But to return. Finding that the communication had been so far correct, I proposed that we should compose ourselves while I repeated the alphabet as before, still hoping to receive the name of my dear friend. But Tom's sister had not accomplished her purpose, and she proceeded to spell the following words:-

"I - have - a - child - a - girl. - She - is - seven - years - old - and - now - is - in - a - house - of - ill - fame - in - Cat - Street. - I - want - my - brother - to - bring - her - away - from - there".

This was a difficult and painful message to convey, and I told Tom that I did not like to tell him what was spelt.

" She says that she has a little girl seven years old," I began.

Here he removed his hands quickly from the table, and counting on the fingers of one hand by those of the other, looked up and observed:-

"Yes, mum, that's so. She's seven now".

When I gave him the rest of the message he became much excited, and begged me to assure his sister that he would send home 50 dols. the next month, and have the child removed to a better place, and that as soon as the crops were in he would go home and get the child.

I assured him she could hear all he was saying.

"But is it true that there is a street called Cat Street?" I asked.

"Yes, mum; and it is the worst in the city," he returned.

The following day he acknowledged to me that his sister was a woman of the town.

I now asked my husband to procure me a smaller and lighter table so that I might sit at it by myself, and in that way be more likely to attract my own friends. This he did, but to my great annoyance, Mary Howells immediately presented herself. This time, however, she came to say that her child was ill. When she left the movements of the table were weak and uncertain.

The following evening, she came to say that the child was much worse, and she thought it would die. A day or two later she reported it dead. I asked if the child were now with her, and she replied by very decided movements, that she was not.

After this, Mary Howells never put in an appearance, and every day I prayed that some one I loved might speak a word to me. They did not. I know now that they could not, for want of the honest sailor's electrical help, which I rejected in my ignorance. Seafaring persons are apt to possess great mediumistic power.

After hearing that the child was dead I wrote a guarded letter to Tom's parents, for him, asking how they all were, including the little girl. In due time I received a reply, or, I should say, Tom did, though he could not read writing. They said they were all well except Mary's little girl, who had died. (They did not say exactly when, but as Tom had not been absent from England much over a year, it must have been within that time, and we had every reason to believe the mother's statement a true one.) The old people further said that Mary had married a soldier.

I understood from this that the child's mother was not wholly depraved, that she was concerned about the welfare of her little one, and looking about for help in her destitute circumstances her thoughts had turned to her brother, most likely persistently turned to him, and this resulted in her leaving her body temporarily during sleep in search of him. We had assumed that she was, as we say, "dead." She had not asserted the fact.

I submit this one experience and will write out another as soon as I can. - Very truly yours, Georgiana B. Kirby.

A second letter from Mrs. Kirby, dated Santa Cruz, Cal., October 12th, 1886, gave further particulars as follows:-

Dear Sir, - Yours of September 9th arrived in due season. My reply has been delayed by my ineffectual efforts to ascertain the month when our two friends, McLean and Dryden, visited us on the ranche, because it was within a month after this that Mary Howells told me her child was ill, and later that she was dead, and I thought it might not be so difficult to search the death record of one month for the child under the head of "Howells." As it is the gentlemen have proved to me that their visit occurred in 1852, and not in 1853 as I had supposed, but they could not remember if it were the spring or fall of that year. This, our ignorance of the date of the death and of the child's Christian name, is the most unsatisfactory part of my record. Neither were mentioned in the grandfather's letter, and from Tom never mentioning the name I fancied he did not know it. I saw him recently, but I could not venture to speak to him of his sister's illegitimate child. He has twelve living daughters of his own, and he would be justly offended if I should remind him of how we had gained a knowledge of his sister's life.

He told us that his father was still alive and living where they always had lived, at Saltash, which he thought by this time must be a part of Plymouth.

I should explain that neither Dr. McLean nor the Rev. - Dryden were personally cognisant of our doings, so that they could not act as witnesses in the case.

You ask if I can point you to any contemporary record. Thirty-four years ago no Spiritualistic paper was published in the United States, and such a narration given as true in any ordinary journal would have laid us open to the charge of lunacy. And had this been otherwise, we could not have proclaimed the fact that the sister of the honest fellow who was working for us was a disreputable woman.

As to fraud on Tom's part, he could hardly understand why we wanted him to sit with his hands on the table. I repeated the letters in my mind. How could he tip the table at the right instant so as to spell words which disclosed his sister's disgrace? Then he was in no want of money. He had been earning 60 dols. a month (and had spent it all, mostly at Spanish fandangos); and the agreement with my husband, to which he had lately placed his x, bound him to work for Mr. K. for one year for the sum of 60 dols. a month and his board and lodging. You, sir, must have read something about the high price of labour in California in those early years of its settlement.

The sittings were held after supper (or dinner, you would call it), between seven and nine o'clock.

Cat Street was in Plymouth, England. If it has given place to another the fact of its former existence could be verified. Georgian A B. Kirby.

The actual existence of the "Cat Street" of the narrative is shown by the following letter:-

Post Office, Plymouth, January 23rd, 1888.

Sir, - In reply to yours of the 21st instant, I beg to inform you that a few years ago there was a street named Catte Street, but it is now called Stillman Street. - I am, sir, yours obediently,

R. A. Leverton (for Postmaster).

The regretted death of Mrs. Kirby soon after the date of her last letter put an end to this correspondence.

It will be observed that the communications from the woman at Plymouth were received at an hour which, in England, fell in the middle of the night.

With Mrs. Kirby's case we may compare an old, but carefully evidenced, record which I give in 852 A.

In that case a warning was received by table-tilting of the approaching death of a man who (although the experimenter did not know it) was lying in a state of opium-stupor. The circumstances of his last illness had previously been predicted by a crystal-vision. It is, of course, conceivable that, if indeed it was the sick man's own spirit which gave the message through the table, his own spirit also may have inspired the crystal-vision. Compare with this case the incident described by Mr. Underwood (865 A) where Mrs. Underwood's left hand wrote in "mirror-writing" the name of a person two hundred miles off, who was, as was subsequently learnt, "in an unconscious state at the time, and very near death, which occurred two or three days afterwards." There have been some scattered indications, throughout our evidence of automatisms, of a possible premonitory knowledge, or guardian care, possessed and exercised by a man's own deeper self, without external spiritual intervention.

I add in 852 B the case of Signor Bonatti, where, again, some of the communications through automatic writing are given as coming from living persons, though the usual communicator frankly styles itself "Secondo," as being no more than the automatist's secondary personality.