"It is impossible to doubt that we have here proof of a supernormal agency of some kind—either telepathy by the trance intelligence from the sitter or some kind of communication with the dead."

Two pages farther on, however, appears the advocatus diaboli (Op. Cit., p. 224):

"When asked to give the contents of any sealed letters written in his life-time for the express purpose of being read by him after death the two sentences were given: 'There is no death' and 'out of life into life eternal' (p. 102). Whatever Hodgson may have written, it was surely not quite so commonplace as that."

To my gullible apprehension, it seems eminently appropriate.

Among the interesting phenomena investigated by the S. P. R., have been the automatic, or I should prefer to say heteromatic, writing of Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. Holland, which were not made in trance. Vol. XX of the Proceedings is entirely given up to the consideration of it by Mrs. Verrall. She is the wife of a professor in Cambridge, and herself lecturer in Newnham College. The phenomena themselves are of moderate interest beside most of those described in these pages, but their evidential value is high, and their implications most important, and the treatment of them is pervaded by wide scholarship, and is charming. The experiences, however, do not connect with the main Moses—Piper—G. P.—Hodgson—Myers thread on which these brief extracts have naturally strung themselves, and I will not attenuate that thread to make room for this outside strand. I especially commend Mrs. Verrall's volume, however, to anybody who combines with an interest in Psychical Research, an interest in really "elegant letters."

The following scrap relating to Hodgson is from an account by Miss Johnson (Research officer of the S. P. R.) of Mrs. Holland (pseudonym) (Pr. XXI, 303f.):

"In February, 1905 ... Mrs. Holland found that the automatic writing was beginning to make her feel faint or sleepy. The condition was obviated at the time.... It now began to recur. [This sort of thing is noted in several places as preceding the advent of a new, and especially a strong control. Ed.]

"Mrs. Holland learned of Hodgson's death on January 2, 1906. Her script on Friday, February 9, 1906, 9 P. M., is as follows (Pr. XXI, 304):

"... S j d i b s e I p e h t p o—Only one letter further on—

188
915
34
87
119
1815
414
——

"They are not haphazard figures read them as letters—....

"K. 57.

"I found that in spite of the rather obvious hints....—'Only one letter further on' and 'Not haphazard figures read them as letters,'—Mrs. Holland had not deciphered the initial conundrums. The first letters are formed from the name 'Richard Hodgson' by substituting for each letter of the name the letter following it in the alphabet; the numbers represent the same name by substituting for each letter the number of its place in the alphabet.

"I asked Mrs. Holland if she had ever played at conundrums of this kind. She told me that as a child in the nursery she had played at a 'secret language' made by using either the letter before or the letter after the real one. But she had never practised or thought of using numbers in this way. She noted afterwards: 'When my hand wrote them I thought they were an addition sum and hoped [my subliminal] would add it very correctly and quickly. [My supraliminal] is very poor at figures.'"

188
915
34
87
119
1815
414
——