William James, and others.  Myers’s great work on human personality was forever at my elbow.  And the longer I was debarred—­self-debarred because of my keen ambition and my determination to do nothing that could ever make me in any way suspect in the eyes of those to whom I looked confidently for preferment—­from continuing the practices which had such a fascination for me, the more intensely I was secretly drawn toward them.  The tug at my soul was at last almost unbearable.  It was then I looked toward Chichester, and resolved to take him into my confidence—­to a certain extent.

“I approached the matter craftily.  I dwelt first upon the great spread of infidelity in our days, and the necessity of combating it by every legitimate means.  I spoke of the efforts being made by earnest men of science—­such men as Professor Stepton, for instance—­to get at the truth Christians are expected to take on trust, as it were.  I said I respected such men.  Chichester agreed,—­when did he not agree with me at that time?—­but remarked that he could not help pitying them for ignoring revelation and striving to obtain by difficult means what all Christians already possessed by a glorious and final deed of gift.

“I saw that though Chichester was such a devoted worshiper of mine, if I wanted to persuade him to my secret purpose,—­no other than the effort, to be made with him, to communicate with the spirit world,—­I must be deceptive, I must mask my purpose with another.

“I did so.  I turned his attention to the subject of the human will.  Now, at that time Chichester knew that his will was weak.  He considered that fact one of his serious faults.  I hinted that I agreed with him.  I proposed to join with him in striving to strengthen it.  He envied my strength of will.  He looked up to me, worshiped me almost, because of it.  I drew his mind to the close consideration of influence.  I gave him two or three curious works that I possessed on this subject.  In one of them, a pamphlet written by a Hindu who had been partly educated at Oxford, and whom I had personally known when I was an undergraduate, there was a course of will-exercises, much as in certain books on body-building there are courses of physical exercises.  I related to Chichester some of the extraordinary and deeply interesting conversations I had had with this Hindu on the subject of the education of the will, and finally I told a lie.  I told Chichester that I had gained my powerful will while at Oxford by drawing it from my Hindu friend in a series of sittings that we two had secretly undertaken together.  This was false, because I had been born with a strong, even a tyrannical, will, and I had never sat with the Hindu.

“Chichester, though at first startled, was fascinated by this untruth, and, to cut the matter short, I persuaded him to begin with me a series of secret sittings, in which I proposed to try to impart to him, to infuse into him, as it were, some of my undoubted power—­the power which he daily saw me exercising in the pulpit and over the minds of men in my intercourse with them.