"Twenty-three" was the answer.
This last, I felt sure, must be wrong. Miss Whiting had not mentioned any age, but it seemed to me unlikely that so young a woman should have been travelling round the country with two temperance lecturers.
When these answers were being given, Mrs Gray's son, the medium, asked if he might put one hand on my wrist to come into magnetic conditions with me.
I agreed to this, but said I should turn my eyes away from the alphabet, lest my muscles should give him any unconscious indications.
When I sent these answers to Mr Stead on returning to England, I wrote down Julia O. (ignoring the repetition of the O); and in connection with the other answers, told him, of course, of my previous conversation with Miss Whiting, which reduced the whole episode to one of possible Thought Transference.
In answering me he said: "I am glad Julia was able to give her name, even if it were Thought Transference; but, as a matter of fact, it is not her whole name which you received—she always signed her letters to me 'Julia O. O....'" This makes rather a good bit of evidence, seeing that the second O had been given, but discarded by Mrs Gray and myself as a repetition of the first letter of the surname!
To resume my experiences with Mr Knapton Thompson.
In the evening of this writing incident Mrs Gray had another public séance, at which I was again present, Mr Thompson sitting on one side of me.
After some "materialisations," for other members of the circle had appeared, Mrs Gray announced that Stead's "Julia" was present in the cabinet, and wished to speak to me.
I went up at once, and the form came out and stood in very fair light from the gas-burners. She seized my hands with every appearance of delight and eagerness, and her grasp was strong and tense. It is my peculiarity always to notice hands very accurately. They always seem to me to indicate character very closely; and apart from this, I am attracted by people who have well-shaped hands (not necessarily small ones), and find it very difficult to ignore clumsy or ugly fingers, which, unfortunately, never escape my notice.