"'Who's Rogets? [Phinuit tries to spell the real name.] (Spell that again.) [At the first attempt afterwards Phinuit leaves out a letter, then spells it correctly.] Rogers.... Rogers has got a book of mine. (What is he going to do with it?)'
"[Both Hart and G. P. knew Rogers, who at that time had a certain MS. book of G. P. in his possession. The book was found after G. P.'s death and given to Rogers to be edited. G. P. had promised during his lifetime that a particular disposition should be made of this book after his death. This action ... was here, and in subsequent utterances which from their private nature I cannot quote, enjoined emphatically and repeatedly, and had it been at once carried out, as desired by G. P., much subsequent unhappiness and confusion might have been avoided.]
"During the latter part of the sitting, and without any relevance to the remarks immediately before and after, which were quite clear as expressions from G. P. came the words, 'Who's James? Will—William.' [It must be remembered that Phinuit was reporting G. P. throughout.] This was apparently explained by Phinuit's further remarks at the close of the sitting.
"Phinuit: 'Who's Alice? (What do you want me to say to her?) [To R. H.] Alice in spirit. Alice in spirit says it's all over now and tell Alice in the body all is well. Tell Will I'll explain things later on. He [George] calls Alice, too, in the body. I want her to know me, too, Alice and Katharine.... He won't go till you say good-by. [The hand then wrote: George Pelham. Good day (?) John.] ...'
"[Alice James, the sister of Professor William James, had recently died in England. The first name of Mrs. James is also Alice. Alice, the sister of Katharine, is the youngest daughter of Mr. Howard and was very fond of G. P.]
"As I have already said, the most personal references made at the sitting cannot be quoted; they were regarded by J. H. as profoundly characteristic of Pelham.
This was followed by the most remarkable experiences of the kind that ever occurred before Hodgson himself passed over to the majority and was ostensibly manifested to his surviving friends through Mrs. Piper and other mediums. G. P. sent for his friends the Howards (pseudonym) with whom he had been a housemate in Boston, for his parents, and for other friends. All of these came, very skeptical regarding the genuineness of the manifestations, but Mr. Howard—an eminent scholar of wide experience of the world, became convinced that he was in converse with the postcarnate intelligence of his old friend; the majority of the relatives, who were of a more orthodox habit than Mr. Howard, were brought at least to a condition of agnosticism on the subject, and the arch-critic Hodgson who had exposed more "spiritualistic" frauds than all other men put together, was turned into a militant spiritualist. G. P. was asked.
"(Can't you tell us something he or your mother has done?) 'I saw her brush my clothes and put them away. I was by her side as she did it. I saw her take my sleeve buttons from a small box and give them to my father. I saw him send them to John Hart. I saw her putting papers, etc., into a tin box.'
"The incident of the 'studs' was mentioned at the sitting of Hart. G. P.'s clothes were brushed and put away, as Mrs. Pelham wrote, not by herself, but by 'the man who had valeted George.'"
This incident is used by Mrs. Sidgwick in Pr. XV, 31, in support of the thesis that a medium's communications are influenced by education and social habits. I am disposed entirely to endorse this. The communications seem to me to come from a blending of the control, the medium, and the sitter. Perhaps this utterance will seem less Delphic as we go on.
The following (Pr. XIII, 416f.) does not seem much like telepathy.
"Mrs. Piper [on coming out of the trance. Ed.]: 'There is the man with the beard' [whom she saw in the trance. Ed.] Mrs. Piper then described what she thought was a dream. 'I saw a bright light and a face in it, a gentleman with a beard on his face, and he had a very high forehead and he was writing.' R. H.: 'Would you know it again if you saw it?' Mrs. Piper: 'Oh, yes. I would know it, I think.' R. H.: 'Well, try and recall it....'
Within twenty-four hours of this experience, or some other reported elsewhere, the dream recollection had, like dream recollections generally, faded away: she could not recognize the photograph. We can talk about telopsis here, if we want to, but telopsis of what? Of that photograph? Nonsense! And as strange as anything else about it, is that there is nothing strange about it. In my own dreams I see any number of people I never saw before, just as plainly as I see any number on the street, and if photographs were handed me, as those were to Mrs. Piper, immediately on awaking, I could identify them. This identification is nothing out of the ordinary course of nature, only the wit to see that it is, has but just come.
But with any sitter, Mrs. Piper may have had telepathically just as definite an idea as the sitter has, or she may always have been telepathically impressed in her dream by the post-carnate man himself. Each one of us will have to fumble to his own conviction, if he ever reaches one.
Hodgson continues (Pr. XIII, 321-2):