Fifty Years a Medium – Chapter 2, 8/14 by Estelle Roberts

From a material aspect, these meetings were anything but remunerative. At the time of which I am writing, it was the custom for mediums to receive five shillings for a meeting, out of which they had to pay their own fares. Furthermore, it was no uncommon occurrence for a medium to take both afternoon and evening services without any increase in payment.

This did not worry me, however, useful though a little extra money would have been. I was too filled with the zeal of the crusader to look for pecuniary gain. Indeed, I was probably too idealistic and too serious in outlook.

It is so easy to become too intense about any subject on which one feels strongly. Because of this, during the early days of my career, at sittings when I was not entranced, and therefore aware of all that I said, I was sometimes tempted to ignore or dress in greater decorum occasional phrases, which shocked me as being flippant, or in bad taste.

I recall such an instance when a young woman, whose fiancé had been killed, came for a sitting. He immediately came through to me. I heard him with perfect clarity, repeat the same words over and over again, but as they shocked me I was reluctant to pass them on to my sitter. “Tell me,” I asked her, “was he a man who used strong language?”

“Not especially,” she replied. “Why do you ask? What is he saying?”
“Well,” I said dubiously, “he keeps on saying, ‘Not bloody likely, not bloody likely!’ “

She laughed happily at this, and told me they had agreed that whoever died first should try to come back and give as a password the famous phrase from Bernard Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion’.
I soon learned that the spirit people behave just as naturally and individually as we do. By passing over they do not suddenly become paragons of all the virtues as some people seem to think.

They retain their mortal characteristics and to all intents and purposes are the same people they were on earth, except that they have discarded ailing, injured, or worn out bodies in exchange for perfect spirit bodies.