CHAPTER XXV.

WILLIE.

"His was a noble life, brief in span, but full of service from his boyhood up."--W. T. STEAD.

THREE years after his African visit he watched the passing of his dearly loved eldest son, and wept beside the beloved body, which would no more be used by the loving, tender spirit which for thirty-three years had worn it as its earthly dress.
There had ever been a great love between father and son. As soon as he was old enough to understand anything Willie took an interest in his father's work, and his greatest ambition was to be an editor like his father. He became his father's secretary when scarcely into his teens, and from that time till he was twenty-one, when he became private secre-tary to Mr. E. T. Cook * (Later Sir ET CooK)--the then editor of the Daily News, he was his father's right hand.
Soon after he became Mr. Cook's secretary he married, and for a few years my Father and he did not come into such close touch as before. But when the former's health broke down through the strain of the Daily Paper, Willie took the position of editor and piloted the paper through its short life with splendid enthusiasm and indomitable courage. From that time onward till the day of his death, they were again in very close touch, and my Father depended upon Will's help in a great many ways.
" Last year," my Father wrote at the time of his death, "when I undertook the mission round Europe and America, before the Peace Congress, I made over to him full responsibility for the editing of the Review of Reviews in my absence. Nobly, as always, he responded to my appeal, although little as I knew it, the call made serious inroads both upon his business and his strength. He was always so cheerful, buoyant, so delighted to help, that I little knew at what a sacrifice I was being helped."
On the very Saturday on which Willie passed on, Father had come up to town from Hayling to meet him at night, when the temporary appointment of Acting Editor was to have been made permanent, and Will was to have been formally appointed, as his Father's successor, in the editorial chair.
My Father did not hear of his son's illness till a quarter past eleven in the morning. Down to a quarter to eleven at night he was absolutely incredulous that his life was in danger. At a quarter past eleven he saw him die.
It was a bitter blow, and for some time sorrow and grief filled his soul.
But it was not long before he realised that Will's passing was to bring to him the assurance of the possibility of intercourse with those who have gone on before.
" No one could deceive me," he said, " by fabricating spurious messages from my beloved son. " And nothing that can be written will carry more conviction than his own testimony.
Speaking at Halifax eighteen months later, he said :--

"Eighteen months ago my eldest son passed into the other world. I heard his first cry as a new-born infant. I caught his last sigh as he passed into the unseen. I had always said I would never make my final pronouncement on the truths of Spiritualism until someone near and dear in my own family passed into the great beyond. Then I should know whether Spiritualism stood the test of a great bereavement, bringing life and immortality to light. And I am here to tell you that the reality of my son's continued existence, and of his tender care for me, have annulled the bitterness of death.
" You remember what Lowell said: ' Console me if you will, but all the consoling can never make death other than death.' I can say Spiritualism has made death other than death for me. That boy had been for thirty-three years my joy and my pride.  Iliad trained him in hope that he would succeed me and carry on my work. The very day he died I came up at 11.30 a.m. to appoint him as my assistant-editor. That night at I 1.30 p.m.. I saw him die. The blow was so sudden. I did not know he was seriously ill. When I saw him breathe his last I knew our Father had other plans, and that the boy I had trained to work for me here was going to work for me on the other side. And that hope has been gloriously fulfilled.  The telephone helps us to realise this kind of communication.  When my boy was here, our offices were connected by telephone, and it is much the same now. He writes to me through several mediums, he shows himself to my friends. I myself have seen his materialised face. One friend has seen him at least three times fully materialised, as was our Lord after His resurrection. He is here to-night beside me.  I am as sure of that as I am of the fact that I am speaking to you. When I realise the difference it makes to have this knowledge, and to be without it, I feel I must testify to you as to the reality of the unseen world around us."

In his message on December 15th, 191 I, the day after the anniversary of his "passing on," his birthday, he called it, Will wrote the following message, and as it explains partially why it is impossible for those communicating from the other world to give more definite details of their life and surroundings, I give it here:

WILLIE.
"December 15th, 1911.

W. Stead, jun.   My dearest Father.  My birthday message is ever the same.  'Tis better on before. When I think of the ideas that I had of the life I am now living, when I was in the world in which you are, I marvel at the hopeless inadequacy of my dreams. The reality is so much, so very much greater than ever I imagined. You and I and all people that on earth do dwell, are too apt to imagine this life as only an extension of the old life. Everything is to be as it is, only more so. But everything is not as it was. It is a new life, the nature of which you cannot understand, although it is possible to explain something of it by analogy. Imagine yourself a caterpillar on a cabbage leaf. 'Things will be better on before you,' you say to the caterpillar. But what does ' better' mean to the caterpillar? More cabbages, ever more cabbages, and ever cabbages ; more sunshine, less rain, and no hungry birds to eat you up. All caterpillary ideas limited by the sensations and aspirations of a cabbage world. After a time the caterpillar becomes a butterfly. But how can the butterfly explain to the caterpillars the conditions of luis new life, the buoyancy of flight, the joy of love, the sweetness of the honey-flowers? These essentials of the new existence are incapable of being explained to the caterpillar mind, for the vocabulary of the cabbage would contain no words capable of conveying concepts entirely alien to the caterpillar's senses. So it is with me. I tell you it is better on before, always, and far better than I dreamed of. But when I come down to tell you wherein the betterness consists, I feel like the butterfly sitting by the caterpillar and endeavouring to explain what sight is' what light is, what flight is, wherein lies the joy of love."