This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
102
DEALINGS WITH THE DEAD.

sense they inspire a liking in the minds of others, but in their former capacity, none so generous as to really love and pity them; for, being perfect automata, subject to any and all sorts of influences, they become all things by turns, and nothing long; hence they are accused of inconsistency and everything else, by the very people, to serve, and amuse, and instruct whom they have vacated themselves, and consented tacitly to be drained of the last drop of man and womanhood by harpies and vampires from both sides of the grave.

The man before me had been guilty of this supreme folly, and, like many a score of others, had failed to realize that no man or woman can ever be loved alone as the representative or official, but only as man or woman; nor that the more one merges him or herself in an office, the more one sinks the individual in the representative, the less are their chances of being either loved or respected. This is one of the reasons why mediums are, as a class, unhappy and discontented, always craving love and sympathy for their own sakes, and never getting either. As mediums and speakers, they have friends and admirers by the hundred; but let their gift be lost, or themselves be demented or driven into some silly act, and, lo! the 'friends' drop off like rain from a roof. Of course, there are those who will deny this, but it is true, nevertheless, and will remain so, until these sensitives learn the lesson of self-conservation, and exchange the passive for the active mediumship—the blending for their automacy.

Let it be observed, that every human being is surrounded with an atmosphere emanating from themselves, and that these enveloping auras are charged