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himself 66 a thought-reader," and repudiated his position as an agent-a MEDIUM-of spirits. That he never did this for one single hour, in sunshine or in shadow, that he everywhere and at all times avowed himself a medium, a spiritualist, and a reformer, is the reason of all others which moves me to make known so far as I can, his life, his purposes, and his inalienable belief.

To avoid all misconception with regard to this object, I may state that at no time have I ever had any professional connection with either literature, or the great and honourable work of spiritualism.

I will only add that, in perfect sympathy with his love of reform, and earnest desire to spread a clearer knowledge of the nature of man as the possessor of a spiritual life which survives physical dissolution, I considered it a duty, even before he himself had recognised its necessity, to publish of my own wish and will, all I had written and realised on the first available opportunity, and without any other aid, direction, or sympathy than I have received from spiritual sources.

S. E. G.

October, 1882.

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JOHN WILLIAM FLETCHER,

CLAIRVOYANT.

CHAPTER I.

EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT OF MEDIUMSHIP.

JOHN

OHN WILLIAM FLETCHER was born some forty miles from Boston, at Westford, in the United States, in the year 1852.

He held the position, and received the education, of an ordinary middle-class American citizen, and the means which his father had realised from a manufacturing business in Lowell gave to his only son the prospect of a life full of ease, comfort, and many worldly advantages.

The painful circumstances which severed him from all this, and which estranged him from those who were for a long period very dear to his heart, prevent me from dwelling upon the details of his early life, with which those friends were associated. The estrangement accomplished one designed event; it sent him into the world to work in the noblest cause which has ever been committed to the keeping of man. The life of ease was exchanged for the life which of all others is a daily sacrifice to a sensitive nature,—the sacrifice of encountering ridicule and contempt in giving up one's whole being for the sake of demonstrating to blind humanity the sublime truth of its immortality, and the reality of the eternal world. What money can ever compensate the suffering spirit,

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