WCP449

[1]

Stockton, California

May 30th. 1887.

My dear Fanny

I have just received your dated May 6th which has been forwarded here from Boston. In consequence of a letter from John promising to get up some lectures at San Francisco & Stockton & to act as my agent, and also finding an excursion train from Kansas where I was at a cheap rate, I arrived in San Francisco a week today where John met me and we went to a first class hotel, & had lots of visitors from all the scientific men & Spiritualists of San Francisco. The lectures were on Wed. 25th & Friday 27th & involved are an immense deal of trouble to John, but they succeeded pretty well, & after paying all expenses cleared nearly 150 dollars the two, so that my expenses to California well be more than covered even if the Stockton lectures turn out a failure. I have also agreed to give a lecture on Spiritualism next Sunday in San Francisco for which I m to have $100. We reached here yesterday & found Mary [2] May, William & his wife, ^{Arthur the youngest boy} and the two grand-children, Bertie & Ethel; a very nice little boy & girl. Mary looks wonderfully well & much more like what I remember than John, who is older in look & manners. He has a slight resemblance to Williams & also to our father. May is a nice quiet ladylike girl with a decided resemblance to my mother's miniature! Next week I expect to go to the Yosemite & the Big Trees, & afterwards to spend a week in the Sierra Nevada on my way back. California spring, in the plains, is now over & the whole county is already yellow and dusty, and the hills bare & arid. I have as yet seen no part of America I should like to live in, nowhere is there any of that delightful green and & varied landscape which we enjoy all the year round. Here, where the winter & early springs are delightful, all the summer & autumn is dry, hot, glaring & dusty. In the mountains where the summer is more agreeable you are buried in snow for several months in winter & liable to snow [3] storms even in spring and summer. I fancy perhaps the mountains of Carolina & Georgia would be the best all the year climate, but I doubt if the country would be so permanently enjoyable as England. The absence of greenfields & footpaths, is a great inferiority everywhere in America. I think British Columbia is the nearest approach to the English Climate, but the country though grand is wild. On the whole I doubt if any Englishman fond of country life could live in any part of America without constantly regretting the old country.

While in Ameri San Francisco I had an invitation to see a wonderful State writing medium, and I & John went & had the most surprising & satisfactory séance I have ever had. It has completely staggered & converted John. In less than half an hour we had four slates covered with writing all lying on the table under our own hands after having been thoroughly cleared, & in a bright room close to a window, at 10 am. The messages are signed "Elizabeth Wallace"— "T.V. Wallace"— "O. Wallace"— and another "John Gray" is written [4] in four colours on a marked slate without any coloured pencils being in it! One of the longest messages was written in about 20 seconds, cont[ainin]^g over 100 words! Besides this I asked if anything could be done on paper, & I was told to take off 6 sheets from a paper block or pad such as are sold here for note writing. I tore off six sheets quite fresh from the shop, put them myself between two slates, held my hand on them, & in a few minutes was told to open the slates. The six sheets of paper lay there apparently blank, but in turning them up successively each had on the under surface a good outline portrait of well known men, one D.D. Howe quite recognizable, one said to be "the spirit portrait of Mary Wallace". This was the most marvellous thing I have ever seen, as the paper was used at my suggestion, & no ones' hands touched it but my own from beginning to end! I will send you a paper cont[ainin]^g account of the séance, with copy of another portrait which appeared on a slate. I am very sorry to hear of your bad success in business. I fear the neighborhood is too poor.

Your affectionate Brother | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]