This column has already dealt with the topic of reincarnation, but in the light of a recent discovery, it is scarcely a dead issue.

Pray be so kind as to answer this simple question. Who was born of humble rural stock, became a shoe manufacturer, participated in his country's civil war, and, later, rose to the very top of the political tree? Yes! Yes! Yes! Vice President Henry Wilson of Farmington. But who else? Iosef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili Stalin, that's who else!

Now, while amateur historians might be content to regard this alarming parallel as merely a quaint coincidence, hard-bitten Henry Wilson watchers know better. From the myriad of facts at their fingertips, thanks to Farmington Corner, they are able to draw very different conclusions, and as president of W.O.O.O.F., the organization noble attempting to rocket Wilson Out Of Obscurity Forthwith, allow me to lay these conclusions before you.

But firstly, what do we know about Henry Wilson that the university wallahs do not. Well, thanks to the research of Farmington bibliophile Bob Colpitt, it has been established that before his death in 1875, Wilson had become avidly interested in spiritualism and visited a medium in Boston.

We also know that a couple of years after his death, the spirit of Henry Wilson sneezed its way up and down the corridors of the Senate, with witnesses attesting to this fact in an out-of-print book of famous ghosts.

The membership of W.O.O.O.F. have also accepted that the reincarnation of Henry Wilson is alive and well, happily repairing stoves and freezers under the pseudonym of Royce Hodgdon. (See previous columns on subject.)

With all this in mind, it is obvious that Stalin is the missing piece in the jigsaw.

Tired of flitting ghostily along the corridors of power for four lonely years, Henry Wilson chose, in 1879, to be re-incarnated as Uncle Joe, and followed the career track that had worked for him in the past. Then, seeing the writing on the Iron Curtain for his next recycling trick, he returned to the good ol' U.S. of A.

For your reading convenience, a chart illustrating the common characteristics of these three lives of Henry Wilson has been prepared below:

Naturally, the usual tired battery of eggheads and nitpickers have been attempting to discredit this now accepted reincarnation theory.

"Stalin was the son of a shoe manufacturer," these pettifoggers cry.

"Well, show me the kid that has never helped his dad," I retort.

They also quibble, "If Royce was born in 1948, and Joe didn't die until 1953, how could Henry be in two places at once?" That argument is easily disposed of - given the secrecy of the Soviet block in pre-glasnost days, it is altogether apparent that Stalin died pre-1948, with his place being taken by a look-a-like, until the ensuing power struggle was eventually won by Nikita Khrushchev.

But a small minority of the hoi polloi remain dark skeptics, and no argument or reasoned logic can illuminate their minds. Perhaps when Royce moves via the manufacture of shoes, to the pinnacle of politics, as one day he surely will, perhaps they will begin to see a pattern emerge. By that time, it will be too late. All the W.O.O.O.F. badges will have been sold - meanwhile these delightful items are still available, while stocks last, at a mere $1.25 each.