The next day but one after my arrival, and quite early in the morning, Dr Hodgson came to call upon me.
It was my first sight of that genial and delightful personality. At the very moment of shaking hands, he said cheerily, and with a look of half-rueful amusement at his own discomfiture:
"Well, you've got to come! They insist upon it, so there is nothing more to be said."
My preconceived ideas of a critical, elderly, and white-haired professor, taking himself very seriously, were dissipated on the spot; and this was the beginning of a sincere and loyal friendship between us which lasted for nine years on this sphere, and will last, I trust and believe, through whatever forms of existence may succeed to this one.
We made arrangements at once for my joining Dr Hodgson next morning at Arlington Heights, where my first sitting with Mrs Piper took place, and where I met for the first time this refined and interesting-looking woman.
I was told that with the advent of the Imperator and Stainton Moses' controls, the character of Mrs Piper's mediumship had undergone a complete change. The former communications through the voice ceased, and gave place to automatic writing, except at the moment of return to the physical body, when a chance sentence or two might be uttered during the transition period, but that these were not always intelligible to the listener.
Mrs Piper's arm and hand became curiously "dead" and limp when unconsciousness set in; the blood departed, leaving it as white and helpless as that of a corpse. By degrees this dead look disappeared. The blood flowed once more through the veins, and as I noticed this change, the hand moved gropingly towards the pencil held out by Dr Hodgson, and finally grasped it. The latter's long practice and infinite patience were invaluable in making out the often rather illegible script. The hospitality he gave to all attempts at definite communications, however vague and shadowy at first; the infinite patience with which he repeated again and again a question not fully comprehended—all this, combined with intelligent criticism, alert, dispassionate judgment and balance of mind, made an investigator of psychic phenomena very rarely to be met in a world where most of us evince in a marked degree "les défauts de nos qualités."
To combine sympathy, patience, and receptivity with cool and critical judgment is well-nigh impossible for ordinary men and women.
Dr Richard Hodgson certainly solved the problem to a very remarkable extent.
The first thing that struck me in the two sittings I had with Mrs Piper, was the hopeless breakdown of the Thought Transference Theory, as accounting for the automatic writing.