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Dr. X. writes:—“Mr. Stephens was anxious not to leave his wife alone in Paris, during his absence, and knowing that Professor Richet intended making a long series of experiments with Dr. Maxwell at W., he decided, for diverse reasons, to send his wife to the same locality. Thus it came about that Mrs. Stephens was invited by Professor Richet to join the investigating circle, a circle which it had been intended should be strictly limited to Dr. Maxwell, Professor Richet, the medium [M. Meurice] and myself. No one, save Professor Richet, knew of the foregoing details.
“When Mrs. Stephens arrived—her husband came with her, but only remained a couple of days—we saw a tall, slight, fair woman of twenty-two or twenty-three years of age,—a quiet, gentle, refined-looking woman. As she was, curiously enough, a spiritist, and even possessed ‘intuitive’ faculties of a pretty marked character,—she had had several veridical hallucinations, and occasionally indulged in spectrum gazing with fair results—her addition to the circle was looked upon by the other three members as having been decided by Professor Richet, because of her nascent psychical powers. No suspicion of her situation—of which even Mrs. Stephens herself was as yet uncertain—ever dawned across our minds. She was an early riser, a good walker, and apparently enjoyed the best of health. The most practical medical eye could have detected nothing abnormal in her health.
“Very much had been expected from this particular series of experiments; but, for reasons which are beyond our comprehension, comparatively little was received. There was every evidence of abundant force, and the medium was, at times, almost unnerved by our systematic lack of success.
“Throughout the whole of this particular series, more than ever did the agency manipulating the energy act like an independent intelligence, giving striking evidence of power when it cared to do so and, when not disposed to communicate, shutting off all communication most decidedly and completely.”
We propose setting forth succinctly, but in detail, the results, both mediocre and superior—and just as they occurred—of these few weeks of experimentation, leaving it to the reader to bestow an acute analysis upon them in his own guise. It was only as the time allotted this series drew to a close, that the phenomena took a personal turn, and bore so directly, and so intimately, upon Mrs. Stephens’s life.
The notes which are quoted in this series by Dr. X. are, without exception, Professor Richet’s.
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First Seance. Time 8 to 10.30 p.m.