Connecticut western news., 1910-04-28
HE STUDIED,
 TOO HARD By HARRIET L. GEDDES Copyright, 1910, by American Press
 Association.

sntists of Germany, the following manuscript was found among his pa pers:
 Holding the chair of chemistry in the university, all the work of my brain has been devoted to the decom- position and reconstruction of matter. l have long been convinced that we must pass through matter to get at spirit-in other words, our medium instead of being a person must be sci ence. Now. by chemical agents we photograph matter which we can see. More than this, we photograph objects we cannot see except by the aid of the telescope. Still more, we photograph objects beyond the range of our vision even assisted by the telescope. Ergo, may we not by the extension of the process at last get a picture of beings existing in spirit form?
 This dry scientific preface is but pre- liminary to the storyI have to tell and is essential to its understanding. Ten years. ago I married Louisa Markham. Five years ago she died. Since then my scientific studies have run in but one view, to bring her within the sight of my mortal eyes.
 The discovery of radium gave a new impulse to my investigations. Radium is the first substance known to exert power without exhausting itself. The steam engine must have coal, the body food Ac nc I n1.1 nf q iY1Y, ff struck me that here was a substance akin to spirit, neither requiring fuel. But since radium is matter, reasoning from analogy, spirit may also be mat ter. We may photograph matter even though invisible. Therefore may we not photograph spirit?
 I will not ask you to follow me in my studies of photographic processes. I tried to penetrate the realm of soul. I will only say that I at last discov- cred a substance which l converted into a plate-or, rather, laid upon a plate-a hundred times more sensitive than any known form of matter. It was one of many I had tried in mak- ing ordinary photographs and failed. But on one occasion while experiment. ing with 1t I was called away. On returning several days later took the plate from the camera, and it occur red to me to develop it.
 To assign a reason for this impulse -I had no object of which l was con- scious-would be to leave the scien- tific field and enter that of psychology. am convinced that I was impelled by one in the spirit world to develop the plate. Such direction given to hu- man thought is very common. I de veloped my plate-not with the usual agents, but others had proved by ex- pertinent to be far more delicate-and what was my astonishment to see the semblance of human forms. The diff ference between them and living per sons I cannot explain. To get an idea of them they must be seen.
 Why these figures had appeared be- fore my camera, do not know. I could never get them again. If they were spirits they had happened to be where they would be photographed. I pondered long on how I might photograph my wife, provided she was accustomed to frequent places she had been used to frequenting in life. There is a window of her bedroom at which she used to sit and look over a view of rolling ground on which were scat tered several of the college buildings. It occurred to me to keep a plate con- stantly exposed bearing on the chair she had used in this window in the hope that she would come there. A weeks exposure failed to show any impression on the plate. Possibly, thought, ordinary light is not strong enough for the purpose. l determined to use the strongest light available. | The room faced south, the sun being on it in summer from 8 o'clock in the morning till about in the evening. l rigged lense-on the principle Of the common sunglass-outside the window, throwing light on the chair compos- ed of the converging rays of the sun. i My lens was arranged to turn by clockwork so that the light thrown on the chair would continue irrespective of the suns apparent motion.
 1 exposed my plate all one very clear day, but found nothing on it when de- veloped. For five successive days the sun shone brightly. l continued the exposure After the fifth exposure a faint figure appeared on the plate. A print showed a woman sitting in the chair.
 The figure was not distinct enough l for me to tell whether or no 1t was that of my wife. I mourned the im- perfection of my materials and sighed that I had none more delicate. caught the figure at the window scv- ! eral times, but the impression was al- ways blurred. How I longed to pro- duce a picture that would give the features of the face! Doubtless l
 would then see my wife looking at me as she had often done while sitting in l that chair.
 Soon after this I changed the basis of my investigations. I laid out se- ries of experiments at taking pictures i with the light of radium. I worked