I HAVE read a few of your INNER LIFE Magazines that were given me, and I enjoyed them very much, although one of them has caused me a very troubled mind. So I thought I would write you for help. It is the one where you spoke about Spiritualism and the misery mediums cause our loved ones who have gone on. It is so hard to know if we are right or wrong, and I would for anything harm those who have gone on into the other world. But in order to let you know what I mean, I’ll have to give you parts of my life. If I write too much or if you are not interested, just lay it aside and don’t bother with it.

I’ll begin my life story as far back as I can remember. As a very small child I spent most of my time alone, even though there were five of us children. I being second to the youngest, I played most of the time by myself, thinking, and you might say I was a dreamer. Yet I was not a dreamer as a dreamer sits and thinks but is idle; but not I, for I thought best while my hands were busy.

As far back as I can remember I was always sewing something for my dolls, which I loved very much; then when I got to be about five or six my dolls weren’t enough—I wanted babies to play with. So each new baby that came into the neighborhood I believe I can truthfully say I was the first outsider to see, and I know the mothers really wanted me to come. And to me each new baby was like a new world.

Understand, I didn’t make a big fuss over them, like so many people do; but to me they were something holy, and I worshiped them. Every mother trusted me with them, and when I was just seven years old and very small for my age, two neighbors would pay me five cents a day to take their babies out while they were doing their work; not both at a time, but one day I had one, the next day the other. I would keep them from early morning until dinner time, and from dinner time till supper time, without taking them home, and I would sit and play with them as I used to play with my dolls.

As we grew older and the children in the neighborhood got sick with the childish diseases, no matter where they were, it was I who went to sit with them, or held them on my lap and talked to them, or told them stories, when they were too fretful to lie in