by Jabez Hunt Nixon
First edition, first printing of a Spiritualist medium's memoir
Kansas City, MO: Hudson-Kimberly Publishing Company, 1901. First edition, first printing. 500pp. Bound in publisher's dark blue buckram with gilt spine lettering, floral endpapers. Very Good, well-worn along edges, gift inscription to rear endpaper and a few previous owner stamps to endpapers, limited underlining to text and few marginal notes.
The best known work by an American Spiritualist, featuring conversations with a medium, William W. Aber. According to Nixon's obituary in the 1915 Spring Hill (Kansas) New Era he was born in 1831 and raised a Quaker; he was a "police judge" and city attorney in Spring Hill for many years. That town was the center of what was known as the Aber Intellectual Circle. This book features Aber's conversations with spirits, some of whom were famous historical figures. According to the Topeka Library's account of Aber's exploits,
"In the early 1900s Aber's fraudulent seances were exposed several times in the Kansas City area. In one instance he was exposed by two men who were worried about a woman who had been seeing Aber to contact her deceased husband. The two men grabbed Aber, who was dressed as a spirit. Aber managed to escape and locked himself in the bathroom until authorities arrived. He tried his luck again on the West coast. Authorities arrested Aber in Seattle in 1920 while, once again, dressed as a ghostly apparition. He was told to leave town. Newspapers across the nation carried the humorous headline 'Ghost Fined and Must Walk Earth Elsewhere.'".