Mrs. Andrews referred to the essay that gave elementary instruction.
“Certainly,” she said. “We will try that first. They say that two hands holding the pencil often produce extraordinary results, but we will begin, as they suggest, singly. I declare that my hand feels quite fidgety already, as if the control was just waiting for the means of communication to be prepared.”
Everything in Mrs. Andrews’s house was in apple-pie order, and it took her no time at all to find two writing-pads and a couple of sharpened pencils. With these she rejoined her husband on the paved walk, where they had had tea, outside the drawing-room, and, with pencil in hand, fixed her eye firmly on the top of the mulberry tree at the edge of the lawn, and waited. He, with left hand free for his cigarette, did the same, but his mind kept going back to the boiled rabbit he had dreamed of after crystal-gazing, which still seemed to him a very unusual occurrence, for, to the best of his recollection, he had never dreamed of boiled rabbit before.
Within a few days’ time very promising developments had taken place. Almost immediately Mrs. Andrews had begun to trace angled lines on the paper, which, if they did not suggest anything else particular, were remarkably like the temperature chart of a very feverish patient. Her hand, seemingly without volition on her part, made energetic dashes and dabs all over the paper, and she felt a very odd tingling sensation in her fingers, which could scarcely be put down to anything else than the presence of the control.
Her husband, scarcely less fortunate, also began to trace queer patterns of irregular curves on his sheet, which looked very much as if they were words. But though they were like words, they were not any known words, whichever way up you attempted to read them, though, as Mrs. Andrews said, they might easily be Russian or Chinese, which would account for their being wholly meaningless to the English eye. Sheets of possible Russian were thus poured out by Mr. Andrews, and whole hospital records of fever charts on the part of his wife, but neither at present came within measurable distance of intelligibility. The control seemed incapable of making itself understood. Then on a memorable day Mr. Andrews’s pencil evinced an irresistible desire to write figures, and after inscribing “one, two, one, two,” a great many times, wrote quite distinctly 4958, and gave a great dash as if it had said its last word.
“And what 4958 indicates, my dear,” said he, passing it over to Mrs. Andrews, “I think we must leave to the control to determine.”
She looked at it a moment in silence; then, a great thought splendidly striking her, she rose in some excitement.
“Henry, it is as plain as plain,” she said. “I am forty-nine; you are fifty-eight. Our ages are thus wonderfully conjoined. It certainly means that we must act together. Come and hold my pencil with me.”
“Well, that is very curious,” said Henry, and did as he was told.
At this point their experiments entered the second phase, and the pencil thus jointly held at once developed an intelligible activity. Instead of mere fever charts and numerals, it began to produce whole sentences which were true to the point of being positive truisms. Before they went to dinner that night, they were told, in a large, sprawling hand, that “Wisdom is more than wealth,” and that “Fearlessness is best,” and that “Hate blinds the eyes of Love.” The very next day more unimpeachable sentiments were poured forth, and at the end was written, “From Pocky.”