LETTER V
CONTINGENT FEES
March 10, 1917.
TO-DAY I heard that a certain rich man (unmindful of the camel and the needle’s eye), supposing that the letters from this Living Dead Man had been profitable to you, that there was “money in them,” was considering the question of whether he should financially back a medium who stood ready to declare that she was in communication with me, that I repudiated the books written through you, and stood sponsor for certain manuscripts written “through” her, as my only genuine messenger to the world.
I join in your laughter, at your supposed “profitable” investment in the securities of the other world, and at the eagerness to get aboard a sea-of-ether-worthy ship exhibited by people who have not paid their fare.
I may as well tell you now that this country and some others are scattered over with supposed “communications” from me. It would seem that my writing arms are as numerous as the feet of a centipede. It would also seem by the style of some of these supposed communications, by their contents and their contradictions, that I have as many minds as Indra has eyes.
Even the elementals of the ouija board do not contradict themselves so frequently as these amanuenses make me contradict myself. I think you will have to trademark me.
After the serious nature of my recent letters, it relaxes me to jest.
If you include this letter in the book, please head it “Contingent Fees.”