The worlds and I

Foreword To Critics And Clergymen

BEFORE you express your opinion too loudly regarding the last chapters of this book, the author respectfully suggests that you read the following editorial which appeared in the "Harbinger of Light. ,,

"Communication is possible, but one must obey the laws, first finding out the conditions. I do not say it is easy, but it is possible ; and I have conversed with my friends over yonder, just as I can converse with any one in this audience now."

Sir Oliver Lodge.

"Only a few weeks ago a Captain Chaplain drew a pathetic picture of the deaths of some of 'the boys' at the front and comforted his hearers with the inspiring assurance that 'they had passed painlessly into the night from which no mortal has ever returned !' He is evidently another of the clergy who 'do not know/ As a matter of fact, the gallant souls referred to did not pass into 'night' at all — either painlessly or painfully! They passed into the spiritual dawn, and as they gradually recovered consciousness the light around them increased, and, to their inexpressible joy, they eventually found themselves in an environment of translucent brightness. 'Night,' indeed, for such self-sacrificing heroes! Then, again, what authority, apart from Shakespeare, has this 'spiritual guide* for the assertion that these departed warriors cannot return? His Bible certainly contradicts him. A battalion of old Israelitish fighters returned when Elisha was hard pressed by his foes, and if they could return in those times, why cannot our brave lads return to-day?

"Samuel also returned and spoke to Saul; one of the old prophets returned and conversed with John ; and at the time of the Crucifixion the streets of Jerusalem were thronged with vi FOREWORD

the so-called 'dead.' If these things could happen in the past, why cannot they happen in the present? Does God work by 'fits and starts,' or are His ways the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever?

"But independent of all Scriptural testimony, we know, on the authority of modern-day scientists and millions of other witnesses, that the return of the departed is an indisputable fact, and that, as Sir Oliver Lodge points out, if the 'conditions' are provided, they can converse with us, as spiritual intelligences conversed with mortals in olden days. Thousands of 'the boys' who lost their physical bodies on the battlefield of this world-wide war have returned to their homes and talked with their parents and friends. And the reunion has been so real that 'the blinds have been pulled up/ and a flood of soul-uplifting sunshine has dissipated the clouds of gloom. These facts are now becoming common knowledge, and are being shared by 'all sorts and conditions of men'— the majority of the clergy excepted !

"To put the question to a clergyman who has no knowledge of the proofs of survival supplied by the evidence of psychical research, is tantamount to going to a butcher and asking him to solve a problem in electrical science ! What does a butcher know about electrical voltage or the principle upon which the voltameter is constructed ? And what does a clergyman know of the change called death, and what happens afterwards, if he has neither investigated personally, nor studied the amazing evidence which demonstrates beyond cavil that the dead do return and do communicate ? In every other department of human inquiry, if we desire a solution of some abstruse problem, we instinctively consult an expert in the particular science or study -involved. And why should not the same principle be followed in seeking knowledge of human survival and the interblending of the spiritual and material worlds? We should go to those who know — not to those who do not know.

"We would, therefore, advise all those who resort to their minister for information on the transcendent subject under discussion to ascertain the extent of his knowledge, and con-

FOREWORD vii

sequently his authority for the attitude he assumes. Let them ask him these questions: —

"i — Are you familiar with the experiences and declarations of Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Crookes, Sir William Barrett, Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Professor Zollner, Professor Lombroso, Professor Richet, Professor Hyslop, Bishop Welldon, Archdeacon Wilberforce, Rev. Dr. Dearmer, Rev. Dr. F. Holme s-Duddon, Rev. Dr. Norman Maclean, Archdeacon Colley, Rev. F. Fielding-Ould, M. A., Rev. Arthur Chambers, Rev. Chas. L. Tweedale, F. R. G. S., and a multitude of other authoritative investigators?

"2 — Have you ever sat with a well developed medium, or in any other way personally investigated what are known as psychic or Spiritualistic phenomena? If the replies to these questions are in the negative — and they certainly will be in nine cases out of ten — it may very safely be assumed that the clergyman does not possess the necessary qualifications for expressing any opinion whatever on the subject. He may, however, express it all the same, but it should not be allowed to carry the slightest weight.

"Surely no exception can be taken to these terms! They are based upon reason and common sense, and should be accepted without demur."

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I The Little Days 17

II First School Days and Early Pets 33

Chapter I

1\>TY literary career was in a large measure begun before *-**• my birth through prenatal influences.

The mother who wishes her unborn child to possess certain tastes, talents or qualities, cannot bring about the desired result by merely thinking of it. Thought is only constructive when it is charged with intense feeling and emotion. Powder scattered lightly over a large surface does not project a bullet to the mark, but compressed into a small space and given the right impetus, the lead is sent to the bull's-eye. So, desultory thought is wasted, while focused thought creates that which it desires. The expectant mother whose thought is focused intensely in any special direction attracts to herself out of space the Ego awaiting reincarnation best calculated by its former lives to use her thought; and she impresses upon its embryo mind, in the important months which ensue, the nature of her wishes.

My mother, always a devotee at the shrine of literature (and having in her own mind the seed of poetic fancy) found herself for the first time in her life with a large library at her command during the months preceding my advent. She committed to memory whole cantos of Byron, Moore, and Scott, and mentally devoured the plays of Shakespeare, as well as various works of fiction. Curiously enough, she believed that the child she was carrying under her heart was to be a novelist. Always she spoke of me before my birth (so aunts and a grandmother as well as she have told me) as a daughter who was coming into her ripened life (I was the youngest of four children) to carry out her own unrealized ambitions. "My child will be a girl," she said, "and she will be a writer; she will follow literature as a profession; she will begin young, and she will travel extensively and do all the things I have wanted to do and missed doing/'

When, at the age of seven and some months, she found me printing on scraps of paper a story about the love of Mr. Larkspur for Miss Hollyhock, and the jealousy occasioned by a roving bee, she did not join in the surprise of other members of the family, but said, "I expected her to do these things." So my crude, early efforts met with encouragement from the start, and my ambitions were fired by my mother's often expressed belief in my abilities.

I think I did not differ from other small children in any particular, save, perhaps, in my lack of interest in dolls. All my dolls were carefully laid in a drawer until some doll-loving little visitor came, when they were produced. I wanted kittens or puppies for playthings, particularly kittens. Dolls were so cold and inanimate, kittens so warm and responsive. I have all my life found wonderful companionship in cats. Dogs, too, have been dear friends and comrades. The only doll which left any memory in my child life, was a crookednecked yellow summer squash which I dressed up in a bit of lace and tied a string about its waist and called "Mary." I insisted that she strongly resembled a little blonde neighbor, Mary Hart by name. A few years afterward, my sister was amused because I saw a resemblance to this same Mary Hart in a shock of yellow wheat tied in the middle. Mary was very slim of waist and very golden in coloring.

I believe I was rather an amiable child, yet I had very naughty spells when quite young. Visiting my grandmother and aunts at the age of three, I was (unwisely) allowed to sit at the table with my elders and partake of all the goodies under which the table groaned. When pie time came, I grew obstreperous, because hot mince pie, not cold, was served. I kept shrieking, "I want a piece of cold mince pie !" My mother wished to take me away from the table, but

Aunt Abigail said, 'The poor little dear must have what she wants." So she hurried to the kitchen and cooled a piece of pie by holding it in a pan of cold water. When she returned, I was kicking my heels on the floor, screaming lustily, and, refusing the cold mince pie, I declared I wanted my pie hot! My mother applied a hot hand instead. In all my mother's life afterward, whenever I expressed an intense desire in her hearing, she would say: "Oh, yes, I know, you want a piece of cold mince pie."

Another droll little story was told me about myself between the ages of two and three. A small boy, named Eddie, came to call with his mother, who said she thought Eddie and Ella would make good playmates. I looked at the boy intently for a moment, ran into the kitchen, and reappeared with a tin wash-dish and a rag in my hand. My mother in amazement asked me what I was doing. I replied, "I am going to wash Eddie's face before I play with him. ,, When, in later life, I showed an impulse to try and improve people physically, mentally, or morally, without any requests on their part, I was reminded of this early incident. In the country neighborhood, I was recognized, from the age of eight to fourteen, as a child prodigy, and my teachers gave me praise, far in excess of my merits, as I recall those early efforts in prose and verse. I loved to give my imagination full sway, and "Composition Day," the dread of most children, was to me a delight. Two of my teachers instituted a monthly school-magazine (made of sheets of note-paper fastened by a ribbon) to which the scholars contributed. My effusions were prominent under my own name and several pen-names. Various narratives, essays, verses, and a special line of conundrums and little jokes about my schoolmates, appeared in each number of the magazine. Before this, however, I had finished, at the age of nine, a novel whose title page read as follows:

Minnie Tighthand and Mrs. Dunley

A True Story

By Ella Wheeler

The novel contained ten chapters; and was "bound" in paper torn off the kitchen wall. The first four chapters were headed by lines of original verse. This, my maiden effort in verse, described the heroine —

A head covered with pretty curls ;

A face white as the snow, Her teeth are like handsome pearls;

She's tall and stately too.

Mrs. Grant, the "woman villain" of the story, was described as "Neither handsome nor pretty, but always fretty."

Under the sub-title of "A Death," in one chapter the following couplet appears:

Death came down so stilly So softly, so chilly.

After the fourth chapter was finished, the family discovered my occupation and the reason for my continual requests for scraps of paper. An older brother, then mangrown, hearing my story and verses, volunteered the information that novelists never wrote the verses which headed their chapters, but selected them from the works of a poet. I distinctly recall my mental depreciation of novelists, and an accompanying augmentation of respect for poets, after my brother's statement. I permitted the remaining chapters to go into my book without couplets.

The next verses which I recall were composed for the school-magazine and were of a somewhat personal character. A little girl living just across the road from my home was named Ophelia Cramer. Down the road, on the way to the school, lived Homer Benson, who chanced, that summer, to be the chosen cavalier of Ophelia, always waiting for her before he went to school and walking on her side of the road as we returned home. Naturally, they were subjected to much teasing from other children. In my own home, an aged and toothless dog was fed on a corn-meal diet, which my mother prepared for his sustenance. To the school-magazine I contributed the following classic stanza :

"An old dog's bread is made of meal,"

Said Homer Benson to his Ophel.

"I know it, love," she said, with a sigh, "And if they did not eat it, they'd surely die."

From that early stage onward, through my teens, my literary proclivities and mental powers were influenced by reading the New York Mercury, New York Ledger, Waverly, Peterson, Godey, and Demaresfs Magazine, and novels of Ouida, Mary J. Holmes, and Mrs. Southworth. This emotional literature naturally had its influence upon my imagination, and caused me to live in a world quite apart from that of my commonplace farm* environment, where the post-office was five miles distant, mail came only two or three times a week, and the call of a neighbor was an event. Instead of this life, I was mentally living in enchanted realms, surrounded with luxury and beauty, and enjoying the romantic adventures of the heroines of fascinating fiction. I think I was nine years old when I saw my first editor.

He came from Madison with a railroad official to ask for subscriptions for some proposed new line of railroad. He came in a "covered carriage" — my idea of elegance and wealth, as I rarely saw anything better than lumber-wagons or runabouts. I came from school, a long mile walk, on a hot summer afternoon, tired and curious to know who was within. As I entered the room, some member of the family presented me, and the editor took me on his knee.

"You look as delicate as a city girl," he said. "You ought to be more robust, living in this fine country air." Editors have said many kind things of me since then, but nothing which ever gave me such a sense of being a superior being as that. To look like a city girl — what joy! Yet I had never seen a city girl then, I am sure.

During my fourteenth year, the New York Mercury, which had been sent us by Aunt Abigail, living near Jamesville, Wisconsin, ceased to come. Aunt Abigail no longer subscribed for it. I missed its weekly visits with an intensity scarcely to be understood by one who has not known the same lonely surroundings and possessed the same temperament. There was not money enough floating around in those times to permit a subscription to the Mercury, and if I were to possess it, I knew I must either obtain a long list of subscribers, which would be a difficult and laborious undertaking, or earn it by my pen. I resolved to try the latter, but, fearing failure, I did not want the family to know of my attempt. Finally, I decided on a stratagem. I was corresponding with a young girl, several years my senior, who was in the freshman class at Madison University.

I confided in her and enclosed the Mercury letter. Jean posted my letter and watched the news-stand for results. Two months later, long after I had relinquished all hope, she wrote me that my essays had appeared. Whereupon, I wrote a stern reproof to the editor for not sending the paper, "at least, as pay for my work/' if he could afford no other remuneration! Shortly afterward a large package of back numbers of the New York Mercury came addressed to me through the country post-office. Now, even at that early age, I had an admirer, naturally disapproved of by the family. When the enormous roll of newspapers, direct from the editor's office, came to me, a stern member of the household at once concluded that the would-be "beau" had subscribed to win new favor in my eyes. This accusation was made before I was questioned on the subject. Perhaps the most triumphant and dramatic hour of my life was when I stepped forth, in short skirts and long ringlets, and announced to the family that not my admirer, but my "literary work," had procured the coveted Mercury for our united enjoyment.

In later years, I frequently heard of statements made by various unknown individuals who claimed to have "discovered" me and to have given my first efforts the light of day, but the advent of my muse into prose was also through the medium of the Mercury and wholly through my own efforts. The prose essays were published under the name of "Eloine," and immediately after their appearance I sent, under the same name, an ambitious poetical effort describing a highly emotional experience, to the editor of the "Ladies'

Promenade" column. The verses appeared anonymously with a half-column of sarcastic ridicule by the editor, which he closed by saying that the author of the lines so crucified was able to write very acceptably in prose, and he trusted she would "never again attempt poetical expression." Humiliated and crushed, but only temporarily, I rose to new attempts, and my first published verses appeared under my own name, in the Waverly Magazine, shortly afterward. Three short poems sent to Frank Leslie's publishing house brought me a check for ten dollars. This aroused in me such ambitions, that I proceeded to the nearest book store, twelve miles distant (riding to town on a high spring seat beside my brother in a lumber- wagon filled with bags of wheat for market), and there I wrote down the addresses of a dozen magazines and weeklies and began to bombard them with my effusions. Having had my first manuscripts published (even though one had been riddled by ridicule), I believed that the path to literary attainment was a flowery one; but at the end of the next three months I had become so accustomed to the "respectfully declined" note from various editors that a check for forty dollars, which was finally sent me by Frank Leslie's house, proved almost a nervous shock.

To possess such a sum of money all at once was a wonderful and inspiring experience, and it set my brain afire with new fancies. Many of the poems appeared in the Leslie and Harper publications without my name attached, as was the custom in those days, and I at once proceeded to send them, properly autographed, to country newspapers in Wisconsin. This led some of the editors no doubt to the belief that they had "discovered" and launched me, while in truth my verses had previously been published and paid for by New York and Boston editors.

Until I began to earn money, the neighbors had criticised my mother for keeping me out of the kitchen and allowing me to "scribble" so much. But when they found me able, with one day's work at my desk, to hire an assistant in the house for a month they began to respect my talent.

I wish the scores of grown men and women who write to me for "aid and influence" in getting into print could know just how I found my way into the favor of editors. It was by sheer persistence. It never occurred to me to ask advice or assistance of others. I am glad it did not, for the moment we lean upon any one but the Divine Power and the divinity within us, we lessen our chances of success. I often receive letters now from writers in the West, asking me to use my influence with editors in their behalf and saying, "You must realize from your own early struggles how impossible it is to get a start in an Eastern periodical without a friend at court." No more absurd idea ever existed. Eastern editors are on the lookout for new talent constantly, and if a writer possesses it, together with persistence, he will succeed whether he lives in the Western desert or in the metropolis, and without any friend at court. All such literary aspirants are requested to read these pages and learn how I found my "friend at court" — the will in my own soul, and the patient and persistent effort of mind and heart and hand. Miles from a post-office, more miles from a railroad, and far from any literary center, without one acquaintance who knew anything about literary methods or the way to approach an editor, I pounded away at the doors of their citadels with my childish fist until they opened to me.

I recently came across a curious set of little home-made books where I kept my accounts long ago — a page for the poems sent to Frank Leslie's, another to Harper's Bazar and Weekly, another to Demaresfs, and so on through the list ; and then the various journeyings of a poem, eight, nine, ten times to New York or Boston and back again before it folded its wings and rested in some editor's nest of "accepted manuscripts." I am sure I made many blunders and wrote much trash, and when advice was volunteered I did not value it as highly as I should. I felt I alone must make my climb toward the heights I sought, and no one could "boost" me up.

I soon filled the house with all the periodicals we had time to read, and in addition the editors sent me books and pictures and bric-a-brac and tableware — articles from their prize-lists, which were more precious than gems would have been to me.

They served to relieve the bare and commonplace aspect of the home, and the happiness I felt in earning these things with my pen is beyond words to describe.

About the time I appeared in print, I left the country school. My record there had been wretched in mathematics, while excellent in grammar, spelling, and reading. I lost interest in study, and my mind would not focus itself upon books. I lived in a world of imagination, and pictured for myself a wonderful future. In this I was encouraged at home by the ambitions of my mother, who despised her life and felt herself and her family superior to all her associates, and was forever assuring me (and them as well!) that my future would be wholly apart from my early companions.

Fortunately for me and for all concerned, I was a healthy and normal young animal, fond of my comrades, and enjoying their sports, into which I entered with zest, despite my mental aspirations and literary tendencies. But feeling I must receive a better education, the family made great sacrifices to send me to Madison University.

I was not happy there; first, because I knew the strain it put upon the home purse; second, because I felt the gulf between myself and the town girls, whose gowns and privileges revealed to me, for the first time, the different classes in American social life ; and third, because I wanted to write and did not want to study. I had lost all taste for schoolbooks.

On composition-day, I undertook to distinguish myself by writing a "narrative/' as the class was requested, but my ardent love-story only called forth a kind rebuke from gentle Miss Ware, and I was told to avoid reading the New York Ledger.

After one term, I begged my mother to allow me to remain at home and write, and she wisely consented. I took to my profession with a new ardor and enthusiasm after that.

My world grew larger with each sunrise, it seemed to me. People from Madison, Milwaukee, and Chicago began to write to me and seek me out. I was invited to visit city homes, and while this was a delight bordering on ecstasy and a relief from the depressing atmosphere of home anxieties, it yet brought with it the consciousness of the world's demands, which, added to those of duty and necessity, made a larger income imperative.

There was continual worry at home. No one was resigned or philosophical. My mother hated her hard-working lot, for which she was totally unfitted, and constantly rebelled against it like a caged animal beating against iron bars, while she did her distasteful tasks with a Spartanlike adherence to duty, doubting the dominance of an all-wise Ruler who could condemn her to such a lot. Like thousands of others in the world, she had not learned that through love and faith only do conditions change for the better. The home was pervaded by an atmosphere of discontent and fatigue and irritability.

From reincarnated sources and through prenatal causes, I was born with unquenchable hope and unfaltering faith in God and guardian spirits. I often wept myself to sleep after a day of disappointments and worries, but woke in the morning singing aloud with the joy of life. I always expected wonderful things to happen to me. In some of the hardest days, when everything went wrong with everybody at home and all my manuscripts came back for six weeks at a time without one acceptance, I recall looking out of my little north window upon the lonely road bordered with lonelier Lombardy poplars, and thinking, "Before night something beautiful will happen to change everything." There was so much I wanted ! I wanted to bestow comfort, ease and pleasure on everybody at home. I wanted lovely gowns — ah, how I wanted them! and travel and accomplishments. I wanted summers by the sea — the sea which I had read of but had never seen — and on moonlight nights these longings grew so aggressive I often pinned the curtain down and shut out the rays that seemed to intensify my loneliness, and I would creep into my little couch under the sloping eaves, musing, "Another beautiful night of youth wasted and lost." And I would awaken happy in spite of myself and put all my previous melancholy into verses — and dollars.

Once I read a sentence which became a life motto to me: "If you haven't what you like, try to like what you have."

I bless the author of that phrase — it was such a help to me just as I was nearing the borders of the family pessimism and chronic discontent. I tried from that hour to find something I liked and enjoyed in each day — something I could be thankful for ; and I found much, though troubles increased and conditions did not improve about me.

Slowly, so slowly, it seemed to me, my work and my income increased. I longed for sudden success, for sudden wealth. It was so hard to wait — there was so much to be done. There was a gentle hill south of the house; often on summer evenings, after writing all day, I climbed this ascent at sunset and looked eastward, wondering what lay for me beyond the horizon. I always had the idea that my future would be associated with the far West, yet it was to the East I invariably looked. My knowledge of the East was bounded by Milwaukee — the goal of happy visits two or three times a year.

Sometimes I walked through the pasture and young woods a half-mile, to call on Emma, the one friend who knew and sympathized with all the family troubles. And Emma would walk back with me, and we would wonder how many years longer these walks and talks would continue for us. I would tell her of my successes in my work, and she and her gentle mother rejoiced in them as if they were their own personal triumphs. Such restful walks and talks they always were!

Looking backward, I recall few mornings when I did not greet the day with a certain degree of exhilarating expectancy. Even in times of trouble and sorrow, this peculiar quality of mind helped me over obstacles to happiness which, retrospectively viewed, seemed insurmountable. A peculiar spiritual egotism possibly it might be called, for it led me to look for special dispensations of Providence in my behalf, and a setting-aside of nature's seeming laws and regulations, as well as the violating of reason's codes, that I might be obliged.

Facing the deadly monotony of the commonplace, I always looked for the unusual and romantic to occur. Environed by the need of petty economies, I always expected sudden opulence. Far from the world's center of life and action, I felt that hosts of rare souls were approaching, and, while hungry in heart and brain, I believed that splendid banquets were in preparation for me. What would otherwise have been lonely, troubled, and difficult years were made enjoyable by this exalted state of the imagination.

Such concentration of expectancy, of course, brought some degree of result. Unusual things did happen, and that same virile, vivid imagination magnified them and made them seem colossal confirmation of my hopes. The commonplace meadows blossomed with flowers of beauty, and buttercups and daisies looked to me like rare orchids and hothouse roses. Between what really happened, and what I continually expected to happen, the world widened, existence grew in interest, and earth palpitated with new experience as the years passed. Always I expected more and more of life, and always it came in some guise.