I remember perfectly well having asked Mr and Mrs Harrington to come to tea with me one afternoon to meet my eccentric landlady, and I also remember his having a long talk with her whilst his wife and I were immersed in our own conversation. But I heard no details of this talk. He had merely said how much interested he had been in meeting Mrs Peters, and that she evidently had some mediumistic power.
It was certainly curious that the watch should have been mentioned, first in Sussex Gardens, London, and six years later in Arlington Heights, Boston, and that on each occasion the same wish with regard to it should have been expressed!
During this Arlington Heights sitting (the second one), Mr Moses also referred to an MS., of which I knew nothing at the time. This allusion also was verified by his other executor, the late Mr Alaric Watts, upon my return to England.
During this visit to America I also came across a Mr Knapton Thompson, a hard-headed Yorkshire man, who had invented a new kind of smokeless combustion stove, which must have been a good one, for our shrewd American cousins were employing him to put up these stoves in several public buildings, including the Smithsonian Institute in Washington.
Mr Thompson combined psychic proclivities with his smokeless invention, and had become greatly interested in the New York medium, Mrs Stoddart Gray, who has been already mentioned in connection with my own investigations, twelve years previous to my present visit. He had written to tell Mr Stead of his experiences, which included several in which the Julia of "Julia's Letters" had purported to be present.
Mr Stead had turned this gentleman over to me by giving me an introduction, accompanied by the request that "I should see the man and report what I thought about him and his wonderful experiences."
So I asked Mr Thompson to call upon me, and arranged to be present with him next day (Saturday) at Mrs Stoddart Gray's circle.
I found that he had taken up his abode with the medium and her son during his short stays in New York, with the openly expressed intention of finding out if there were any trickery behind the scenes. He had, however, convinced himself of her bonâ fides, and was deeply interested in the interviews he was able to obtain by means of these mediums, with a daughter he had lost some years previously. He was much pleased to find that I knew Mrs Gray already and could also testify to some very remarkable phenomena occurring to me at her house.
So I met him there next afternoon, with every expectation of a good sitting. These hopes, however, were entirely destroyed owing to the presence of a noisy, vulgar man, whom they called the "Whisky King." He made the most inane remarks, cracked stupid jokes, antagonised every respectable person in the room, I should suppose; and as all this took place without a word of protest from the lady of the house, one can only conclude that she considered it worth her while to endure his vulgarities.