"We were a very disorganized group as we descended to our coffee. Nancy regarded us with suppressed questions in her eyes. As soon as the colonel had received his cup from Mrs. Van Zant's hand he made for her and told her he had just discovered he had been spending the evening in the same room with Harrison Evans and did not know it until a few minutes ago. Nancy cast one appalled and fleeting glance at me and then at Mr. Van Zant's suffused face before she yielded herself up to him.

"It was too late now for regrets. I drank my coffee and looked at the tragedy from every angle. I had stupidly let myself be carried along upon a sea of adulation while the Van Zants had been betrayed before my eyes. It was tragic. What was more, it smacked of rankest ingratitude. They had accepted Nancy and me as charity; charity we should have remained in the name of all decency. I looked across at Mr. Van Zant and hastily away again. He was dissected and quivering before my eyes. I felt very low myself. Things would never be the same again, no matter what their reaction was to my changed condition. They would drop us.

84

"Well,"-Evans leaned over and blotted out the end of his cigarette, "that is what happened."

"You don't mean," I interrupted, "that you never saw them again?" Evans nodded.

"They never asked us again. Nancy and I have never laid eyes on them from that day to this."

"Oh, my Lord!" I leaned back in my chair and laughed until I was faint.

"When I had stood as much of the colonel's voice as I possibly could,— he gave no one a chance to talk about anything else except Harrison Evans, and you can imagine how I loved the sound of my name by that time,-I signaled to Nancy, and we got up to go. We did n't get rid of him so easily though; he went with us. Tore himself away from the outstretched arms of the Van Zants and followed us to the sidewalk and around the block to our car. I don't know what he thought of us for parking it there. We took him down and dropped him in front of his blessed 'Follies'; we would n't go with him. Then Nancy and I went home. We felt that there had been a death in the family and we wanted to be alone to mourn.”

"You did n't call?"

"No; we considered it, and decided not. We waited until the next year. We watched the mail feverishly; the invitation did n't come. It never came again."

"Are they still living?"

"I think so. Yes, they are still living, of course they are; they 're deathless. Once a year they gather with Doctor Sciple, reduced to taking more pink pellets as time goes by, and the cultivated Miss Culver, in that drawing-room with its blue satin walls and the Aubusson carpet, and discuss the weather and their ailments. Nancy and I are never mentioned. Our brief little stay among them was a mistake and not to be discussed. It is something that has never been."

"Ah, you should write it," I said as Evans got to his feet preparatory to departing bedward; "you really should, my dear fellow!"

But Evans only shook his head as he bade me good night.

response to the bidding of a hearty voice, and was confronted by a great oak-tree of a man, with a head like the dome of St. Paul's. He was drying some clothes before a fire, as the day was very wet, and with a smile he said that caution of this sort was one of the penalties of age. "You are young; you don't have to think about such things."

Now, it happens that I have been young for a length of time sufficient to find it pleasantly flattering to be mistaken for a mere youth, and a sense of honesty dictated that I confess my real age. The comfort that I craved was immediately forthcoming, as my punctilious admission brought from Sir Oliver Lodge a hearty laugh. He shook his head and said, “You are an old man!"

Sir Oliver bears a striking resemblance to the late Lord Salisbury. His head, like the rest of him, is massive and has unusual length, the cranium being bald and high, and the huge jaw lengthened in effect by the white beard.

From childhood science has always had great interest and fascination for me, and here was an opportunity par excellence for a bit of journey into the scientific fairy-land. So, as I made my

from him a most enlivening and instructive discourse on several subjects about which I was curious.

He told me about the new conception of the atom-new at least to me and, I think, to the average layman.

"Well, Sir Oliver," I said, "this is alchemy at last, is it not?"

"Yes, in principle. We have not been able to make gold, however. The claims of the alchemists were made merely as a measure toward self-preservation. If they had confessed that they were investigating the laws of nature, they would have been burned as sorcerers, or put to death in some horrible way as punishment for imprudently trying to pry into secrets of the Almighty. But if they said, 'We will make gold of the baser metals,' the authorities responded with much enthusiasm: 'Excellent. A sane and laudable ambition. When you succeed, let us have some of it.'"

Sir Oliver was one of the pioneers in the atomic discoveries above referred to, and also in the development of radio. I asked if he thought there was a possibility of a vast number of "tunings" being made available for practical use, with the result of supplanting the telephone and cable. He

thought not, as interference would hardly be overcome unless the vibration numbers, or "tunings" in use were rather far apart, thus limiting the scope. In the case of wires the difficulties from various kinds of interference are virtually eliminated, and, in his opinion, they will always carry a great majority of the traffic in messages. Astronomy was another subject upon which he touched.

He spoke of his recent lecture tour in America, where he delivered perhaps eighty addresses, mostly on the subject of spiritualism. He was delighted with the cordial hospitality extended to him, and gratified by the large audiences that greeted him everywhere.

"It was a revelation to me to see them turn out in such numbers to hear an old man talk," he said. "Americans seem to be very fond of lectures."

We rested after a while from our work on the sketch, and the conversation continued over the tea-cups. Sir Oliver expressed the conviction that America must lead in science in the future, as, among other reasons, unlimited money is provided there for the furtherance of scientific experimentation in all subjects. He expressed an envy, with which I had the greatest sympathy, of American scientists of his acquaintance who have at their command money in any quantity necessary for the continuance of their investigations.

I asked him, too, about his investigation years ago of the famous medium Eusapia Paladino. He said that she was for the most part a precious old fraud, willing to do anything to deceive, but possessed, nevertheless, of remarkable powers. Several mediums

to-day have similar ability, notably an Austrian boy who can cause levitation of heavy objects, and can exert a mysterious force in other surprising ways. In response to my question whether any progress at all had been made toward the explanation of spiritualistic phenomena, he replied that some slight progress had been made, but that most of the genuine manifestations of this kind still remain mysteries. It is his hope to clear away as much of the uncertainty as possible, and toward this end he is conducting experiments at his laboratories. He invited me to his home in the country, and promised me a view of his workshops.

Fortunately, the following Sunday found me in Salisbury, so I rang him up from my hotel. Sir Oliver's fine, heavy voice, with its rich Staffordshire bur, was most pleasant to hear again. He had previously drawn a diagram to direct me in finding Normanton House, regretting that his motor-car was not available for use at the present time. I replied that it would be a simple matter to get one in the town.

"No, no," he said; "get a bicycle. You'll enjoy the exercise, and it is cheaper."

Sir Oliver's house is a large rectangular edifice of alternating blocks of gray stone and chalk that is studded with flints. On entering the house, my eyes were at once attracted by a photographic portrait of Raymond Lodge, Sir Oliver's dead son, with a wreath of immortelles festooned across it.

My host appeared promptly, and after calling my attention to this picture, showed me, among other things, an excellent likeness of himself in oils and a number of Lady Lodge's paintings. Then he carried me off to his

psychical laboratory, where he had an apparatus designed for taking photographs of spirits. I asked if he had as yet produced any successful photographs. He replied that he had not, and appeared skeptical of the possibility of its achievement.

"Photography is very easily manipulated, you know," he said. "If I produce some successful pictures myself, I shall believe it, but not before."

Sir Oliver Lodge is, first of all, a great scientist, and in trying to explain psychical phenomena he absolutely remains the scientist. Thousands of people of the highest intelligence have observed the exercise by mediums of a mysterious physical force that causes heavy objects to rise in the air, that can make deep indentations in stiff clay at a considerable distance, and that performs many other equally surprising things. Some of the mediums, too, achieve remarkable feats in the psychic field, with the published accounts of which most of us are familiar.

These are not superstitions, but realities, unless we are to believe that a multitude of the greatest scientists of the world, as well as many famous men of various professions, have been successfully and repeatedly hoaxed over a long period of years, and despite the most exacting precautions that they can devise. The list of the names of eminent men who have observed these things and have been forced to believe in them as actual scientific realities is enough to give pause to the most skeptical. In whose province lies the investigation of these physical forces if not in that of the physicist? And who is to sift the evidence having to do with the psychological phenomena that have been

authoritatively observed and recorded if not the psychologist? If, after all, the phenomena are false, these are the people to prove it, and the finger of scorn should not be directed at their endeavers. True, Sir Oliver believes that he has been in communication with the spirit of his son, a thing that he cannot yet prove to the satisfaction of many of us. But if he did not believe, he would hardly have the same incentive to investigate the many phenomena that are as yet unexplained. He is one of the pioneers, willing to dare, and to seek the truth even in this almost forbidden field. Columbus was ridiculed because he believed the world was round, and had the courage to brave uncharted seas to try to prove it. The sincere scientist seeks after the truth even though his efforts bring derision upon him, and welcomes the truth whether it elevates his theory to the dignity of a law or dashes it into oblivion.

Sir Oliver spoke with a smile and a shrug, and Lady Lodge a bit more feelingly, of the uplifting of eyebrows in some quarters because of their championing of spiritualism. A great many self-constituted critics think that they must be a bit "touched," she said, or they would not have espoused such a belief. But they are not in the slightest degree shaken in their determination to pursue their investigations with all possible thoroughness. They regret that much of their work must be done through mediums, as some of these people are at times willing to resort to pretense to bolster up any sagging of their powers. But it seems to me that the world is fortunate in having so great a scientist as Sir Oliver Lodge battling with a subject that has baffled many people over a