Mr. Edison regards as absurd. Some of these mediums are barefaced frauds, of course, but he thinks that many of them are self-hypnotized enthusiasts who really believe that they are in touch with the spirit world. The appliances of the “mediums” are clumsy, unscientific and worthless. No message from spirit land can ever come through such childish paraphernalia, he asserts. If Mr. Marconi or Mr. Edison himself were ship-wrecked on a desert island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean it would be futile to try to establish wireless connection with some schoolboy outfit in a backyard in San Francisco. But it might be possible, with great patience and skill to attract the attention of one of the great, high-power, delicately constructed wireless stations of the navy.     And so it is with a disembodied spirit in the world beyond the grave who might be seeking to attract the attention of mankind on earth. He would have to overcome tremendous difficulties, no doubt, and would be utterly helpless in trying to apply his scientific knowledge through any of the clumsy, puerile equipment of the enthusiastic but ignorant spiritualistic “medium.” But he might be able to make use of waves of ether or other forces in the universe if Mr. Edison succeeds in setting up an instrument which would register calls from such a source. And this is the task which Mr. Edison has now set his genius to work at.     Already science has undertaken tasks of incredible delicacy which are in some respects not unlike the problem which Mr. Edison has before him. The heat of a candle has been measured miles away. The heat of the most distant

stars has been recorded. Not only this, but “young stars” are now distinguished from “old stars” by instruments of marvelous delicacy. Everybody knows that the slightest earth tremor on the other side of our globe is recorded by the curious little instrument called the seismograph. In the Massachusetts Institute of Techonology laboratory is a little machine in which it is possible to weigh the earth, and just as the war was coming to an end an American scientist developed an instrument which would give notice of the approach of a man in the darkest night —an instrument so delicate that the moment a soldier stuck his head above a trench hundreds of feet away across No Man’s Land the heat radiated from his face gave a signal instantly.     But, of course, these various instruments are of no value to a person who does not understand them or who has not been trained in the use of them. If the average lawyer, doctor or clergyman or business man stepped into a telegraph office while the operator was absent it would be impossible for him to make use or the instruments to send a message over the wire. And similarly Mr. Edison believes that it is highly unlikely that anybody not technically trained will be able to make use of the forces of nature and the instruments for controlling them after he has passed into the world beyond the grave.     If there is to be any communication from the dead it must be assumed the departed still retain at least the faculty of memory in the next world. If there are spirits and they have memory and wish to communicate with those left behind, it will be a valuable thing for those who pass into the next