It was the more curious, that our first séance in New York, within a few days of our arrival, and in a metropolis where at the time we were absolute strangers, should have been so much more successful as regards evidential experiences.
I will again quote from my diary of 1886. The medium visited on this occasion was Mrs Cadwell, who has since died.
We knew nothing beforehand of the medium, who lived in a small flat in an unfashionable quarter. Some eight people only were assembled in the extremely small room. All were perfect strangers to Miss Greenlow and me, but a fancied likeness in one lady present to a picture I had seen of Mrs Beecher Stowe led me to ask if it were she, and I was told that my surmise was correct.
There was no room for a cabinet, so a curtain was hung across a tiny alcove, just the ordinary "arch" found in most rooms of the kind.
When I went behind the curtain with the female medium, before the sitting began, there was barely space for us both to turn round in. The carpet on either side the curtain was one piece. There was absolutely no room for any trap-door machinery, even could such have been worked successfully in the perfect silence in which we sat, within two feet of the alcove. The room was about the size of the small back dining-room in an ordinary London lodging—say in Oxford or Cambridge Terrace, for example.
The medium sat amongst us at first, only going behind the curtain after a few moments, when she was "under control" as it is called.
A little child of hers, who died some years ago at the age of four, is supposed to help in the materialisations, but is never seen outside the curtains. If she came out herself she would not be able to help the others to do so. I mention these things in the words in which they were told to me, offering no comment, but putting the case for the moment as spiritualists would put it. To do this, and then to give a faithful and unprejudiced account of what took place, seems to me the only fair way of treating such a subject.
I was told again and again that too much concentration of thought on the part of the audience was deterrent. This accounts for music as an invariable accompaniment of all such sittings. It seems to harmonise the circle, to break up over-concentration, and may also, unfortunately, serve to cover the doings of dishonest mediums.
It must not, however, be supposed that in this case the materialisations went on only whilst we were singing. This might point to a possible "trap-door theory," although in a city where flats abound (rooms, not human beings!) there would still be the difficulty of getting your downstairs neighbours to look kindly upon such proceedings. As a matter of fact, we were often sitting in absolute silence when fresh "spirits" appeared.