The Wanderings of a Spiritualist

I am afraid that the average Britisher looks upon New Zealand as one / solid island. If he had to cross Cook's Strait to get from the northern / to the southern half, he would never forget his lesson in geography, for / it can be as nasty a bit of water as is to be found in the world, with / ocean waves, mountain winds and marine currents all combining into a / horrible chaos. Twelve good hours separate Wellington in the north from / Lyttelton, which is the port of Christchurch in the south. A very short / railway joins the two latter places. My luck held good, and I had an / excellent passage, dining in Wellington and breakfasting in / Christchurch. It is a fine city, the centre of the famous Canterbury / grazing country. Four shiploads of people calling themselves the / Canterbury Pilgrims arrived here in 1852, built a cathedral, were / practically ruled over by Bishop Selwyn, and tried the successful / experiment of establishing a community which should be as Anglican as / New England is Nonconformist. The distinctive character has now largely / disappeared, but a splendid and very English city remains as a memorial / of their efforts. When you are on the green, sloping banks of the river / Avon, with the low, artistic bridges, it would not be hard to imagine / that you were in the Backs at Cambridge.

At Christchurch I came across one of those little bits of psychic / evidence which may be taken as certainly true, and which can be / regarded, therefore, as pieces which have to be fitted into the jig-saw / puzzle in order to make the completed whole, at that far off date when a / completed whole is within the reach of man's brain. It concerns Mr. / Michie, a local Spiritualist of wide experience. On one occasion some / years ago, he practised a short cut to psychic power, acquired through a / certain method of breathing and of action, which amounts, in my opinion, / to something in the nature of self-hypnotisation. I will not give / details, as I think all such exercises are dangerous save for very / experienced students of these matters, who know the risk and are / prepared to take it. The result upon Mr. Michie, through some disregard / upon his part of the conditions which he was directed to observe, was / disastrous. He fell into an insidious illness with certain psychic / symptoms, and within a few months was reduced to skin and bone. Mr. / Michie's wife is mediumistic and liable to be controlled. One day an / entity came to her and spoke through her to her husband, claiming to be / the spirit of one, Gordon Stanley. He said: "I can sympathise with your / case, because my own death was brought about in exactly the same way. I / will help you, however, to fight against it and to recover. " The spirit / then gave an account of his own life, described himself as a clerk in / Cole's Book Arcade in Melbourne, and said that his widow was living at / an address in Melbourne, which was duly given. Mr. Michie at once wrote / to this address and received this reply, the original of which I have / seen: