If fresh rose leaves are shut closely into a drawer until they have thoroughly dried and crumbled, they will be found, when removed, entirely scentless, but the drawer will retain for years some intangible emanation which they have given off, and this will permeate any object left in the drawer. Recent delicate experiments have shown how the violence of emotion will affect the weight of human beings, and no doubt, in supreme crises of feeling, living bodies may lose this weight by the throwing off of some emanation which may linger for a long time in the immediate surroundings. It has been discovered that many objects retain luminosity, after being long exposed to powerful rays; a luminosity invisible to our sight, but sufficient to make dim photographs upon highly sensitized plates. The "ghosts" are very probably explicable on some such theory as this. Some individuals are like these extremely sensitive plates. The emanations thrown out in the condition of intense emotion affect them, and give them an impression of sounds or sights which appear, in our present state of ignorance, to be supernatural. Of course, any psychologist or scientist would pooh-pooh this hypothesis of mine, if it were made public, but equally they would have sniffed fifty years ago at a guess at wireless telegraphy, or the Roëntgen ray, or the radioactivity of radium. After all, however, they are right in thinking that guesses are not very valuable unless one has the industry to demonstrate their accuracy.

December 20.
Amateur Saints.

If there is any one thing more particularly repulsive to me than another it is the way the average clerical person speaks of religious things. One would suppose that such matters, if one really believed them, would be the profoundest sentiments of one's nature, and be mentioned with the reserve and reverence with which the lay person treats the deeper sentiments, such as love, honour, or patriotism.

A little pamphlet came by mail to-day, which proved to be a sort of begging letter from a community of Protestant clergymen, who are undertaking to imitate monasticism in America. Under a heading of a cross is this text, "If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great matter if we shall reap your worldly things?" And there follows an appeal for assistance in building a monastery on the Hudson. The language of this pamphlet is the usual language of begging letters, only with that flavour of smug religiosity and bland business-like dealing with matters of the soul which amazes the lay mind.

This community of, presumably, able-bodied men who desire to reap of our worldly things naively sets forth in the following programme the manner in which they intend to occupy their time:

5 A.M.Rise.
5.30 to 6.Meditation in Chapel.
6.Morning Prayer and Prime.
6.50 to 8.Celebrations of the Holy Eucharist.
8.Breakfast.
9.30.Terce and Intercessions.
12 M.Sext and None.
12.30 P.M.Dinner.
1 to 1.20.Recreation (in common).
4.45.Evensong.
5.15 to 5.45.Meditation.
6.Supper.
6.30 to 7.15.Recreation (in common).
8.30.Compline.
10.Lights extinguished.

And it is to permit them to spend their days in such fruitful fashion that one is called upon to contribute the money earned by men who toil! That many have already contributed is to be inferred from the fact that this community has become possessed of seventy-five acres of valuable land, and has spent some forty thousand dollars on the erection of a monastery.

Of course, there are worthless idlers everywhere, but very few of them in our practical day assume their indolence as a merit, or call upon their neighbours to support them, in the name of the deeper sentiments of life.