“Last night I paced up and down the room for twenty minutes with the great Sesostris—it was his wish to talk with me, the medium, a wonderful woman, ascertained.”
“How did Sesostris look?”
“Majestical! He was dressed all in white; though not so tall as I, he has a noble bearing.”
“What did he say?”
Little that was new, it appeared, though the old gentleman repeated the conversation, as well as those of Plato and Socrates, with whom he often talked. While he rambled on, the attendant, a fat perspiring man, was visibly embarrassed—he too wished to talk about America. As we took our leave he found his chance.
“Behold, this came from San Francisco,” he pointed to a hideous porcelain medallion, with a photograph of a man and a woman, hanging from his buttonhole, “a portrait of my son and his wife, non c’è male?”
“The Signori will return?” said the old man, hovering between us and his big book. “They will let me be of some service to them?”
We would gladly have returned, our new friend is one of the most learned archeologists in Sicily; but, alas, he would only speak of materializations and controls—his book was full of the gross impostures we used to hear about years ago, before the high-grade mediums of these later days and their dupes came to the fore.
“Think of the things he could have told us!” groaned Patsy. “What a wasted opportunity!”
Not far from the Museum we passed a flaring placard with the words: