Long before leaving school I wanted to be a writer.  Perhaps my early successes in English and composition were the cause of this.  Even as a schoolboy I wrote 'poems' to - and about - my girl friends.  Fortunately for posterity, no copies of these were kept.  After leaving school I wrote considerably, principally playlets, and, as the reader has seen, I actually wrote and produced a three-act psychic play before I was eighteen years old.

By the time I was one-and-twenty other interests, in addition to 'psychic' ones, were competing for my attention.  I had become an amateur archæologist.  This was the result of several visits to the ruins of the Roman city of Uriconium, near Wroxeter, Salop, where I did some excavating and found many coins.  I became a numismatist in consequence.

In 1902 I helped to excavate the Roman villa urbana (a residence in the country or in the suburbs of a town, not to be confused with the villa rustico, or farm-house) in Greenwich Park.  The site (known to have existed for many years) lies midway between the Magnetic Pavilion and the Vanbrugh entrance to the Park.

Excavating Roman villas is one of the most exciting jobs imaginable.  We had thrill after thrill as the excavators turned up relics of a bygone age.  The villa itself was probably the residence of one of the Triumviri Monetales, or Mint Superintendents, or the ofice of a military paymaster, because so many coins were found.  The villa must have been directly in touch with the making or handling of money, as there were discovered the coins of no fewer

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than forty emperors or rulers, thus proving that money was either stored or collected at that spot.  If the villa was the residence of a Mint official, he must have taken a lot of home-work back with him of a night!

Chronologically, the coins ranged from Claudius I (A.D. 41-54) to Honorius (A.D. 395-423).  But a single specimen of a denarius of Mark Antony, struck at Alexandria about B.C. 35, was unearthed.  This money was struck for paying the soldiers of the 14th Legion (Germina), who probably dropped the piece at Greenwich whilst camping on the site of what was afterwards the villa.  So, roughly if we can take the coins as a guide - the Roman villa at Greenwich was occupied for something like 400 years.

My work at Uriconium and Greenwich turned me into an ardent coin collector, and I specialised in the coins of Kent and Shropshire - our native heath.  I formed very complete collections of the trade tokens of these two counties, and put endless work and research into the task of ascertaining the history of the issuers of these interesting trade pieces of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  I recorded more than 700 varieties of Kentish tokens alone, issued in about one hundred towns and villages.  These traders' tokens were issued - principally by shopkeepers and merchants - because small change was not supplied by the Government: the traders coined their own small change.  These old farthings and halfpennies (principally) are of the utmost value to the genealogist and the topographical student.  Love and passion, hate and admiration may be delineated from the signs and superscriptions on these old pieces, and in many instances villages have been located, towns identified, and the names and doings of public worthies handed down to posterity.  Many of these tokens were made by itinerant minters who travelled from village to village, setting up their press in some

old barn, engraving the dies and striking the coins on the spot.  I have a rare Pulborough farthing token issued in 1667 by Richard Haines.  It was probably struck in our village.

The result of my interest in numismatics was the writing and publication of my first serious work: The Coins of Kent and Kentish Tokens.  This was published in serial form in The Kentish Mercury, and the articles ran for more than two and a half years, viz. from May 23, 1902, to December 30, 1904.  I was twenty-one years old when this work was published.  During this same period my Shropshire Tokens and Mints appeared in the Wellington Journal, where the book ran serially for several months.  I also wrote many articles on coins for The Askean (a school magazine) about this time, and even commissioned an artist to draw a design - complete with portrait - for my own private token.  As a result of my books and articles on coins, I was invited (May 18, 1904) to become 'Honorary Curator of Numismatics' to Ripon Museum - a post I hold to this day.

As my interest in psychical research became keener, I am afraid that I collected fewer and fewer coins - except, of course, coins of the realm!  What finally put an end to my serious numismatic activities was the fact that I had a fine and rare collection of the ancient gold coins of the Sussex princes (most of them washed up at Selsey), stolen from Pulborough church.  The coins included those of Tincommius, Verica, and others.  Some were unique.

I had nearly completed (1923) my Numismatic History of Sussex, and all the plates had been engraved.  It was during this year that I placed my collection of Sussex coins on loan for exhibition in our local church.  The coins included traders' tokens, Anglo-Saxon pieces struck at Sussex mints, the pre-Roman gold coins I have mentioned, medallions, etc.  On September 26, 1923, a telegram was handed to me in London saying that the gold coins in the church had been stolen - probably by a collector, as visitors were allowed to go in and out of the church as they pleased.  They were never recovered.  All the satisfaction I received was a polite note from the Church Council expressing their 'sincere regret' for my loss.  I received no compensation.  If the loss had occurred anywhere except in my own village, I would have taken drastic action in the matter.  It was an unfortunate business.  My book on the Sussex coins remains unfinished to this day, as I lost all interest in it.  I lost interest, too, in coins generally, except those pieces struck by mediums, conjurers, etc. of which I have a large collection.

To continue my early archæological adventures, in the summer of 1902, when my interest in things antiquarian was still keen, I made an important discovery: I unearthed the remains of a pre-

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I have been consistently fortunate in finding relics of Roman or prehistoric origin, and this is a good opportunity of giving a list of the principal ones, as they are of absorbing interest.  I have been 'fortunate' for two reasons: (a) Because I happen to live in a district very rich in Roman remains; and (b) because I have looked for them.

The most interesting thing I discovered was a perfect specimen of a Roman silver ingot which I picked up in 1909 on the surface of a ploughed field on top of Park Mount, Pulborough.  This 'mound,' or high hill, is artificial, and was constructed by the Romans west of the present railway in order to guard the great military Stane Street that ran from Londinium to Regnum (Chichester). An armed camp or mansio was stationed there.

Of the prehistoric relics that I discovered in the Pulborough district none is more interesting or rarer than the beautiful Early Bronze Age flint dagger, one of only three perfect specimens found

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I appear to have wandered from what my ambitions were when I was one-and-twenty.  But I think it is necessary that the reader should be acquainted with my youthful activities.  Though I had many hobbies - and they were nothing more- such as photography, archæology, amateur theatricals, and mechanics, my real leisure persuits were collecting books on 'magic,' and the unravelling of the apparently miraculous.

Well, then, here are some of the 'ambitions' that foolishly possessed me when I attained my majority, as confided to Frank

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Whitaker. (1) I wanted to be a writer and to write especially for the Encyclopædia Britannica; (2) I wanted to appear in Who's Who; (3) I wanted to collect the largest magical library in existence; (4) I wanted to be offered a doctorate, honoris causa, of some university; (5) I wanted to possess a Rolls-Royce car.  Later, when the radio was in its infancy, I wanted to broadcast.  There were several other things that I wanted to do or be.  I was already a 'psychical researcher' in a modest way.

Let me say at once that in due course most of my early ambitions were realised, with no conscious effort or intention on my part.  My literary work began very early indeed: almost before I left school.  But I was not content with writing for school magazines and provincial newspapers.  I wanted to write for journals of consequence.  My choice of the Encyclopædia Britannica arose in a curious way.  At home, my father had, for months, subscribed to the ninth edition (twenty-five volumes), and I would take a volume up to bed with me, and read one or two articles each night.  I was thrilled with the wonderful things and people I read about and mentally resolved that I, too, would some day contribute to this great work.  Thirty years later I was writing for the Encyclopædia Britannica and for the Encyclopædia Italiana too.

Above all, I remember, I wished to experience the thrill of being 'interviewed,' and I wanted to collect Press-cuttings about myself.  I must have been very vain!  I could not then visualise that some day I should be compelled to tie up my telephone in order to stop newspaper men from worrying me; or that I should eventually collect 20,000 Press-cuttings about myself (some abusive; these from the spiritualists!) in forty folio volumes.

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The only reason that I can think of why I wanted to appear in Who's Who is that we possessed an early edition which I used to study with the greatest interest.  I used to amuse myself in tracing the careers of the distinguished men whose names appeared there, and wondered what was the secret of their success.  I concluded it was hard work!

As for my library, I shall have more to say about that in a future chapter; but I was always possessed by a desire to obtain every book on magic - British and foreign - and assimilate their contents.

As for the honorary doctorate, I am afraid that this very ambitious desire originated through my studying the careers of the great men in Who's Who.  Of course, the whole thing was rather ridiculous - but one is apt to be ridiculous when one is just out of one's 'teens.  Anyway, as we shall see, even this honour was offered me more than thirty years later.

So much for my youthful ambitions! I hitched my wagon to

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Well, the reader now knows how I occupied my leisure during the early years, and should have a good general idea of the background of my activities - scientific, antiquarian, magical and psychical - that formed the solid base on which my future career as a psychical researcher was afterwards built.  Without such experiences, I never could have conducted satisfactorily the hundreds of very diverse investigations, some of which are detailed in the following chapters, that have intrigued me for so many years.

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