The ostensible reason for my presence at Arlington Heights was the idea entertained by the "controls" that, having known Mr Stainton Moses in earth life, I might be able to facilitate his communications. I hope this may have been the case, but if so, it was certainly not due to any power of Thought Transference I may have possessed.
Again and again I asked for names of friends we had known in common, but nearly always in vain. Even when, in despair of getting these normally, I concentrated my mind consciously on some short and easy name, the latter was not given.
Yet next day some of these names would appear spontaneously on the script, when my mind was entirely occupied by other subjects.
References were made to Mr Moses' lack of appreciation for music, and he asked whether our mutual friend Mrs Stratton still played Liszt. He also referred to his visiting the Strattons, and finding them playing duets together, in London.
On my return to town Mrs Stratton fully endorsed the fact that Mr Moses disliked music (this was unknown to me), but she denied emphatically that she and her husband ever played duets in his presence. Mr Stratton, however, corrected this impression, and reminded her of several occasions when Mr Moses had come to them from University College, found them at the piano, and being on very intimate terms, had begged they would finish the passage or movement; and on one or two occasions this had been done.
These slight but evidential incidents, forgotten by Mrs Stratton herself, and unknown to me, were conveyed quite correctly in the automatic script through Mrs Piper—three thousand miles across the Atlantic—and nearly six years after the death of Mr Stainton Moses.
The most convincing test upon these occasions, however, was the reference to a Mrs Lane—the lady to whom Mr Moses had been engaged when he passed away.
Very few of his friends knew of this engagement, even in England. Dr Hodgson, who had never met Stainton Moses in earth life, had naturally not heard of it. It was only by chance that I knew anything of the matter, and this merely through once meeting the lady at Mrs Stratton's house some time after Mr Moses had died. On that occasion Mrs Lane had a young daughter with her; I knew nothing of any other members of the family.
During my second visit to Mrs Piper I mentioned meeting this lady—already a dim memory with me—and the "control" at once asked if I had met a sister also.
I answered "No," remarking that a young daughter had been with her.