The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-01-22

Before His Death He Promised to Re.
 turn to Earth If He CouId-Tha,
 WouIdn't Be the FIrstTime His Ghos,
 Has Been Seen, He Said Ghosts Don'i
 Walk, Except Financially, and Then
 Only FigurativeIy-About the Ghost
 CanI.
 pr. Elliott Coues, the famous orni-
 thologist and member of the National
 Academy of Science, who died the other
 day, was long recognized as the fore
 most advocate of belief in the existence
 of ghosts. He had promised several of
 his friends that, if able to do so. he
 would appear to them after his own de-
 mise, and now they are waiting with
 no little interest to see If he will carry
 out his agreement. Himself a ghost
 seer, as he used to say, he enjoyed dis
 cussing the subject of phantoms in the
 same method of cool-headed analysis as
 he would apply to the classified tion of
 birds or any other matter susceptible of
 approach by rational argument. The
 writer was so fortunate as to possess his
 friendship for many years, and on many
 Sunday afternoon has spent an hour
 or two with him in his study, over a
 pipe and dish of tea, talking spooks.
 T have myself seen the ghosts of a
 good many dead persons" said the doc-
 tor to me one day. T remember one
 occasion, when I had just gone to bed,
 the light being turned out. I was com posing myself to slumber, when I sud-
 denly became aware of presence in the room. The impression conveyed to my mind was that it was the presence of
 certain person lately deceased, with whom I had been on very intimate
 terms. In fact, I felt an overpowering sense of the nearness of the individual in question.
 At about the same moment there arose slowly from the floor nebulous mass of what looked like shining white vapor, which began to take shape as did the smoke from the casket opened by the fisherman in the Arabian Nights tale. Gradually it assumed a more dis tinct outline until it presented radiant image of my friend. The lips appeared to move, and from them came an in telligihle utterance--a message from the departed. I do not care to say what that message was.
 T can assure you that the vision was no dream, and the nature of the mes sage was such as to eliminate to my own satisfaction, at all events, the theory of hallucination. What then, was this shape of shining white vapor? Was it human soul? It is a question pregnant with intense interest"
 The doctor took another pipeful of to- bacco lighted it. and, with a puff or two. continued:
 Every afternoon at about o'clock I lie down on the sofa in my library for brief rest before dinner. Occa- sionally, while enjoying this repoee, though perfectly wide awake, there comes upon me the peculiar sensation of the ghost chill, which I will present ly speak of. I wait with much at- | tention and interest to see what is go- | ing to happen, and presently find my | own consciousness projected objectively, l is it were, so that my conscious self | stands out in the room and views my | body lying on the lounge. About the | latter is a bright light, which grows gradually until it has filled all the room, and my conscious self finds it. self surrounded by phantoms. most of them of persons who appear to be strangers to me while others resemble | acquaintances who have long been dead, They seem to walk about and converse in\ the ordinary way though not aud ibly. All the time I am clearly aware of the situation, and make useful men tai note of whatever I observe, until fov1r hriof mn hn l and I find myself on the sofa again.
 Tt is obvious, if ghosts exist at all, that they must be made of something. My belief is that they are in a sense and possess semi-materia1 If you ask by what I mean semi material I will refer for illustra- ton to the ether which is understood to occupy all space. It has waves of known lengths and measured velocity, which strike upon the retina of the eye and produce impressions of light. In short, we know a good deal about this ether, but nobody ever saw particle of it, inasmuch as 1t has not the mole cular constitution of ordinary matter. It is semi-mat terial I have no notion of the nature of the substances that make a ghost, but I suppose that when a man dies 1t separates itself from the. prosser particles that compose his phys lcal organizes. The latter decomposes, put the spiritual part of the individual foes not necessarily share that fate, be- ng composed of finer stuff.
 'Did it ever occur to you that we ourselves may be moving in world of lnseen spectres and continually sur whether at home or on our walks abroad, by invisible phantoms of he dead? It has been estimated that 'or every being now living 30,000 have lied on tI1is earth, so that, if the spirit IaI bodies of all preserve existence here liter death, we survivors are but com ,arative few, passing a brief term of years of what we call life in the flesh mid vast impalpable swarm of beings ncorporeal. Indeed, my own notion is hat it is only the very rare and ex- :eptional ghost that makes itself vis- ble to the living, and that such a phe' is to be regarded as wholly (  We have reason now to think that here is no such thing as the highly { ghost represented by radition and described in popular fic- (