WCP1372

[1]

58 Montein Rd.

Forest Hill S.E.

May 9th 1906.

Dear Dr. Wallace.

The arrival of your book¹ yesterday morning was indeed a pleasure and surprise to me and I shall indeed value it and look forward to reading it both for profit and enjoyment. My husband & I managed to read 2 chapters of it last night and we promise ourselves a great treat. Yes, I am sure I shall find not only science there, but the poetry of science and it will be food for my writing on which I hope soon to embark.

The stars — they have always drawn me as many another — they have always seemed as the earliest companions of one’s interior life, — the very symbols of sublimity and lofiest passion. I shall read your book and learn, and if I am prepossessed with some idea akin to the plurality of worlds, it is in some spiritual sense, as though there might be worlds & worlds too fine for our perception in which spirits moved & lived and had their being far removed from this dim star. I once read a book given thru' spirit influence on the subject, but of course arbitrary statements want to be verified by the scientific method at last.

Thank you for your appreciation of "Songs at Dawn”.² It is indeed refreshment and encouragement of the truest kind to have these words from you [2] and to know that the inspiration of a very laborious leisure has met with this approval.

I shall write my new poem so much more hopefully and faithfully in the thought of it, and my husband is as pleased that you liked the poems as I am.

And now I have just a word "given me" for you, as the mediums say, unsought and I know not if of any value in your eyes, but I just give it as it came.

Since January I have done nothing to my new poem and this morning "they" said we must begin. — So I shut myself up and took mentally an impression of the first portion of "Israfel" — so beautiful that I am sure I shall never be able to write it, or anything worthy of it — and before I came out of a semi-trance condition, the words were added;

"Tell Alfred Russel Wallace that greatly impressed as we are by the work he has already accomplished, he has yet another book to write that will truly place him among the Immortals and that it will [3] be given to him under the loftiest spirit-guidance before he leaves the "Earth-plane" — That was all and if it seems unsatisfactory to you in view of your premeditated plans or desires I can only say that I pass on what I am not responsible for, except in the matter of passing on.

I can only add personally that I hope for everyone’s sake it may be true. I think on the whole my impressions, especially if people’s spiritual work are very reliable and I have bad experience some 10 or 12 years now in passing on impressions for others given me in this way from time to time.

I will not send "Songs of Christine" just now, as I see you are fully occupied; they will serve a leisure hour later on, and again thanking for your kind present and your generous encouragement, [4]

I am | yrs. sincerely | Ellis Margaret Heath.³ [signature]

P.S. Thanks for note on "plain"—

It is an abbreviation of "complain" —

Perhaps a 'poetic license' but

I thought it allowable as one

uses to adjec: poetically plaining –

("a plaining lyne") — which is a

participial form of a non-existent verb —

Perhaps strictly I should have used no comma.

I recall now that you said you were waiting & not sure what you were to write on next, —

but I think you will know very soon now and "they" give me to understand that you will not have very long to wait.

[5] Mrs. Heath,

Prediction about A.R.W... May 9/1906

(Spirit^m)