A review from "The Quest: A Quarterly Review":
"D. D. HOME: HIS LIFE AND MISSION." By Mme. Dunglas Home. Edited, with an Introduction, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
"This is a reprint, in slightly abridged form, of the Life of D. D. Home, written by his widow, with the help of a large mass of unpublished correspondence, some thirty-five years ago. It is of service, in these days when psychical phenomena are attracting wider attention than has ever previously been the case, to revive the memory of Daniel Dunglas Home, who was one of the greatest, if not indeed the most convincing, of mediums whom the Spiritualistic movement has produced. Home never received a ha'penny for a single one of the innumerable sittings he gave, and though most bitterly and ferociously attacked and schemed against, was never detected in any fradulent attempt whatever. He welcomed investigation and willingly lent himself to the most irksome tests. There was never a prepared room, cabinet or anything of the kind; and the astonishing physical phenomena produced through his mediumship took place always in light of some sort. No one was more anxious to expose trickery and rid the movement of the parasitic charlatanry which found in it so convenient a host, than Home himself, as his last work, Lights and Shadows of Spiritualism, amply proves. Browning's 'Sludge the Medium' is as slanderous and revolting a caricature of Home as could well have been penned. Home moved in the best circles of Society in half-a-dozen countries, and maintained his position there with dignity and charm. His high moral character, deep piety and tender-hearted solicitude for the sorrows and misfortunes of others, and bis brave struggle against the exhausting drain of ever-recurrent and protracted ill-health and continual financial worries, are set forth by his biographer mainly from contemporary private letters and documents which speak for themselves. Over against the simplicity, sincerity, and scrupuosity of the man himself, who carefully kept from publication a mass of private testimony to his psychical capabilities and bona fides, owing to his over-sensitive repugnance to mentioning the name of anyone who did not come forward of his own free-will to bear witness, is set the unpleasing picture of the invincible prejudice, facile misrepresentation and dogmatic denials of the representatives of an official science which, excellent in its own special province, showed itself, with the exception of one or two courageous and far-seeing minds, untrue to the great trust reposed in it by the general public. The phenomena happened, and it was the duty of those who claimed to speak for science seriously and patiently to investigate them. The phenomena still happen and those who have the enterprise, temperament and training to observe psychical and psycho-physical events in a genuinely scientific spirit, are fortunately more numerous to-day than in the cock-sure Victorian Age. But "it's a long long way to Tipperary" yet; for the great campaign is as it were only just beginning in earnest, and the twentieth century will doubtless witness many a hard-fought field before the battle is won, not in the interest of any 'ism,' but for a genuine science of life and mind."
