"Did Julia ever tell you that she had appeared to me in New York?"
In answering my letter he replied—also in a P. S.:
"By-the-by, to answer your last query—yes. Julia told me weeks ago that she had appeared to you in New York, but that she could not give you her age on that occasion, because she was not accustomed to speaking through the embodiment."
Now in sending the list of questions and answers to Mr Stead I had merely marked against the answer as to her age, "twenty-three," that doubtless it was an error, but I had never hinted to him that I had asked her to correct the error in New York, or that she had been unable to speak on that occasion.
This again was a good bit of independent evidence.
I will now give a description of Mr Knapton Thompson's interview with his daughter, on the same evening that Julia appeared to me. I have already said that the magnet which drew Mr Thompson to these séances was the opportunity given to him of meeting and talking to a daughter who had passed away some years previously.
On this special evening the daughter materialised as usual, and came out from the cabinet. As Mr Thompson was sitting next to me at the time, I could distinctly hear Mrs Gray whisper to him:
"Would you not like to take your daughter into the other room, Mr Thompson? It is rather crowded here to-night. You would be quieter in there."
Mr Thompson got up at once, and greeted the materialised form, and they disappeared through the folding doors to the reception-room. Other matters of interest were occurring, and I had quite forgotten the absence of Mr Thompson in the dimly lighted room (in those days the light was always dim at first), until I found he was again occupying the seat next to my own. I had not noticed his return, and asked him at once 'what he had done with his daughter.' A good half hour must have elapsed between his disappearance and return. He said, quite simply and as a matter of course: "Oh, she did not care to come back into this crowded room. We had half-an-hour's chat, and then she de-materialised in the other room, and I returned alone."
I can only repeat that Mr Knapton Thompson was a shrewd, practical Yorkshireman, and a very successful man of business, as was proved by the orders he received in America for the stoves he had invented.