Alice Hegan Rice

“ She insisted on the house being painted, on the fences being mended; she even concerned her astral mind with old Kitty and the decrepit buggy.
"But you surely ain't going to do everything she tells you!" protested Beulah.
"I am," said Mr. Gribben. "There's no living woman whose advice I'd give a copper cent for, but when one comes back from the dead and tells me that if I don't spend my money while I am living that Tom Gribben's children are going to squander it in riotous living when I'm dead, why, I listen to her. What do you reckon it will cost to paint the house?" ”

“ She smiled tolerantly: "The spirits are so playful at times. I have had them tease me like this for half an hour. Sometimes if I ask a question it calms them. Let me see— Will the spirits tell us who Mr. Gribben was in a former reincarnation?"
The pencil twisted backward, described a circle, then wrote in small letters, "He was a king in Babylon, and she was his Christian slave."
"Who was?" demanded Beulah, off her guard, and in an instant the pencil had flourished off the letters "y-o-u." ”

“ Gribben, excitedly. "What shall I do?"
"Just hold it lightly in your hand, thus, and I will place my fingers under your wrist like this. Give your other hand to Mrs. Jones."
"Miss Jones," corrected Beulah, with a look of fury.
For some time nothing happened. Then, oh, so slowly, the pencil moved, creeping uncertainly over the paper in long, feeble letters until it had written the one word, "Martha."
"She's weak because she has been gone such a short time," explained Madame Surelle, "and, besides, the right of way is always given to the spirit who has been there longest. ”

“ After that Beulah blossomed with the rest. She had fallen heir, not only to Martha's clothes, but to all her personal possessions, among which was an elaborate brown coiffure known as a transformation. That it justified its name was demonstrated on Beulah's first Sunday in her new apparel.
"I never would have known you!" Mr. Gribben declared, "The clothes look familiar, of course, but you look different. What have you done to yourself?"
"Just what every other woman does," said Beulah. ”

“ Beulah put up the other shade and began to straighten the furniture, but Madame Surelle still leaned on her elbows and gazed into Mr. Gribben's eyes.
"You must not falter on the very threshold of achievement," she urged. "You must practise automatic writing every night and send us the results, however unintelligible they appear to you. ”

“ A pair of non-commital eyes of slightly different size and color stood guard over a nose that was really too small to look after itself, and farther south-to be exact, southwest-on her facial map lay a mouth that only opened when it had to, and usually shut in somebody's face. ”

“ Gribben, in instant alarm. "Why, who do you suppose I'd ever get to look after the farm the way you do?"
"Well, a unmarried person can't take no risks," said Beulah.
The matter evidently weighed upon Mr. Gribben, and his anxiety deepened as Beulah's hints of departure recurred at shorter intervals. He worked himself into quite a perturbed state about it, and even sank to picturing his forlorn condition in case she left him.
"I am going to see if I can't get some advice from Martha," he said one day at noon. "You have supper early and we'll call up the spirits." ”

“ Gribben.
Madame Surelle regarded him earnestly. "How can you doubt? To whom did the first message come last night? Who else in Bentville has been able to do automatic writing? I tell you, you are psychic to your finger-tips!"
Mr. Gribben looked at the above-mentioned finger-tips and shook his head doubtfully, whereupon Madame Surelle tried another tack.
"I suppose you know that all things are numbers. Numbers control our lives. Pythagoras taught us that. ”

“ From the first night the pencil in Mr. Gribben's hand wandered obligingly over the paper, making feeble hieroglyphics which he duly forwarded to the Society of Psychic Seekers. A tremendous impetus was given to his enthusiasm when he received his first report and found that he had written a message in Coptic! The translation read:
My strength grows with each summons to the earth world. Soon I will join thee in the astral body.
Beulah studied the paper skeptically. "How do you suppose Martha knew how to write that foreign language?" she asked.
"The same way I did!" retorted Mr. Gribben. ”