ACROSS THE STREAM

BY E. F. BENSON

LONDONJOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.1919

INTRODUCTION

There is a very large class of persons alive to-day who believe that notonly is communication with the dead possible, but that they themselveshave had actual experience of it. Many of these are eminent inscientific research, and on any other subject the world in general wouldaccept their evidence.

There is possibly a larger class of persons who hold that all suchcommunications, if genuine, come not from the dead but from the devil.This is the taught opinion of the Roman Catholic Church.

A third class, far more numerous than both of these, is sure that anyone who holds either of these beliefs is a dupe of conjurers, or thevictim of his own disordered brain. This type of robust intellect has,during the last ten decades, affirmed that hypnotism, aviation inmachines heavier than air, telepathy, wireless telegraphy, and othernon-proved phenomena, are superstitious and unscientific balderdash. Inan earlier century it was equally certain that the earth did not goround the sun. It is, happily, never disconcerted by the frequency withwhich the superstitions and impossibilities of one generation become thescience of the next.

The first part of this book may be accepted by the first of these threeclasses, the second by the second, and none of it by the third. Its aimis to state rather than solve the subject with which it deals, and tosuggest that the dead and the devil alike may be able to communicatewith the living.

E. F. BENSON.

BOOK I

CHAPTER I

Certain scenes, certain pictures of his very early years of childhood,stood out for Archie like clear sunlit peaks above the dim clouds thatshrouded the time when the power of memory was only beginning togerminate. He had no doubt (and was probably right about it) as to whichthe earliest of those was: it was the face of his nurse Blessington,leaning over his crib. She held a candle in her hand which a littledazzled him, but the sight of her face, tender and anxious, and divinelyreassuring, was the point of that memory. He had been asleep, and hadawoke with a start, and, finding himself alone in the midst of theimmense desolation of the dark that pressed on him like an invader fromall sides, he had lifted up his voice and yelled. Then, as by aconjuring-trick, Blessington had appeared with her comforting presencethat quite robbed the dark of its terrors. It must still have been earlyin the night, for she had not yet gone to bed, and had on above hersmooth grey hair her cap with its adorable blue ribands in it. At herthroat was the brooch made of the same stuff as the shining shillingswith which a year or two later she bought the buns and sponge-cakes fortea. He remembered no more than that; he knew nothing of what she hadsaid: the whole of that memory consisted in the fact of the securecomfort and reli

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