IN a Table Sitting it is manifest that the hypothesis of unconscious muscular guidance must be pressed to extremes, as a normal explanation, when the communications are within the knowledge of any of the people sitting at the table.

Many of the answers obtained were quite outside the knowledge of the medium or of Mrs. Kennedy, but many were inevitably known to us; and in so far as they were within our knowledge it might be supposed, even by ourselves, that we partially controlled the tilting, though of course we were careful to try not to do so. And besides, the things that came, or the form in which they came, were often quite unexpected, and could not consciously have been controlled by us. Moreover, when the sentence spelt out was a long one, we lost our way in it and could not tell whether it was sense or nonsense; for the words ran into each other. The note-taker, who puts each letter down as it is called out to him by the sitters at the table, has no difficulty in reading a message, although, with the words all run together, it hardly looks intelligible at first sight, even when written. For instance:—

BELESSWORRIEDALECPLEASEOLDCHAP,

which was one message, or:—

GATHEREDINMEDIUMANDTHATGOESINTOTABLEANDWEMANIPULATE,

which was part of another. Neither could be readily followed if called out slowly letter by letter.

Still, the family were naturally and properly sceptical about it all.

Accordingly, my sons devised certain questions in the nature of tests, referring to trivial matters which they thought would be within Raymond's recollection, but which had happened to them alone during summer excursions or the like, and so were quite outside my knowledge. They gave me a few written questions, devised in conclave in their own room; and on 12 October I took them to London with me in a sealed envelope, which I opened in the train when going up for a sitting; and after the sitting had begun I took an early opportunity of putting the questions it contained. We had already had (on 28 September, reported in last chapter) one incident of a kind unknown to us, in the name 'Norman,' but they wanted more of the same or of a still more marked kind. I think it will be well to copy the actual contemporary record of this part of the sitting in full:—

Second Table Sitting of O. J. L. and M. F. A. L. with
Mrs. Leonard, 12 October 1915, 5.30 p. m.

Present.—O. J. L., M. F. A. L., K. K., with Dr. Kennedy
as Recorder