days dying—­of starvation and thirst,” Foster went on, as if deciphering some terrible hieroglyphs written on the air.  “His thigh swelled to the size of his body.  Clouds of flies settled on him—­flies and vermin—­and he chewed his own arm and drank his own blood.  He died mad.  And my God! he crawled three miles in those four days!  Man!  Man! that’s how your father died!”

So saying, with a great sob, Foster dropped into his chair, his cheeks purple, and tears running down them in rivers.  The younger man ... burst into a wild cry of grief and sank upon the neck of his friend.  He, too, was sobbing as if his own heart would break.  Bartlett stood over Foster wiping his forehead with a handkerchief....

“It’s true,” said the younger man’s friend; “his father was a stock-raiser in Texas, and after he had been missing from his drove for over a week, they found him dead and swollen with his leg broken.  They tracked him a good distance from where he must have fallen.  But nobody ever heard till now how he died.” ...

Now it is hardly to be supposed that the young visitor could ever have had this scene in his mind as vividly as Foster had.  In that case where and how did Foster get the vividness and emotion?  How do we get them in dreams?  He dreamed while he was awake.

As Bartlett quotes this, and as it declares him to have been present, he of course attests it by quoting it.  So in each of Bartlett’s quoted cases, the original witness is the reporter in the newspaper, and Bartlett, who was present (he was Foster’s traveling companion and business agent) thus confirms it.  We know Mr. Bartlett personally, and have thorough confidence in his sanity and sincerity.  We have also been at the pains to learn that he commands the confidence and respect of his fellow townsmen in Tolland, Connecticut, where he is passing a green old age.  Moreover, he does not interpret these phenomena by “spiritism.”

We also had a sitting with Foster, in which he undoubtedly showed abundant telepathy, and satisfied us that he was fundamentally honest, though not always discriminating between his involuntary impressions, and his natural impulses to help out their coherence and interest.

* * * * *

Those who explain these things by denying their existence, were at least excusable thirty, or even twenty, years ago, but since the carefully sifted and authenticated and recorded evidence of recent years, especially that gathered by the Society for Psychical Research, the makers of such explanations simply put themselves in the category of those who, in Schopenhauer’s day, denied the telopsis which is now quite generally recognized.  He said their attitude should not be called skeptical, but merely ignorant.  This brings to mind an excellent very practical friend who read the first number of this REVIEW, and praised it, but said:  “Don’t fool any more with Psychical Research and Simplified Spelling.”  We refrained from saying that we had not known that he had ever studied either, and we would not say it here if we were not confident that his aversion from the subject will prevent his reading this.