The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-09-28
A WRITER TURNED sPIRITIsT.

lraclal integrity. We Will tolerate no Vlo- lent racial mixtures.
 2 A WRITER TURNED SPIRITIST.
 The account of an absurd spiritualistic seance in London, at which the spirit of Lord Northcliffe was "matenalized" and babbled the usual nonsense, calls to mind the loss suffered by literature when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle became interested in spiritualism. That Sir Arthur is intensely in earnest, no one who hears him lecture or reads his arti- cles on this subject can doubt. That he is. wasting brilliant talents and making no real progress toward his goal is the opinion of many who admire him as a literary. man, but can only pity his ef- forts to establish communication with the other world-wherever and whatever that world may be. .-z..
 The alert mind and ingenious imagina- tion that created Sherlock Holmes and carried him through series of adven- lures that have kept countless readers l awake until the small hours of the morn ing; the author of some of the finest I short stories in the language and of at least two novels that are certain to sur- vive the flight of time, is now engaged in attending seances where tables are tilted, and rapped; mysterious noises emanate from cabinets and strange lights and ghostly figures move about darkened room. To many of us this appears an example of misdirected energy and of great abilities frittered away in pursuit of a will-o' '-the-wisp.
 |. Whether or not we are prepared to concede that spiritism is science, to the person of average intelligence, and to many expert investigators as well, it seems to be about 90 per cent. fraud and trickery. It is, to say the least, extraordi- nary, that a medium who succeeds, as in the recent case of Boston medium, in baffling men of science with her perform ances under the customary conditions that make fraud easy, finds her "control' powerless when Harry Houdini offers her z cabinet of his own construction in which to perform her tricks. .Houdini has for years accomplished feats that to a suspi- cious. person appear supernatural, but he smilingly disclaims any relation with the Spirits"
 All of Houdini's tricks, and they are legion, are performed by natural means, and this modern magician does not at tempt to make the public think otherwise. But this is not true of the mediums who, for instance, will present to a quaking circle of hand-holding clients dim fig ure presumed to be Abraham Lincoln, who speaks in a pronounced cockney &C., cent; Julius Caesar who, strange to say, has learned modern English since that day in the Roman forum when the envious blade of Casca, not to mention the lethal strokes of those other conspirators who did the deed with Brutus and Cassius, ran his body through. Equally ridiculous, the spirit of some departed author, Mark Twain or Thackeray, appears and speaks ungrammatical English! 1t is enough to shake the faith of any but the stoutest believer in such char4atanry. Certainly the gentleman who was invited to kiss his departed wife" and remarked as he left the room that his "wife" needed shave and that he was going to meet her at a nearby theatre where he expected to find her very much alive, was not deceived by the mediums alleged ability to summon up the ghosts of the dead.
 It is to this sort of thing, no more scientific in many instances and scarcely more credible, that Sir Arthur is devoting the remainder of his life, while the lit erary talent that made him famous is neglected. Who can say how much good work he might have added to the volumes already written, had he not gone off trail ing the spooks, as he hoped, through glory but as a matter of fact, through dark ened rooms and cabinets in which tam bourines are shaken and from which manifestations of the supernatural issue forth to send cold chills down the spines of the assembled company? It is true that Sir Arthur tried to end the Sherlock Holmes stories by killing" the cele- brated detective, later reviving him; and it may be true that Sir Arthur recognized that he had about exhausted his powers as writer of detective stories, but Sher- lock, popular as he was and still is, does not represent Sir Arthur's best work. "The White Company" "Sir Nigel" per- haps his best historical novel, and the TO- bust and racy humor of Brigadier Gerald, are worthy of a place in any literary company. "The Green Flag and Other S ories,'' published in 1900, contains some lort stories that are masterpieces of their kind.
 The man who could do this, and much more, as a historian and 8 writer of fife tion, has turned from the profession that made him famous, dropped the pen that gave joy to millions of readers and now sits in semi-obscurity straining his ears to catch a sigh or groan from Spirit , land!