“Joy.... Don’t fail to make her believe.” I reminded him that this was his responsibility, and he added, “You and I.”
A question of which there is no record drew this reply: “Yes, busy every minute.... Work is so interesting.... I love you just the same.... Go home when I can.... Tell Dad I am with him ... helping all I can ... I am so glad you came.... I was afraid you would not.... Go home in peace, Mother dearest. I am alive and happy and busy and well.”
She said it was like him to sum it all up that way.
“Of course it is like me. It is ‘me.’”
Some personal comment concerning members of the family followed, in the midst of which Annie Manning interrupted with her invariable, “Tell Manning.” Asked if she had any connection with the Gaylord family, she said, “No, good-by,” and Frederick resumed his sentence where it had been broken off.
Throughout this and subsequent interviews Mrs. Gaylord and I kept up a running conversation, impossible to reproduce here—my hand still resting on planchette—to which Frederick frequently contributed a remark, precisely as if he had been present in the flesh. Again, he would break a pause by addressing some characteristic statement or appeal to his mother, sometimes, she told me afterward, answering her unspoken thought.
Over and over he begged her to say that she was convinced of his presence and identity, and at last she gave him this assurance.
“Oh, thank God!” He made strong circles, before running up to a clear space some inches above, to add, “Tell Dad.”
For the first time, a possible explanation of his inexorable refusal to give me a message for his father occurred to me, and when I asked, he said, “Yes, I want to reach them through her.”
He told her not to think of him as he had been during the months of his last illness, saying: “Forget all that. It is over, and I am well and strong, and happier than ever—now.” When we wondered whether it had distressed him to be unable to communicate with his family, he said, “Yes, I needed that.”