It wasn’t long in the course of eventualities before I was ordained by the Spirit Psychic Truth Society, and elected secretary of the union, and gettin’ my percentages from test and trance meetin’s at Pythian Hall. I was popular with the professionals, which pays, because mediums as a class is a little nervous, and—not to speak slanderous of a profession that contains some of the most gifted scientists—a set of knockers.
Only I wasn’t satisfied. I was ambitious in them days, and I wanted to make my debut in materialisin’, which takes a hall of your own and a apparatus and a special circle for the front row, but pays heavy on the investment. Try every way I could, with developin’ circles and private readin’s and palms extra, I could never amass the funds for one first-class spirit and a cabinet, which ought to be enough to start on. Then one night—it was a grand psychic reunion and reception to our visitin’ brothers from Portland—She come to the circle.
Our publication—I united with my other functionaries that of assistant editor of Unseen Hands—stigmatised it afterward as the grandest demonstration of hidden forces ever seen on this hemisphere. It was the climax to my career. I was communicatin’ beautiful, and fortune favoured my endeavours. When I pumped ’em, they let me see that which they had concealed, and when I guessed I guessed with amazin’ accuracy. I told a Swede all about his sweetheart on the other plane, and the colour of her hair, and how happy she was, and how it was comin’ out all right, and hazarded that her name was Tina, and guessed right the first trial. I recollect I was tellin’ him he was a physie, and didn’t he sometimes feel a influence he couldn’t account for, and hadn’t he ever tried to establish communication with them on the spirit plane, and all he needed was a few developin’ sittin’s—doin’ it neat an’ professional, you know, and all of the other mediums on the platform acquiescin’—when a woman spoke up from the back of the room. That was the first time that ever I seen her.
She was a middle-sized, fairish sort of a woman, in mournin’, which I hadn’t comprehended, or I’d ’a’ found the article that she sent up for me to test her influence, long before. As soon as she spoke, I knew she’d come to be comforted. She was a tidy sort of a woman, and her eyes was dark, sort of between a brown and a black. Her shape was nice and neat, and she had a straightish sort of a nose, with a curve into it. She was dead easy. I seen that she had rings on her fingers and was dressed real tasty, and right there it come to me, just like my control sent it, that a way was openin’ for me to get my cabinet and a stock of spirits.
“Will you please read my article?” she says. Bein’ against the æsthetics of the profession to let a party guide you like that, Mrs. Schreiber, the Egyptian astral medium, was for rebukin’ her. I superposed, because I seen my cabinet growin’.
“I was strongly drawed to the token in question,” I says, and then Mrs. Schreiber, who was there to watch who sent up what, motioned me to a locket on the table.
“When I come into the room, I seen this party with a sweet influence hoverin’ over her. Ain’t it a little child?” Because by that time I had her sized up.
I seen her eyes jump the way they always do when you’re guided right, and I knowed I’d touched the achin’ spot. While I was tellin’ her about my control and the beautiful light that was hoverin’ over her, I palmed and opened the locket. I got the picture out—they’re all alike, them lockets—and behind it was a curl of gold hair and the name “Lillian.” I got the locket back on the table, and the spirits guided me to it for her test. When I told her that the spirit callin’ for her was happy in that brighter sphere and sent her a kiss, and had golden hair, and was called “Lillian” in the flesh plane, she was more overcame than I ever seen a party at a seance. I told her she was a medium. I could tell it by the beautiful dreams she had sometimes.
Right here, Mrs. Schreiber shook her head, indicatin’ that I was travellin’ in a dangerous direction. Developin’ sittin’s is saved for parties when you can’t approach ’em on the departed dear ones. In cases like the one under consideration, the most logical course, you comprehend, is to give private test sittin’s. But I knowed what I was doin’. I told her I could feel a marvellous power radiate from her, and her beautiful dreams was convincin’ proof. She expressed a partiality to be developed.
When I got her alone in the sittin’, holdin’ her hand and gettin’ her to concentrate on my eyes, she made manifest her inmost thoughts. She was a widow runnin’ a lodgin’-house. Makin’ a inference from her remarks, I seen that she hadn’t no money laid by, but only what she earned from her boarders. The instalment plan was better than nothin’. She seized on the idea that I could bring Lillian back if I had proper conditions to work with. In four busy weeks, I was enabled by her magnanimity to open a materialisin’ circle of my own, with a cabinet and a self-playin’ guitar and four good spirit forms. I procured the cabinet second-hand, which was better, because the joints worked easier, and I sent for the spirits all the way to a Chicago dealer to get the best. They had luminous forms and non-duplicated faces, that convinced even the most sceptical. The firm very liberally throwed in a slate trick for dark cabinets and the Fox Sisters’ rappin’ table.