1. A small, light, walnut centre-table, which Mr. Garland himself had assisted in repairing before the proceedings began.
2. A silicon book-slate, eight inches by five inches. There were six pages—the insides of the covers and a double leaf. These leaves lay close and flat, like those of a book.
3. A few bits of slate-pencil, from one-quarter of an inch to three-eighths of an inch in length; also a longer slate-pencil used by the writer.
4. A small writing-pad and lead-pencil, for general memoranda and notations.
5. Certain fruits and flowers, such as roses, sweet-peas, pineapples, and grape-fruit. These met the psychic's needs or fancies, and were brought into close relation with pad or slate when the "forces" seemed inclined to weaken.
6. The piano.
Shortly after the opening of the Friday-morning sitting the Composer requested that the whole slate be ruled with staves for writing music. Throughout the preceding Wednesday and Thursday attempts at the writing of music had been of constant occurrence; they had come on slates, on writing-pads, and on the leaves of closed books. These bits of musical notation had been very fragmentary and obscure; often they had consisted of less than half a dozen notes placed upon staves consisting of but three or four lines, instead of five. The most successful of these earlier efforts had been produced on a double school-slate, with a wooden, list-bound frame: two measures on a treble staff had been sprinkled with vague indications of musical script. No attempts had yet been made to bring even the best of these various writings to order and intelligibility. We were soon to learn that a scrap of music set down within three or four minutes was to require as many hours for revision, emendation, elucidation—for editing, in brief. It is but fair, however, to state that some of this time was taken up by the registering of irrelevant messages from other quarters and by digressions toward the Composer's own private concerns.
The staff drawn on the wooden-framed slate had been ruled crosswise. The Composer now directed that the new staves to be drawn on the silicon slate should run lengthwise and should cover every page of it. This was done by the editor. Provision was asked for seven measures, to which an eighth was added later.
During the three minutes or so required for writing on the six pages of the slate, the position of the slate, in reference to the editor, was as follows: After considerable moving about beneath the top of the table, during which time it was principally in the hands of the psychic, it approached the writer and remained with him. The under cover of the slate (with a bit of slate-pencil tightly enclosed) rested on his knee; the upper cover was pressed against the frame of the table. The editor's thumb rested rather lightly on the middle of the nearer half of the upper cover, and his fingers assisted in supporting the nearer half of the under cover. The psychic herself had surrendered the control of the slate to the editor, and could have had no contact with it beyond touching the edge farthest from him. On the second day, Saturday, during which the bass for the last four measures was produced, the slate was in the exclusive control of the editor, the psychic not touching it at all. The progress of the musical writing was both felt and heard; it was a combination of light and rapid scratching, pecking, and twitching, with an occasional slight waving motion up and down.