Publisher's Synopsis
From the PREFACE. FRAGMENTS OF MY PSYCHIC EXPERIENCE.
IT has been suggested that this volume would be better understood if I gave my spiritual experience and method of writing. In complying, I exclude everything outside my psychic sensitiveness. That I was born in what was then a wilderness on the southern shores of Lake Erie (Ohio, U. S. A.), and for the early years of my life to the time I began to write for the superior intelligences had exceedingly limited social and educational advantages, may be of interest to the readers as showing how the communications transcended my own capabilities, and the education which came with its inspiration.
No one can write of the vicissitudes, emotions, or thoughts of a medium as well as the medium himself. By the essential conditions of mediumship, he is sensitive and easily disturbed by antagonism. What to others would be a jest, to him becomes agonizing, and he is often disturbed by causes unknown by their subtlety. The voice of censure is unbearably harsh; a word of praise lifts his soul with unspeakable delight; he is a bundle of nerves, tense, sensitive to a breath, responding to a touch. These conditions are not of his seeking, but are thrust upon him, and he cannot cast them off. Like all human capabilities, sensitiveness is susceptible of culture, of intensification, and of being lost by neglect or abuse; of yielding unspeakable delight or pain.
Hence, for the medium who has traversed this path- way to clearly present the conflicting impressions he experiences is difficult, but important data for the study of the phenomena may be thereby furnished.
At an age when the mind is usually absorbed in sports my thoughts turned to the great questions of theology and religion. This I refer to the fact that my parents were Unitarians in a community of Trinitarians. Their house was the headquarters for the itinerant preachers, both orthodox and heterodox, who, on circuits, carried their doctrines into the wilderness, and the atmosphere was burdened with dogmatic disputations, based on the literal text of the Bible, for the "higher criticism" was then unknown and doctrinal sermons, hot with the fires of hell, and terrible threatenings of God's wrath met the popular demand. The result was that at an early age I became sceptical of the entire Church scheme. The gloom of doubt was cast over my young life. Annihilation was appalling, yet I saw no escape. They who professed to know the secrets, not only of life but of death, were in direct conflict on vital issues, and their light darkened understanding. Outside of their domain there was no assurance.
Man physically dies like the animal. Death in both is accompanied by the same phenomena, and after death the chemistry of change resolves the substance of each to the same elements. Why should we suppose the one to be immortal and the other not? If immortality be doubted, all dependent dogmas share its fate. I was more infidel than Paine, for I doubted everything.
The beginning of my doubts may be dated to an accident which befell me, and my application of the prayer test. I had been brought up to pray every night before retiring, as a duty which must not be neglected. When I was near ten years old I was set to spreading hay after the mowers, and was given a steel fork, because I was not strong enough to use a wooden one. In those days such a fork was a treasure, and I was strictly charged to be careful of it. All went well, and I kept near the gleaming scythes. Then I fell behind, further and further. Suddenly a snake darted over the swarthe. Filled with that hereditary hatred which has been instilled for countless generations against the serpent, I struck at it with the fork. I gave it no harm, but one tine of the fork snapped short, I was overwhelmed with fear. My father was stern and not inclined to "spare the rod," and I was hopeless....
