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Now, I felt a very natural emotion of pride. My perception of objects of interest was a quick and a correct one. “Speak on,” I said, “I shall be very glad to hear what you have to say.”

He looked toward the open door. I arose and closed it. When I had resumed my seat he drew his chair closer to me, leaned toward me, and said:

“In the first place you should know that I am a materialized spirit.”

I sat up, hard pressed against the back of my chair.

“Nay, start not,” he said, “I am now as truly flesh and blood as you are; but a short three weeks ago I was a spirit in the realms of endless space. I know,” he continued, “that my history is a sore thing to inflict upon any man, and there are few to whom I would have broached it, but I will make it brief. Three weeks ago these spiritualists held privately in this town what they call a seance, and at that time I was impelled, by a power I understood not, to appear among them. After I had come it was supposed that a mistake had been made, and that I was not the spirit wanted. In the temporary confusion occasioned by this supposition, and while the attention of the exhibitors was otherwise occupied, I was left exposed to the influence of the materializing agencies for a much longer time than had been intended; so long, indeed, that instead of remaining in the misty, indistinct form in which spirits are presented by these men to their patrons, I became as thoroughly embodied, as full of physical life and energy, and as complete a mortal man as I was when I disappeared from this earth, one hundred and two years ago.”

“One hundred and two years!” I mechanically ejaculated. There was upon me the impulse to get up and go where I could breathe the outer air; to find my wife and talk to her about marketing or some household affair, to get away from this being–human or whatever he was–but this was impossible. That interest which dawned upon me when I first perceived my visitor now held me as if it had been a spell.

“Yes,” he said, “I deceased in 1785, being then in my thirtieth year. I was a citizen of Bixbury, on the Massachusetts coast, but I am not unconnected with this place. Old Mr. Scott, of your town, is my grandson.”

I am obliged to chronicle the fact that my present part in this conversation consisted entirely of ejaculations. “Old Mr. Scott your grandson!” I said.

“Yes,” he replied; “my daughter, who was but two years old when I left her, married Lemuel Scott, of Bixbury, who moved to this town soon after old Mr. Scott was born. It was, indeed, on account of this good old man that I became materialized. He was present at the private seance of which I have spoken, and being asked if he would like to see a person from the other world, he replied that he should be pleased to behold his grandfather. When the necessary influences were set to work I appeared. The spiritualists, who, without much thought, had conceived the idea that the grandfather of old Mr. Scott ought, in the ordinary nature of things, to be a very venerable personage, were disappointed when they saw me, and concluded I was one who, by some mistake, had been wrongfully summoned. They, therefore, set me aside, as it were, and occupied themselves with other matters. Old Mr. Scott went away unsatisfied, and strengthened in his disbelief in the powers of the spiritualists, while I, as I have before said, was left unnoticed under the power of the materializing force, until I was made corporeal as I am now. When the spiritualists discovered what had happened they were much disturbed, and immediately set about to dematerialize me, for it is not their purpose or desire to cause departed spirits to again become inhabitants of this world. But all their efforts were of no avail. I remained as much a man as anyone of themselves. They found me in full health and vigor, for I had never had a day’s sickness in my life, having come to my death by drowning while foolishly swimming too far from land in a strong ebb tide, and my body, being carried out to sea, was never recovered. Being thus put to their wit’s end, they determined to keep the matter privy, and to make the best of it, and the first necessity was to provide me with clothing, for on my second entrance into this world I was as totally without apparel as when I first came into it. They gave me these garments of the ordinary fashion of the day, but to which I find myself much unaccustomed, and enjoined upon me to keep silent in regard to what had happened; fearing, as I was made aware by some unguarded words, that their efforts to dematerialize me might bring them into trouble.”