never think about it." Although the results of an investigation within such narrow limits cannot be regarded as decisive, it is probable that the note of skepticism or indifference which runs through the majority of the replies faithfully reflects the attitude of the average man or woman of the present day.

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We can only indicate briefly the main lines along which psychical research seeks to establish the fact of a survival. The cumulative effect of these considerations may well serve, in Glanville's words of old, "to secure

some of the outworks of religion and regain a parcel of ground which bold infidelity hath invaded."

(1) Various forms of automatism and certain well attested physical phenomena indicate the existence of discarnate intelligences.

(2) Telepathy proves that thought can be conveyed apart from the ordinary channels of sense; and if telepathy be accepted as the cause of apparitions, it is clear that the dead whose phantasmal forms appear to us are still capable of volition. The apparition (seen simultaneously by two witnesses) of a dead mother bending over the cot of her dying child "with a look of infinite love and tenderness" is deeply significant. Of even greater evidential value are the well attested accounts of deathbed apparitions seen by dying children or their young brothers and sisters who were present.

(3) Many of the communications which reach us from tried and tested mediums, like Mrs. Piper, appear to be what they claim to be, actual messages from deceased persons.

(4) It is virtually impossible to attribute many of the cross-correspondences recorded by the S. P. R. to any other agency but the conscious and detailed activity of a discarnate personality.

And so our patient work continues. The men and women who forty years ago served faithfully as the pioneers of modern psychical research have nearly all passed away. There can be little doubt that they had pitched their hopes too high. So deep was the devotion inspired by these new labors, so large the mass of facts offered by a veritable cloud of con

temporary witnesses, that leaders like Myers and Sidgwick and Gurney confidently hoped that in their own. days the compelling force of the facts they had gathered would bring intellectual conviction and change the whole outlook of mankind. Such clear certainty came to few men in the ranks of these pioneers, and most of them died "seeing the promises from afar but not having attained unto them." But fresh recruits have filled the gaps in our line, fresh channels of research have been opened up, and fresh facts recorded; modern science tends rather to clear our path than to close it, and the

light of that earlier hope still shines brightly. Amid the limitless possibilities of the next fifty years-great discoveries in surgery, biochemistry, television, lighting, and transport— it may be that no insignificant part will be played by the scientific results of psychical research. "Hardly as yet," said William James a year before he died, "has the surface of the facts called 'psychic' begun to be scratched for scientific purposes. It is through following these facts, I am persuaded, that the greatest scientific conquests of the coming generation will be achieved. Kühn ist das Mühen, herrlich der Lohn!”

AUTUMN

BEATRICE POST CANDLER

And so the harvest is all gathered here!
But at the close of the September days
My feet still linger in familiar ways

Which in remembered summers have been dear.
With tender hands to gather up the spray

Of some old shrub that once has known the touch
Of hands beloved; perhaps it were too much
To break it off and carry it away!

The sunset of September glowing yet
Upon the harvest-fields of garnered green
Brings a mirage of summers that have been
And the pale ghosts of joy and of regret.
While from the thicket on the hill

Comes the soft whistle of the whip poor will.

Y

THE MISSIONARY'S WIFE

ELINOR MORDAUNT

OUNG Van Leason's first impression of the island was of something oddly sickening and unreal; like a thin shining curtain of beauty-beauty of a sort-hung in front of a scene set for something altogether and glaringly sinister. For though it is darkness rather than light that is, in general, supposed to intensify the little understood or sinister, there is that less well known vertigo of an intense glare in which any sort of blinding horror might be mirrored upon the strained eyeballs.

At the time of his arrival, midafternoon, the tide was still too low for him to run into the lagoon, and he was forced to wait, swinging aimlessly in that awful glare upon the oily sea until close upon sunset, when-in a strange wild light, flaming in myriad wine tints over the close-pressed mountains, picking out the foam upon the reef in the color and sparkle of pale Moselle-he ran through the break, and dropping anchor put off in his dinghy, grateful for the sight of at least one white European bungalow upon which he had seen his own flag run up; hopeful that there might be more, the chance of a game of bridge, and a night on shore before he started off on what promised to be a pretty tough tour of inspection among the mountains, with his sergeant and three men.

No canoes came out to meet the

prau, however; and as Van Leason landed and made his way followed by his sergeant and two men down the single path of the wretched village, his temper soured. Really it was damnable; he had never seen such dirty houses, rotting beneath sagging roofs, graves in what might have been the front gardens; iron bars at every window; wretched, sullenlooking people leaning against them, staring out; not at anything, not even at him, in his immaculate khaki, but just staring, their lips projecting over that inevitable wad of tobacco which he hated so, or dribbling red with betel-nut. A dozen yards or so down the village was a native temple with a skull upon the main post of it; a toppling god's house, hung with rags; an obscene and unhuman idol within it. And in front of this, a bloated and obese priest, drunk with something more than zeal, his filthy hair hung with white shells-sitting among a number of lean men, with overhanging brows, their long straight hair matted with red earth-who scrambled to his feet from out of the dust, flung himself screaming toward Van Leason; cursing him until foam mingled with the crimson betel-nut round his loose-lipped mouth.

"Pigi, pigi!" The lieutenant's men swept a circle round their master as he moved on stiff with rage toward a high fence of split bamboo

which cut entirely across the village, behind which he took it that the damned fool who had run up his country's flag, without so much as troubling to come out to meet him, sheltered himself from this scum; a fence with a hole in it, much like a magnified hen-run, through which the boy, for he was little more, pushed his way savagely enough, finding himself in a comparatively neat compound with no more than half a dozen tidyish huts; a small, rusted tin church, all awry; an unpainted bungalow with a veranda and, at the most, two rooms.

A native girl was drooping on the rotting steps, and Van Leason barked at her, "Apa Toean ada di roemah?" (Is the master at home?) Then, as she stared with slow-moving jaws, he pulled aside a flimsy muslin curtain and flung into the meager little front room, at the same moment as a young woman with a child in her arms appeared at the opposite door.

"I am so sorry, lieutenant." She was panting and flushed, trembling, as she put the child—a little girl of somewhere about two years-on the ground, smoothing her frock, glancing up at the new-comer, her eyes bright with tears. "I couldn't find her, or I would have come to meet you-she was hiding under my bed. She didn't mean to be naughty, did you, Lottie? But I was terribly afraid that she had run into the village. They are so wicked, I never know what they will do even to a child like that. And, oh, so horribly oh, so horribly diseased! But won't you be seated? You must have something to eat. My husband will be so sorry to have missed you.'

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There was in the room one large

wooden table laden with papers, a small wicker table with a pile of sewing upon it, a little wicker settee -so propped against the wall that Van Leason made sure that it could not stand unaided-a couple of rickety wicker chairs, and a small low wooden bench, upon which he seated himself; for once careless of his dignity, immersed in a queer sort of wondering dream, weighed down by a feeling that nothing could be altogether real.

The whole day had been queerthe white blazing sea and sky, the hanging about in that sickening ground-swell, mazed with heat; the violent colors of the sunset; that horrible village. And now, here, where he had expected a half-caste in pajama trousers, half drunk, or sodden with his prolonged siesta, this girl; the loveliest creature he had ever set eyes on, so altogether a pure product of his own country at its very best.

"But surely you're not here alone in this-in this-" He was on the brink of saying "hell of a place," and there were no other words he could think of. She had spoken of disease -why, those people were positively rotten, putrid; scarcely a square inch of clean skin among them.

"Oh, not always alone. But my husband has to be away a great deal. He is the missionary here, you know, and there are a great many islands! He can't even get about here without going up the coast in a prau. There are no roads, nothing but forests and mountains!"

"But how on earth does he dare to leave you here-among these filthy people?" cried the lieutenant.

"He has to go; it is his duty."

Quite suddenly the confused uncertainty went out of the flushed, halfsmiling face, and it became set as that of a child repeating a lesson, learned with difficulty, with tears that have stiffened upon the cheeks. "It is his duty; he must attend to his duty; I would not have him turned away from it for me. And now if the lieutenant does not mind my leaving him for a few minutes, I will get him some coffee and an egg. I am afraid that there is no bread-some

As he ate his supper he could hear the little girl being bathed and put to bed in the next room; and after a while his hostess came back into the living-room with a lamp in her hand; turned it low and joined Van Leason on the veranda, sinking into a dilapidated old planter's chair with a sigh of relief.

"One does nothing all day, and yet one is always tired."

"It's just that-the doing nothing there's nothing on earth wears one

thing went wrong with the yeast-out like it. But I suppose you are but there are biscuits."

"Oh, that's all right." He was so absorbed, so altogether taken aback, that he did not attempt to rise from his low seat as she left the room; sat there with the pale moon-like impression of her still before his eyes, washed in upon the gathering dusk.

Roused from his abstraction by a touch upon his knee, he glanced down, saw the child's hand laid there, light as a white moth; and peering at her through the gloom, felt himself flush and glow with the sudden and altogether unexpected thought that it would be jolly to have a kid like this. Then, lifting her upon his knee, smoothing her fair hair back from her forehead, speaking a few awkward words to her, he rose with her in his arms, her tiny hand against his cheek, and moved toward the door through which she and her mother had entered, into a back veranda, half-kitchen, where his hostess was bent over a paraffin stove; aware of his own voice, as though it were some one else's, protesting against the trouble that he was giving; weighed down by the sense of something altogether tremendous.

really busy all the time, with the child and all.”

"And yet there were eleven of usand when I think what my mother had to do."

"But where?"

"In Holland."

"Oh, Holland-that's a different bag of tricks! Look at the climate in a place like this, practically on the equator. Good God, what a place! It beats me how you stand it!" Quite suddenly he was angry and impatient, bitterly contemptuous of her for putting up with such things.

"You mustn't say that-like that. 'Good God!" She repeated the words softly and reverently. "Herren Lieutenant, it's not right."

"My Lord, but you've hit it there!" He was fiercely contemptuous of himself and his outgrown beliefs, of her. For whatever God might be, there was certainly no sign of His goodness here. "Look here; do you know what girls of your age are doing in Holland now, the sort of lives they are living? Dances, theater, friends, pretty clothes-" he paused for a moment, then barked it out-"lovers!"

"You forget that I have my husband."

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