Phinuit and the Lodge family and their next-door neighbors, the Thompsons, got to be great friends. Phinuit had given them much good advice, professional and other, and had really been of considerable service to them, even if only through their imaginations.
At the end of their second series of sittings, Feb. 23, 1890, he said:
"Now, all you people come here. Good-by, Susie. Good-by, Ike. Good-by, Nelly. Now, all clear out and let me talk to Marie. (Long conversation of a paternal kind, with thoroughly sensible advice. Then O. L. returned.) Captain, it's not good-by, it's au revoir, and you shall hear of me when I've gone away.' O. L.: 'How can I?' P.: 'Oh, I will tell some gentleman a message and he will write it for me. You'll see.
"Au revoir, au revoir, &c."
Hodgson's inclination while writing his report, was to attribute the phenomena to telepathy from the sitter. This might account for a part of the knowledge which the medium displayed, but it did not account for knowledge which the sitter never had, but left such knowledge to be accounted for by the vastly less probable hypothesis of teloteropathy from absent persons, which begins to approach the improbability of spiritism itself. But after the medium's possession of the knowledge is accounted for, the main problem is yet to be approached. Knowledge of a particular circumstance is virtually the same in all minds possessing it. But after a medium, say Mrs. Piper, has obtained an item of knowledge from, let it be granted for argument's sake, the sitter's mind, what makes her emotional attitude regarding it not that of the sitter or of herself, but of some departed friend of the sitter? What makes her rejoice in it or regret it as this departed friend, alone among all intelligences, would? What makes the play of her mind regarding it—suggestion, response, appreciation or depreciation, comment and discussion of all kinds, just what would be that of the departed soul which professes to be speaking through her? And what makes all this occur with a fidelity to the character and situation worthy of the greatest dramatists? And how comes that average New England woman to display that supreme dramatic genius virtually every day for a generation? This is not telepathy or teloteropathy. When Hodgson wrote his first report, he and the researchers generally had not got as far as the questions raised by the dramatic features. But he closed with the following mysterious paragraph:
"The foregoing report is based upon sittings not later than 1891. Mrs. Piper has given some sittings very recently which materially strengthen the evidence for the existence of some faculty that goes beyond thought-transference from the sitters, and which certainly primâ facie appear to render some form of the 'spiritistic' hypothesis more plausible. I hope to discuss these among other results in a later article."
The occasion for this paragraph was made plain in his next report, issued in 1898, and published in Pr. S. P. R., Vol. XIII.
A young man alluded to in the S. P. R. reports as George Pelham, had died. He was a member of a very prominent English family, and on the distaff side, of an equally prominent family in New York. He had graduated at Harvard and spent some years as a housemate with the Howards (pseudonym) in Boston, though he died in New York, after some later years passed there. He was well known to the present writer, who finds the utterances of his alleged post-carnate self entirely in character. He was of a very philosophic bent, and no mean writer in both prose and verse. Psychical research was by no means his most prominent interest, or Hodgson his most intimate friend, though he had discussed the subject several times with Hodgson, and been introduced by him, under a pseudonym, for a single sitting with Mrs. Piper. For a month after G. P.'s death Hodgson's regular sittings with Mrs. Piper went on without there being any manifestation professing to come from G. P., when Mr. John Hart (pseudonym) who had been much more intimate with G. P. than Hodgson had, was sitting, in Hodgson's presence, with Mrs. Piper, and after Phinuit had announced a "George," an uncle of Mr. Hart, he went on, as Hodgson reports (Pr. XIII, 297f.):
"There is another George who wants to speak to you. How many Georges are there about you any way? [Hodgson continues. Ed.]
"The rest of the sitting, until almost the close, was occupied by statements from G. P., Phinuit acting as intermediary. George Pelham's real name was given in full, also the names, both Christian and surname, of several of his most intimate friends, including the name of the sitter. Moreover, incidents were referred to which were unknown to the sitter or myself. One of the pair of studs which J. H. was wearing was given to Phinuit [i. e. to the medium. Ed.].... '(Who gave them to me?) [Throughout these sittings, the sitters' remarks are in parentheses. Ed.] That's mine. Mother gave you that. (No.) Well, father then, father and mother together. You got those after I passed out. Mother took them. Gave them to father, and father gave them to you. I want you to keep them. I will them to you.' Mr. Hart notes: 'The studs were sent to me by Mr. Pelham as a remembrance of his son....
"James and Mary [Mr. and Mrs.] Howard [Pseudonyms. Ed.] were mentioned with strongly specific references, and in connection with Mrs. Howard came the name Katharine. 'Tell her, she'll know. I will solve the problems, Katharine.' Mr. Hart notes: 'George, when he had last stayed with [the Howards], had talked frequently with Katharine (a girl of fifteen years of age) upon such subjects as Time, Space, God, Eternity, and pointed out to her how unsatisfactory the commonly accepted solutions were. He added that some time he would solve the problems.' Mr. Hart added that he was entirely unaware of these circumstances. I was myself unaware of them, and was not at that time acquainted with the Howards.
No telepathy then. Phinuit continues: