For it opened up to him, beneath all its sham mysticism, its
intolerable affectations, its grotesque parody of spirituality--of all
of which he was largely aware--a glimmering avenue of a faintly
possible hope of which he had never dreamed--a hope, at least, of that
half self-deception which is so tempting to certain characters.
Here, in this book, written by a living man, whose name and address
were given, were stories so startling, and theories so apparently
consonant with themselves and with other partly known facts--stories
and theories, too, which met so precisely his own overmastering
desire, that it is little wonder that he was affected by them.
Naturally, even during his reading, a thousand answers and adverse
comments had sprung to his mind--suggestions of fraud, of lying, of
hallucination--but yet, here the possibility remained. Here were
living men and women who, with the usual complement of senses and
reason, declared categorically and in detail, that on this and that
date, in this place and the other, after having taken all possible
precautions against fraud, they had received messages from the
dead--messages of which the purport was understood by none but
themselves--that they had seen with their eyes, in sufficient light,
the actual features of the dead whom they loved, that they had even
clasped their hands, and held for an instant the bodies of those whom
they had seen die with their own eyes, and buried.
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