m. He simply became aware that he was functioning consciously on the

Astral plane, and was intensely interested.

He found himself in a strange house of medium size, and he was floating at the top of a flight of stairs leading to an ordinary entrance hall below. At the foot of the stairs hung a lighted lamp, and below the lamp stood a man and woman, who were apparently exchanging a word or two before bidding each other good-night.

My husband instantly conceived the idea of testing and proving his belief, that he was consciously afloat on the Astral plane. If this belief was true, then he ought to be able to pass through the couple standing below, without their being in the least aware of his presence.

In a flash he was downstairs, and his belief stood the test. His imponderable astral body passed without feeling or shock through two ponderable bodies of flesh and blood, and he was out on the other side. The excitement of the adventure awakened him, and he brought back to the Physical plane a clear recollection of all that had happened.

When one thinks of it, the possible presence of total strangers in one's house is rather alarming. Luckily for us such wanderers rarely bring back to waking consciousness the memory of their nocturnal escapades. When we are more advanced in "other side" knowledge we will doubtless refrain from intruding upon the privacy of our neighbors' dwellings, and confine our attentions to realms which are free to all.

It is curious how constantly one hears of the ghosts of priests and monks being seen. I have not met any one yet who has encountered the wraith of an Anglican parson, or a Nonconformist preacher. I wonder why? I presume the latter do sometimes "walk."

Once upon a time, when we were in Rome, my husband and I went to keep an appointment with Monsignor Stonor, who was a great celebrity, and an extremely handsome and charming man. We were being shown upstairs by a servant, and the hour was eleven o'clock on a sunny spring day. I was walking first, my husband following, and at the top of the stairs, coming slowly downward, was an old priest carrying a huge portfolio, under which he seemed to be staggering. He passed the servant, and as he neared me I noticed that the cassock which he wore was torn in great rents in several places. His gray hair hung on his shoulders, though his crown was shaven, and his face was the color of old ivory.

I moved slightly to give him and his burden room to pass, and as he did so our eyes met. His were very strange. They were exactly like points of live flame.

Something about his whole presence struck me as so weird that I turned involuntarily and looked back.

As I did so, I saw my husband walk straight through him. My husband saw nothing. Then I knew and understood.

I did not mention this incident to Monsignor Stonor, but some time after I met his sister, Viscountess Clifden, at Monte Carlo. She was an intimate friend of mine, and one day when an opportunity offered I told her the little story, and asked her if she had ever met with anything of the sort herself. She replied that personally, she had not, but she had heard that several people encountered at different times the old priest in her brother's rooms, though he himself had seen nothing of this apparition.

Lady Clifden enjoyed nothing more than a little flutter at the tables. She never missed a single day during her long sojourns at Monte Carlo.

Every one knows that the Anglican church-goers in the Principality hurry from church to gaming rooms in order to stake on the numbers of the hymns. Lady Clifden used also to hurry from Mass with any numbers she had caught up, and she considered Sunday her lucky day. Suddenly her luck changed.

She told me that on the previous Sunday she had just pulled off a nice little coup, and was about to grasp it, when, to her horror she saw a skeleton hand stretched forth. Before she could collect her scattered senses the skeleton hand had raked in her gold. Where that gold had gone to worried and puzzled her dreadfully. So it did me! I never heard the last of it. She could not get over her loss.

It was no use suggesting that the hand had belonged to one of the emaciated harpies who prey upon the unwary. Lady Clifden knew all about them, and was a match for the whole gang, had they attacked her. She insisted that the hand that had grasped her gold had neither skin nor flesh upon it, and that she had seen the two bare arm bones from wrist to elbow. We compromised on the suggestion of a third party that it must have been the devil himself, and that the heat he is supposed to engender had melted the gold entirely away.

Monte Carlo is a very interesting place for the clairvoyant to be in, more especially if her vision extends to seeing auras. Perhaps nowhere on earth are the basest human passions more swiftly and violently aroused, and several times, when some tragedy was being enacted, or some enormous coup was being brought off, I have been unable to see details, because they were hidden within a dense envelop of dark crimson clouds.

In the rooms a crowd collects swiftly, and from a hundred human auras, all gathered in one compact mass, stream forth emanations of the basest description. Cupidity, envy, revenge, lust of the vilest, despair, ruin, death.

I remember being met one night by a friend in the Attrium who was very excited. "Hurry up," she cried, "the double Duchess has broken the bank and is still playing."

I went into the gambling rooms, and looked for the table at which the Duchess of Devonshire was staking. I knew she would attract a big crowd if she was winning.

I found the table easily enough, not because it was surrounded by a crowd of people, but because it was hidden by a dark and dense crimson fog.

With patience I got through this fog, and watched the handsome Duchess of Devonshire, formerly Duchess of Manchester, and born a Hanoverian, playing with a great quantity of gold, and a pile of thousand franc notes. By bending low down, almost level with the table, I found I got completely out of the fog, and could see clearly underneath it.

One night there was a rush outside, and a huge ring formed to watch "a scrap" taking place between two celebrated members of _la haute cocotterie de Paris_.

They were fighting with formidable hatpins, and I understood that the prey they fought over was Leopold, King of the Belgians.

I ran with the crowd, the gambling rooms emptied in a twinkling, for the combat took place in the Casino Square. I squeezed through the excited mob till I got behind the backers of both parties, who were holding the ring and defying the police.

It was a wonderful sight to witness the combined play of flaming red auras, shot through with vivid flashes like lightning, and blazing jewels.

The duel ended with a few scratches, much tearing of gorgeous raiment and disheveled hair.

How interesting it was to the mystic to feel the psychology of that crowd, and see the thin veneer of civilization stripped off, leaving nothing but the human tiger and ape. Both ladies were eventually led off the arena by the police, not, be it understood, to the police-station, but to their own sumptuous apartments. All the time they shrieked and chattered like infuriated macaws, and between the shrieks they administered resounding smacks upon the cheeks of their patient escort.

Monte Carlo was a wonderful place in those days, in which to study human nature at its best and worst. In latter years it has become meretricious and shabby, and the old magnificence is seen no more. Fifteen to twenty years ago all that was greatest in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, congregated there, and crowned heads mingled freely with the scum of the earth. Constant _habitués_ were the Duchess of Devonshire, and her son, Lord Charles Montague; the Duchess of Montrose, known to the ring at Newmarket as "Bobs," and always the personification, to listen to and look at, of a Thames bargee. Leopold of Belgium, Ferdinand of Bulgaria, Grand Dukes of Russia, potentates from India, all hobnobbing together and gambling heavily.

I often wonder now what has befallen those brilliant stars of the half-world firmament. Emmeline d'Alençon with her "bobbed" hair, and her passionate love of animals and birds. The demure Jeanne Ray, who came out every morning to her garden gate, and distributed food to the crowd of paupers and cripples. I have seen peasants kiss the hem of her dress as she walked on an afternoon along the Promenade des Anglais. The beautiful, soulless Mérode, the fierce, stately Otero, and many others who thought nothing of wearing fifty to a hundred thousand pounds' worth of jewels on one evening.

Where are they now? If living they are old! Old! a word more dreaded by their class than death.