I had many years previously lost a brother—­the same whom I have already had occasion to mention in the earlier part of this letter.  Now, at an early stage of the series of sittings that took place at my house it was intimated that the spirit of this brother was present and wishful or willing to communicate with me.  He did, as was proposed, communicate very freely upon subjects of all sorts by means of raps under the table and the letters of the alphabet spread upon it—­on all subjects save one.  To the often-repeated question, where we had last met in life, I could get no reply.  It was constantly promised to me that I should be answered this question at the next sitting.  Now, it so happened that my wife had conceived, reasonably or unreasonably, doubts as to the medium’s honesty in the matter, and she determined to try him in the matter of this unanswered question.  Talking one day with him in tete-a-tete, she turned the subject of maladies of the chest, of which they had been speaking, to the special case of her late brother-in-law, discussing the powerful influence of climate, and remarking that she feared Ostend had been a very bad place for him.  And there she left the matter without any further remark, and without eliciting any answer from him.  This occurred very shortly before the time when Mr. Hume left my house to accept the hospitality of Mr. Powers.  The sittings continued with great frequency in the house of the latter, and my mother and myself were very frequently present at them.  As before, the soi-disant spirit of my brother Henry announced his presence, and, as before, I repeated my often-asked question as to the place on earth where he and I had last met.  On this occasion the answer rapped out consisted of the word “Ostend.”  I smilingly replied, “Spirit, you know nothing about what you are talking of:  you are wrong.”  Mr. Hume became immediately very angry, and reproached me vehemently for “interrupting the spirit”—­for not waiting for what he was probably going to say.  It was likely enough, he added, that the spirit was about to say that Ostend was not the place.  I said “Pshaw!  In that way he might go through the whole Gazetteer.”  Thereupon Mr. Hume declared that I was evidently not in a fit frame of mind to be a sitter at such meetings; that my presence would be likely to mar any results to be expected from them; and, in short, if only for the sake of those who wished to continue their experiences, it was necessary that I should withdraw from them.  That was the last occasion on which I took part in a seance under Mr. Hume’s mediumship.  My mother continued her sittings at the house of Mr. Powers, and it is fair to record that she there witnessed material phenomena—­some of them closely allied to phenomena only explainable on Spiritualistic theories—­of even a more extraordinary nature than any which had occurred at my house; in which neither she, nor Mr. Powers or any of his family, nor any of the others of the party, were able to detect