The swaying and jolting grew worse.  There was a grinding and crunching under the wheels of the carriage as though a thousand huge coffee-mills were at work.  Suddenly the train parted in the middle, and while the forepart, with the engine, went ploughing through the ballast till brought up in safety a few hundred yards further on, the carriage in which were Ducie and Platzoff, together with the hinder part of the train, went toppling over a high embankment, and crashing down the side, and rolling over and over, came to a dead stand at the bottom, one huge mass of wreck and disaster.

(To be continued.)

SONNET.

    Yes, I have heard it oft:  a few brief years
    True life comprise.  The rest is but a dream: 
    What though to thee like life it vainly seem. 
    Fool, trust it not; ’tis not what it appears. 
    We live but once.  We die before the shears
    Of Atropos the thread have clipped.  True life
    Is when with ardent youth’s and passion’s strife
    We suffer and we feel.  ’Tis when wild tears
    Can flow and hearts can break, or ’neath the gaze
    Of loved eyes beat.  ’Tis when on eager wing
    Of Hope we soar, and Past and Future bring
    Within the Present’s grasp.  Ay, we live then,
    But when that cup is quaffed what doth remain? 
    The dregs of days that follow upon days!

JULIA KAVANAGH.

MEDIUMS AND MYSTERIES.

BY NARISSA ROSAVO.

So long as the world lasts, no doubt a large portion of its inhabitants will run after that which the Scotch expressively term “uncanny.”  The absence of accurate knowledge and the impossibility of thorough scientific investigation, of separating the chaff from the wheat, the true from the counterfeit, becomes at one and the same time the charm and the counterblast to diligent searchers.

For the most part, these are persons of inferior mental calibre, of somewhat unrefined instincts; but, on the other hand, I have known mighty intellects lose themselves in this maze, where no firm clue can be seized by which to go forward safely, to advance at all, while the return journey must be made with certain loss.  Persistent endeavour brings weakened faith in God, in place of that certainty spiritualists talk of when they say their arts are beneficial, proving a hereafter—­a spiritual world.

It is not thus we get on firm footing.  We but advance into sloughs of despond, led by wills of the wisp; and the girl mediums, the so-called clairvoyantes, invariably lose mental health and physical strength.  It is but a matter of time, and they become hysteria patients or inhabitants of lunatic asylums.  I have known a clever clergyman of the Church of England determine to find out the truth, if any, on this path.  He made use of his own daughter in the search.  The coil of delusion led him on until it became a choice of death or madness for the tender instrument with which he felt his way into the unseen world.