“Charlie: ‘What are you laughing at?’ Home: ‘We are thinking that if a policeman had been passing and had looked up and seen a man turning round and round along the wall in the air he would have been much astonished. Adare, shut the window in the next room.’
“I got up, shut the window, and in coming back remarked that the window was not raised a foot, and that I could not think how he had managed to squeeze through.
“OUT, HEAD FIRST
“He arose and said ‘Come and see.’ I went with him; he told me to open the window as it was before, I did so; he told me to stand a little distance off; he then went through the open space, head first, quite rapidly, his body being nearly horizontal and apparently rigid. He came in again, feet foremost, and we returned to the other room.
“It was so dark I could not see clearly how he was supported outside. He did not appear to grasp, or rest upon, the balustrade, but rather to be swung out and in.”
“Such are the facts as narrated at the time. I make no comment except this. Rigorously speaking, it is incorrect to say, as I think has been said, that we saw Mr. Home wafted from one window to the other.
“As to whether he was or was not, I am concerned only to state the facts as observed at the time, not to make deductions from them.”
In view of this publication, it is quite natural to infer that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was cognizant of it at the time of its appearance, because of his controversy with Mr. Joseph McCabe, on that subject; therefore, it is difficult to reconcile that thought with the fact of Sir Arthur’s unmitigated praise and endorsement of a man such as all adduced evidence has branded a charlatan.
D
Luther R. Marsh and the Huylers
In 1903, Luther R. Marsh again fell into the hands of charlatans as Mr. Isaac K. Funk tells in his book “The Widow’s Mite and Other Psychic Phenomena.” A court set aside the assignment of several insurance policies which Marsh had made to a medium known as Mrs. Huyler. Mr. Funk tells the story as follows: