[“Yes,” was the reply through the pencil. “R—— saw. I manifested physical attributes for a minute. I have no hands, but I can imagine them and project them in your minds, occasionally.”
[No one else saw the hand, and at no other time in my experience has anything of this kind occurred.]
I asked Mary Kendal whether they preferred planchette or pencil, and she said, “It is easier for us this way.” Therefore, except on one memorable occasion, all later writing has been done with a pencil.
For the information of persons interested in physical details, it may be explained that I generally use a long pencil, which is held erect, almost at right angles to the paper, the fingers clasping it lightly two or three inches from its point, the hand and arm entirely unsupported. In the very rapid writing that has sometimes been done, and occasionally in moments of great eagerness or emotion, the force propelling the pencil—which seems to be applied sometimes above, sometimes below my hand—has forced it to a sharply acute angle in relation to the surface of the paper. From the first, I have used right and left hands alternately, and the writing, with exceptions so few as to be negligible, has been done in rather large script on wall-paper, many rolls of which have been covered.
One of the exceptions to the use of wall-paper was this first experiment with a pencil, when loose sheets of letter-paper were used, and as many of them were missing when I tried to assemble them the next day, much of this interview has been lost.
“Frederick, shall we ever have our holidays again?” Mrs. Gaylord asked, in the evening.
“Just as many holidays as you will take,” he replied. “I am always there on high days and holidays. Why leave me out?” This was the first time he made an interrogation point. It was traced slowly and with great precision, as if to emphasize his inquiry.
His mother then explained to us that the celebration of certain festivals, which had always been days of family reunion, notably Christmas and Easter, had been impossible to them since his death. Shortly afterward he expanded this theme.
That night Mrs. Gaylord telegraphed to her husband that she had received messages for him and for the family. She said, as other members of the family have said since, that there was in everything Frederick had written a familiar and convincing sense of his personality, a quality which we were unable to recognize, never having known him.
The next day he announced, buoyantly: “Mother dearest, I am here. Thank you for wiring Dad. Made him happier.”