I halted the pencil, supposing that he had intended to write either Boy or Brother, and that there had been a mistake in transmission.
Lois glanced at the sheet, and ejaculated: “Buddie!”
“That’s the name I’ve been waiting for!” her father exclaimed.
The pencil then went on, completing the name as if no interruption had occurred: “... die, or give up other things, or quit.”
Afterward, when it had been explained that certain members of the family had called Frederick Buddie, Bud, or Buzz, variations of Lois’s baby attempts at Brother, he added: “I’ve been trying to get that through, but the Missourian held me to known names.”
At first, names came to me with little difficulty, but latterly—possibly beginning with the Annie Manning episode—I have been generally unable to transmit them. Some one asked Frederick the reason for this.
“Because names are specific,” he said. “She knows my name. She knew I had a special name, besides. But while an idea expressed in familiar words can be transmitted, however unfamiliar the idea, the definite and specific spelling of an unfamiliar name is very difficult to get through, especially if the messenger is a little nervous about it, or constantly alert for possible mistakes. We can sometimes get it through, as I did this, in a rush of other stuff.”
[A few days later, when I was very tired, receiving with difficulty, and therefore questioning every statement made through the pencil, Mary K. said: “You are the most mentally ... el ... elas ... el ... elastic is not the word. Means elastic and masterful ... impregnable messenger I ever tried to work through.... That is the reason names are almost impossible to send through you. You try to get them, but the almost invincible character of your mental resistance to deception makes it difficult for us to penetrate where a doubt exists in your mind. A name is specific to the highest degree, and resistance, however unconscious and unrecognized, prevents its free transmission.”]
“You will come again, won’t you?” Frederick asked, as the hour of my departure approached. “I have had a bully time talking to the family, and I can do better work now, because they are all happier, and all with me in conscious purpose. It’s true that every bit of conscious co-operation with us helps us, as well as you. So that ‘One for myself and two for the Boy’ is not bunk, Dad. It’s the real thing, for both of us.”
With a final brief message to every member of the group, the last of these L—— interviews closed.[10]