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THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, JULY 2, 1909. JULIA'S DUTIES.

Mr W. T. Stead, being thoroughly convinced that the dead return, informs the world in the May number of the "Fortnightly Review" that he has opened in Mowbray House, Norfolk street, London, a bureau for the purpose of establishing communication between this world and the world beyond th 6 grave. He has for many years regarded the exploration of what he calls the Beyond as a task which it was a duty to undertake, but circumstances prevented his making a commencement before April 24th last. The bureau is to be conducted on thoroughly businesslike lines, and is under the direct control of "Julia," a friend of Mr ritesd, who has been in her grave for more than seventeen year?. In life she was Miss Julia A. Ames, a Chicago journalist, and she became acquainted with Mr Stead during a visit which she paid to Europe in 1890. She died in the following year, but before passing away promised a friend of hers that she would make an effort to return from the Other Side, to prove not only the immortality of the soul but its capacity to preserve its terrestial personality after death and communicate with soula in earthly life. Many people, it appears, make the same promise, but few fulfil it. Julia was a shining exception, and Mr Stead fortunately happened to be staying at a castle in England when her apparition more than once appeared. In the January "Portnightly," Mr Stead explained a remarkable faculty which he claims to have long possessed, of automatic hand-writing. After rendering his mind passive he surrenders his hand to the influence of distant friends, whether living or dead, and involuntarily writes down the intelligence they wish to communicate. In this way Julia has been a voluminous correspondent of Mr Stead's. Over fourteen years ago she informed her devoted and sympathetic amanuensis that a bureau "with one or more trustworthy mediums," was sadly needed to bring the dead into communication with the enlightened living. As her object was practically to call the dead out of their graves to walk once more among living men, she must have

fretted over the delay caused by the

circumstancea of Mr Stead, but no doubt the time was well spent in

perfecting her organisation. At all

events she is now ready to direct the operations of the bureau in person. Apart from the financial responsibiltiea of the enterprise, Mr Stead confines himself to seeing that her directions are carried out. He would

not himself, he says, have dreamt of undertaking a duty so onerous and so certain to provoke ridicule of the

shallow and unthinking, had he not been assured of the "businesslike cooperation" of the spirit world. The fundamental hypothesis on which the venture rests is Mr Stead's conviction, or rather knowledge, that when people die they are merely liberated from the burden of the body and continue living in their original personality, and that they are anxious to furnish their earthly friends with full particulars of their happy condition. Now the bureau will have a staff of competent and carefully selected "Sensitives," or mediumsonly two or three at first, perhaps; but as business increases the means of coping with it will no doubt be enlarged—and anyone genuinely seeking to hear from departed relations or Iriends can ascertain, en application, the conditions on which their little business can be taken in hand. The sanction of the director (Julia) must be obtained before the matter can proceed any further, and it will be refused to all who are not sincere in their quest. On this point, says Mr Stead. Julia is very positive. The bureau, she writes—always per medium of Mr Stead's auto-1 matic hand—"will be a kind of I dead letter office, in which missing messages will be sorted out and redelivered. Where there are no messages of love and longing from either side, there is no place for its work." The institution, she gravely insists, must resist the natural temptation to constitute itself a centre for the general exploration of the other world. That will be the work of a separate bureau later on, but the pioneer bureau—"my bureau"—must limit its usefulness to the comparatively narrow sphere of "putting thosd who love into communication after they have been severed for a time by the change called death." Those who not familiar, with Mr Stead's views on occultism might imagine him, in his naive account of Juiia, aiid her bureau, to have attempted a grave and sustained piece of irony after the manner of Swift. It reads like a not unsuccessful imitation of the terrible paper in which that writer suggested the kitchen oven as a practical and useful way of dealing with the surplus chil Iren in Ireland. If it were intended for a piece of mock serious ness, carrying the culte with ruthless realism to its logical absurdity, it would make the spiritualists writhe with annoyance, for a more effective way of ridiculing the whole system could scarcely be imagined. The bureau in Mowbray street, managed by the disembodied spirit Julia, depending on the "businesslike cooperation" of the world beyond the grave, with its American-like prospectus and its staff of carefullvs-: lected densitives—the first a natural clairvoyant, we are informed, the second a trance medium and the third an automatic writer (like the assistant manager)—the Dean of St. Patrick's himself could not have invented a more withering parody. But Mr Stead is in deadly earnest. His seriousness is not mock, hut grotesquely real. When he says he has no more doubt of the existence and identity of Julia than he has in the existence of his wife or sister, he is perfectly sincere. He has fully convinced himself, by wlat he regards as exhaustive teets, that he is con stantly in communication with the dead. Dr. Johnson, who erred on the side of credulity when there was any talk of ghosts, nevertheless said, "A man who thinks he has seen an apparition can only be convinced himself his authority will not convince another." Mr Stead's account of bis experiences will not convince anyone not already strongly pre-dis-posed to accept the faith he preaches.

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WAG19090702.2.7

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9532, 2 July 1909, Page 4

Word count
Tapeke kupu
1,040

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, JULY 2, 1909. JULIA'S DUTIES. Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9532, 2 July 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, JULY 2, 1909. JULIA'S DUTIES. Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9532, 2 July 1909, Page 4

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