Life was desperately hard during these years, full of worry, work and discomfort. But, looking back, I am convinced that it was all part of the pattern of things to come – indispensable training for the work I was to do. If you have not suffered, how can you understand the suffering of others? Without sympathy for those in distress, how can you help to alleviate burdens? At the time, of course, no such thoughts entered my head; I was much too busy coping with more immediate problems. Nor indeed…

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I had to be the breadwinner. With an invalid husband and three children to maintain, our meagre sickness allowance of ten shillings a week was woefully inadequate. I found employment doing housework from eight in the morning until two in the afternoon at a nursing home in Twickenham. The pay was small and insufficient for our needs, but it enabled us to keep going even though I had many a time to go without meals in order to feed my little ones. Clothes were an even greater difficulty, and the…

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At fifteen I went to work as a nursemaid to a family in Turnham Green. I loved children and here there were three of them to look after. They occupied nearly all my time for the next three years. Then I met and married Hugh Warren Miles. Hugh was born at Cumberland Lodge, Windsor Park, and had received his education as a Bluecoat Boy at Christ’s Hospital. His stepmother, whose maiden name was Evelyn Galt, was a sister of the wife of the President Wilson. He had a kind and…

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A medium, taking her place on a public platform, relies entirely upon her spirit friends, for without them she can do nothing. It is only at the ultimate moment before addressing her audience that she becomes aware whether or not her gift will manifest itself. No dress rehearsal, no prompter in the wings can help her. She stands alone save only for her spirit communicators, and this was the first time I had been called upon to take the platform at the Queen’s Hall. It was the beginning of an…

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As I watched him, he slowly lowered the blade of the sword and extended the point towards me as though in salute. This action must have released powerful vibrations towards my body, for I suddenly felt myself go weak at the knees, and my stomach seemed to turn over. The vision persisted. Three times I glanced away, to find it still there when I looked back. Then I called to my sister, “Dolly, come and look!” Dolly looked, and a moment later to my horror, she had collapsed in a…

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One of my brothers, Lionel, who had died before I was born, was among my earliest visitors. He often used to come of a morning or evening, and I would talk to him. He was then only a child, but I watched him grow through the years to maturity. He still comes to me. Other spirit children of my own age would also visit me and I would talk aloud to them. It was hearing me speaking apparently to myself on these occasions that was the main source of alarm…

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CHAPTER ONE1889 – 1919 “This girl must be called Estelle, for one day she will become a star.”These words were uttered by my grandmother as she gazed down at her daughter’s child who had entered this world barely two hours before. In later years my mother told me of this incident for which there was no apparent reason. My grandmother had no reputation in the family as a prophetess, and no doubt would have been shocked at any suggestion that she had psychic powers. However, my father had different ideas…

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“How many people we know who sour their lives, who ruin all that is sweet and beautiful by explosive tempers, who destroy their poise of character, and make bad blood! It is a question whether the great majority of people do not ruin their lives and mar their happiness by lack of self-control. How few people we meet in life who are well balanced, who have that exquisite poise which is characteristic of the finished character! Yes, humanity surges with uncontrolled passion, is tumultuous with ungoverned grief, is blown about…

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SERENITY CALMNESS of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. It is the result of long and patient effort in self-control. Its presence is an indication of ripened experience, and of a more than ordinary knowledge of the laws and operations of thought. A man becomes calm in the measure that he understands himself as a thought evolved being, for such knowledge necessitates the understanding of others as the result of thought, and as he develops a right understanding, and sees more and more clearly the internal relations…

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The thoughtless, the ignorant, and the indolent, seeing only the apparent effects of things and not the things themselves, talk of luck, of fortune, and chance. Seeing a man grow rich, they say, “How lucky he is!” Observing another become intellectual, they exclaim, “How highly favoured he is!” And noting the saintly character and wide influence of another, they remark, “How chance aids him at every turn!” They do not see the trials and failures and struggles which these men have voluntarily encountered in order to gain their experience; have…

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