I said in a stern voice:  “Where are you?”

She replied, “Us are in a room, eight hundred and eleven miles above.  A man is writing.  Us are reading.”

I may tell you two things:  first, that in trance she never spoke of herself as “I,” nor even as “we,” but, for some unknown reason, in the objective way, as “us”:  “us are,” she would say—­“us will,” “us went”; though, of course, she was an educated lady, and I don’t think ever lived in the West of England, where they say “us” in that way; secondly, when wandering in the past, she always represented herself as being “above” (the earth?), and higher the further back in time she went; in describing present events she appears to have felt herself on (the earth); while, as regards the future, she invariably declared that “us” were so many miles “within” (the earth).

To her excursions in this last direction, however, there seemed to exist certain fixed limits:  I say seemed, for I cannot be sure, and only mean that, in spite of my efforts, she never, in fact, went far in this direction.  Three, four thousand “miles” were common figures on her lips in describing her distance “above”; but her distance “within” never got beyond sixty-three.  Usually, she would say twenty, twenty-five.  She appeared, in relation to the future, to resemble a diver in the deep sea, who, the deeper he strives, finds a more resistant pressure, till, at no great depth, resistance becomes prohibition, and he can no further strive.

’I am afraid I can’t go on:  though I had a good deal to tell you about this lady.  During fifteen years, off and on, I sat listening by her dim bed-side to her murmuring trances!  At last my expert ear could detect the sense of her faintest sigh.  I heard the “Decline and Fall” from beginning to end.  Some of her reports were the most frivolous nonsense:  over others I have hung in a horror of interest.  Certainly, my friend, I have heard some amazing words proceed from those wan lips of Mary Wilson.  Sometimes I could hitch her repeatedly to any scene or subject that I chose by the mere exercise of my will; at others, the flighty waywardness of her spirit eluded and baffled me:  she resisted—­she disobeyed:  otherwise I might have sent you, not four note-books, but twenty, or forty.  About the fifth year it struck me that it would be well to jot down her more connected utterances, since I knew shorthand.

The note-book marked “I.,” [1] which seems to me the most curious, belongs to the seventh year.  Its history, like those of the other three, is this:  I heard her one afternoon murmuring in the intonation used when reading; the matter interested me; I asked her where she was.  She replied:  “Us are forty-five miles within:  us read, and another writes”; from which I concluded that she was some fifteen to thirty years in the future, perusing an as yet unpublished work.  After that, during some weeks, I managed to keep her to the same subject, and finally, I fancy, won pretty well the whole work.  I believe you would find it striking, and hope you will be able to read my notes.