and daring experiment once actually attempted," and offered to those who are interested in the unseen possibilities of the Hereafter. It is the story of a man "who voluntarily sacrificed his whole worldly career in a supreme effort to prove the apparently Unprovable."
This persistent probing on Marie Corelli's part of what most writers shun and very few have ever attempted to solve, is one of the secrets of her great sales. Turn to page 319 of "The Soul of Lilith," and you will find the matter put neatly in a nutshell:
"And so it happens that when wielders of the pen
essay to tell us of wars; of shipwrecks, of hair-*breadth
escapes from danger, of love and politics
and society, we read their pages with merely transitory
pleasure and frequent indifference, but when
they touch upon subjects beyond earthly experience—when
they attempt, however feebly, to lift our
inspirations to the possibilities of the Unseen, then
we give them our eager attention and almost passionate
interest."
This passage may afford a little light to those
people who are forever declaring that they cannot
understand what other people can see in Marie
Corelli. The fact is, Marie Corelli appeals to a
tremendous section of the public—a section in
which, we are assured, the fair sex does not pre-