St. Louis June 1901
Imagine my surprise when I came home from shopping to find three men awaiting me in our sitting room—my husband, a photographer, and a young string bean of a man furiously writing on a pad. “My love,” Adolphe said, springing up. “Mrs. Boogher has arranged for an article about your journeys to Mars to appear in the Post-Dispatch.”
“Oh dear,” I said, stalling for time to think. “The spirits instructed me to publish only when the mission is complete.”
The skinny young man, evidently a reporter, pointed his pen at me and asked, “This is Mr. Lester who told you this? The Frog who’s a ghost?”
“De L’Ester,” I corrected automatically.
“So where are the drawings, then?” the photographer said.
“They want to illustrate the article with your flower sketches, the ones created by the spirit guides,” Adolphe explained.
“In my study,” I replied.
The photographer began opening curtains to let in more light. “All right, we’ll wait here.”
I knew that if I ordered the men out of my house, Adolphe would back me without question, but I saw how his eyes glowed with husbandly pride. He thought everyone should share in the glad tidings I brought from the Spirit Realm.
I obliged with six drawings and suffered a lengthy interview. It was the least I could do for him, and I deserved a little punishment for such a big lie.
PICTURES in colors of the flowers of Mars—made by a woman who cannot draw—and written stories of the Martian people, are the remarkable product of spiritualism in the St. Louis home of Mr. and Mrs. Adolphe M. Weiss, 4326 Cook Avenue.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Weiss are spiritualists. But it is Mrs. Weiss who has written the stories and drawn the pictures. They are cultured people in the afternoon of life. They live in comfort. They believe Mrs. Weiss has been made a medium through whom persons who have passed to the spirit world wish to communicate with people of our earth. They know who these people are. They know who is the artist. They know everything except this: why was Mrs. Weiss, neither author nor artist, made the medium of this elaborate intelligence—an illustrated work on the flora of Mars?
It is not their expression to say of Mr. and Mrs. Weiss that they believe the wife has been spiritually controlled for this work. In their own words: they know it. They ask no one to believe. Here are the pictures and the stories. They are not offered as proof of anything. Mr. and Mrs. Weiss simply offer them as information for those who believe.
Mrs. Weiss is a handsome lady of something upward of 50 years. She is not a clairvoyant in the popular understanding of the term. She is not one of these people to whom one may run to catch a glimpse of the future. She is what many other good housewives of St. Louis are: a spiritualist in the privacy of her own home. She has exceptional intellectuality.
This is the story of her experience as she related it to the Sunday Post-Dispatch, telling it as delightfully and giving as little provocation to doubt as though she were telling of a journey of yesterday to places whither any who will may go and see for themselves.
