I can quite understand, too, that your sister in her new life may be, above all things, interested in getting the telegraph in good order, to communicate, and will not think of much else till that is done.  While the first Atlantic cable was being laid the messages would be chiefly reports of progress, directions and instructions, with now and then trivialities about the weather, the time, or small items of news.  Only when it was in real working order was a President’s Message, a Queen’s Speech, sent through it.

Automatic writing and trance speaking never yet convinced anybody.  They are only useful for those who are already convinced.  But you would begin this way.  You would not go to mediums and seances and see what you could get that way.  So now you must persevere; but do not give up your own judgment in anything.  Insist upon having things explained to you, or say you won’t go on.  You will then find they will be explained, only it may take a little more time.... —­Yours very faithfully,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

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TO MISS BUCKLEY

The Dell, Grays, Essex.  April 24, 1874.

Dear Miss Buckley,—­ ...  On coming home this evening I received the news of poor little Bertie’s death—­this morning at eight o’clock.  I left him only yesterday forenoon, and had then considerable hopes, for we had just commenced a new treatment which a fortnight earlier I am pretty sure might have saved him.  The thought suddenly struck me to go to Dr. Williams, of Hayward’s Heath ... but it was too late.  As he had been in this same state of exhaustion for nearly a month, it is evident that very slight influences might have been injurious or beneficial.  Our orthodox medical men are profoundly ignorant of the subtle influences of the human body in health and disease, and can thus do nothing in many cases which Nature would cure if assisted by proper conditions.  We who know what strange and subtle influences are around us can believe this....—­Yours very truly,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

* * * * *

Mr. Wallace felt the death of this child so deeply that during the remainder of his life he never mentioned him except when obliged, and then with tears in his eyes.—­A.B.  FISHER.

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TO MISS BUCKLEY

The Dell, Grays, Essex.  Thursday evening, [?  December, 1875].

Dear Miss Buckley,—­Our stance came off last evening, and was a tolerable success.  The medium is a very pretty little lively girl, the place where she sits a bare empty cupboard formed by a frame and doors to close up a recess by the side of a fireplace in a small basement breakfast-room.  We examined it, and it is absolutely impossible to conceal a scrap of paper in it.  Miss Cooke is locked in this cupboard,