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THE
SHADOW WORLD

BY

HAMLIN GARLAND

AUTHOR OF
"THE CAPTAIN OF THE GRAY-HORSE TROOP"
"MONEY MAGIC" ETC.

NEW YORK AND LONDON

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

MCMVIII

Copyright, 1908, by Hamlin Garland.
Copyright, 1908, by The Ridgway Company.
All rights reserved.
Published September, 1908.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

This book is a faithful record, so far as I can make it, of the most marvellous phenomena which have come under my observation during the last sixteen or seventeen years. I have used my notes (made immediately after the sittings) and also my reports to the American Psychical Society (of which I was at one time a director) as the basis of my story. For literary purposes I have substituted fictitious names for real names, and imaginary characters for the actual individuals concerned; but I have not allowed these necessary expedients to interfere with the precise truth of the account.

For example, Miller, an imaginary chemist, has been put in the place of a scientist much older than thirty-five, in whose library the inexplicable "third sitting" took place. Fowler, also, is not intended to depict an individual. The man in whose shoes he stands is one of the most widely read and deeply experienced spiritists I have ever known, and I have sincerely tried to present through Fowler the argument which his prototype might have used. Mrs. Quigg, Miss Brush, Howard, the Camerons, and most of the others, are purely imaginary. The places in which the sittings took place are not indicated, for the reason that I do not wish to involve any unwilling witnesses.

In the case of the psychics, they are, of course, delineated exactly as they appeared to me, although I have concealed their real names and places of residence. Mrs. Smiley, whose admirable patience under investigation makes her an almost ideal subject, is the chief figure among my "mediums," and I have tried to give her attitude toward us and toward her faith as she expressed it in our sittings, although the conversation is necessarily a mixture of imagination and memory. Mrs. Hartley is a very real and vigorous character—a professional psychic, it is true, but a woman of intelligence and power. Those in private life I have guarded with scrupulous care, and I am sure that none of them, either private or professional, will feel that I have wilfully misrepresented what took place. My aim throughout has been to deal directly and simply with the facts involved.

I have not attempted to be profound or mystical or even scientific, but I have tried to present clearly, simply, and as nearly without bias as possible, an account of what I have seen and heard. The weight of evidence seems, at the moment, to be on the side of the biologists; but I am willing to reopen the case at any time, although I am, above all, a man of the open air, of the plains and the mountains, and do not intend to identify myself with any branch of metapsychical research. It is probable, therefore, that this is my one and final contribution to the study of the shadow world.

Hamlin Garland.

Chicago, July, 1908.

THE SHADOW WORLD

I

A hush fell over the dinner-table, and every ear was open and inclined as Cameron, the host, continued: "No, I wouldn't say that. There are some things that are pretty well established—telepathy, for instance."

"I don't believe even in telepathy," asserted Mrs. Quigg, a very positive journalist who sat at his right. "I think even that is mere coincidence."

Several voices rose in a chorus of protest. "Oh no! Telepathy is real. Why, I've had experiences—"

"There you go!" replied Mrs. Quigg, still in the heat of her opposition. "You will all tell the same story. Your friend was dying in Bombay or Vienna, and his spirit appeared to you, à la Journal of Psychic Research, with a message, at the exact hour, computing difference in time (which no one ever does), and so on. I know that kind of thing—but that isn't telepathy."

"What is telepathy, then?" asked little Miss Brush, who paints miniatures.

"I can't describe a thing that doesn't exist," replied Mrs. Quigg. "The word means feeling at a distance, does it not, professor?"

Harris, a teacher of English, who seldom took a serious view of anything, answered, "I should call it a long-distance touch."

"Do you believe in hypnotism, Dr. Miller?" asked Miss Brush, quietly addressing her neighbor, a young scientist whose specialty was chemistry.

"No," replied he; "I don't believe in a single one of these supernatural forces."

"You mean you don't believe in anything you have not seen yourself," said I.

To this Miller slowly replied: "I believe in Vienna, which I have never seen, but I don't believe in a Vienna doctor who claims to be able to hypnotize a man so that he can smile while his leg is being taken off."

"Oh, that's a fact," stated Brierly, the portrait-painter; "that happens every day in our hospitals here in New York City."

"Have you ever seen it done?" asked Miller, bristling with opposition.

"No."

"Well," asserted Miller, "I wouldn't believe it even if I saw the operation performed."

"You don't believe in any mystery unless it is familiar," said I, warming to the contest.

"I certainly do not believe in these childish mysteries," responded Miller, "and it is strange to me that men like Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir William Crookes should believe in slate-writing and levitation and all the rest of that hocus-pocus."

"Nevertheless, hypnotism is a fact," insisted Brierly. "You must have some faith in the big books on the subject filled with proof. Think of the tests—"

"I don't call it a test to stick pins into a person's tongue," said Mrs. Quigg. "We newspaper people all know that there are in the hypnotic business what they call 'horses'—that is to say, wretched men and boys, women sometimes, who have trained themselves so that they can hold hot pennies, eat red pepper, and do other 'stunts'—we've had their confessions times enough."

"Yes, but their confessions are never quite complete," retorted young Howard. "When I was in college I had one of these 'horses' appeal to me for help. He was out of a job, and I told him I'd blow him to the supper of his life if he would render up the secrets of his trade. He took my offer, but jarred me by confessing that the professor really could hypnotize him. He had to make believe only part of the time. His 'stunts' were mostly real."

"It's the same way with mediums," said I. "I have had a good deal of experience with them, and I've come to the conclusion that they all, even the most untrustworthy of them, start with at least some small basis of abnormal power. Is it not rather suggestive that the number of practising mediums does not materially increase? If it were a mere matter of deception, would there not be thousands at the trade? As a matter of fact, there are not fifty advertising mediums in New York at this moment, though of course the number is kept down by the feeling that it is a bit disreputable to have these powers."

"You're too easy on them," said Howard. "I never saw one that wasn't a cheap skate."

Again I protested. "Don't be hasty. There are nice ones. My own mother had this power in her youth, so my father tells me. Her people were living in Wisconsin at the time when this psychic force developed in her, and the settlers from many miles around came to see her 'perform.' An uncle, when a boy of four, did automatic writing, and one of my aunts recently wrote to me, in relation to my book The Tyranny of the Dark, that for two years (beginning when she was about seventeen) these powers of darkness made her life a hell. It won't do to be hasty in condemning the mediums wholesale. There are many decent people who are possessed by strange forces, but are shy of confessing their abnormalities. Ask your family physician. He will tell you that he always has at least one patient who is troubled by occult powers."

"Medical men call it 'hysteria,'" said Harris.

"Which doesn't explain anything," I answered. "Many apparently healthy people possess the more elementary of these powers—often without knowing it."

"We are all telepathic in some degree," declared Brierly.

"Perhaps all the so-called messages from the dead come from living minds," I suggested—"I mean the minds of those about us. Dr. Reed, a friend of mine, once arranged to go with a patient to have a test sitting with a very celebrated psychic who claimed to be able to read sealed letters. Just before the appointed day, Reed's patient died suddenly of heart-disease, leaving a sealed letter on his desk. The doctor, fully alive to the singular opportunity, put the letter in his pocket and hastened to the medium. The magician took it in his hand and pondered. At last he said: 'This was written by a man now in the spirit world. I cannot sense it. There isn't a medium in the world who can read it, but if you will send it to any person anywhere on the planet and have it read and resealed, I will tell you what is in it. I cannot get the words unless some mind in the earth-plane has absorbed them.'"

Harris spoke first. "That would seem to prove a sort of universal mind reservoir, wouldn't it?"

"That is the way my friend figured it. But isn't that a staggering hypothesis? I have never had a sealed letter read, but the psychic research people seem to have absolutely proved psychometry to be a fact. After you read Myers you are ready to believe anything—or nothing."

The hostess rose. "Suppose we go into the library and have more ghost stories. Come, Mr. Garland, we can't leave you men here to talk yourselves out on these interesting subjects. You must let us all hear what you have to say."

In more or less jocose mood the company trooped out to the library, where a fire was glowing in the grate and easy-chairs abounded. The younger people, bringing cushions, placed themselves beside the hearth, while I took a seat near Mrs. Cameron and Harris.

"There!" said Miss Brush, with a gurgle of delight. "This is more like the proper light and surroundings for creepy tales. Please go on, Mr. Garland. You said you'd had a good deal of experience—tell us all about it. I always think of you as a trailer, a man of the plains. How did you happen to get into this shadow world?"

"It came about while I was living in Boston. It was in 1891, or possibly 1892. A friend, the editor of the Arena, asked me to become a member of the American Psychical Society, which he was helping to form. He wished me to go on the Board of Directors, because, as he said, I was 'young, a keen observer, and without emotional bias'—by which he meant that I had not been bereaved."

"Quite right; the loss of a child or a wife weakens even the best of us illogical," commented Harris. "No man who is mourning a relative has any business to be calling himself an investigator of spiritualism."

"Well, the upshot was, I joined the society, became a member of the Executive Board, was made a special committee on 'physical phenomena'—that is to say, slate-writing, levitation, and the like—and set to work. It was like entering a new, vague, and mysterious world. The first case I investigated brought out one of the most fundamental of these facts, which is, that this shadow world lies very close to the sunny, so-called normal day. The secretary of the society had already begun to receive calls for help. A mechanic had written from South Boston asking us to see his wife's automatic writing, and a farmer had come down from Concord to tell us of a haunted house and the mysterious rappings on its walls. Almost in a day I was made aware of the illusory side of life."

"Why illusory?" asked Brierly.

"Let us call it that for the present," I answered. "Among those who wrote to us was a woman from Lowell whose daughter had developed strange powers. Her account, so straightforward and so precise, determined us to investigate the case. Therefore, our secretary (a young clergyman) and I took the train for Lowell one autumn afternoon. We found Mrs. Jones living in a small, old-fashioned frame house standing hard against the sidewalk, and through the parlor windows, while we awaited the psychic, I watched an endless line of derby hats as the town's mechanics plodded by—incessant reminders of the practical, hard-headed world that filled the street. This was, indeed, a typical case. In half an hour we were all sitting about the table in a dim light, while the sweet-voiced mother was talking with 'Charley,' her 'poltergeist'—"

"What is that, please?" asked Mrs. Quigg.

"The word means a rollicking spirit who throws things about. I did not value what happened at this sitting, for the conditions were all the psychic's own. By-the-way, she was a large, blond, strapping girl of twenty or so—one of the mill-hands—not in the least the sickly, morbid creature I had expected to see. As I say, the conditions were such as to make what took place of no scientific value, and I turned in no report upon it; but it was all very curious."

"What happened? Don't skip," bade Mrs. Cameron.

"Oh, the table rapped and heaved and slid about. A chair crawled to my lap and at last to the top of the table, apparently of its own motion. A little rocking-chair moved to and fro precisely as if some one were sitting in it, and so on. It was all unconvincing at the time, but as I look back upon it now, after years of experience, I am inclined to think part of it at least was genuine. And this brings me to say to Mrs. Quigg, and to any other doubter, that you have only to step aside into silence and shadow and wait for a moment—and the bewildering will happen, or you will imagine it to happen. I will agree to furnish from this company a medium that will astonish even our materialistic friend Miller."

There was a loud outcry: "What do you mean? Explain yourself!"

"I am perfectly certain that if this company will sit as I direct for twenty-one days at the same hour, in the same room, under the same conditions, phenomena will develop which will not merely amaze but scare some of you; and as for you, Mrs. Quigg, you who are so certain that nothing ever happens, you will be the first to turn pale with awe."

"Try me! I am wild to be 'shown.'"

Harris was not so boastful. "You mean, of course, that some of these highly cultured ladies would develop hysteria?"

"I am not naming the condition; I only say that I have seen some very hard-headed and self-contained people cut strange capers. The trance and 'impersonation' usually come first."

"Let's do it!" cried out Miss Brush. "It would be such fun!"

"You'd be the first to 'go off,'" said I, banteringly.

Harris agreed. "She is neuropathic."

"I propose we start a psychic society here and now," said Cameron. "I'll be president, Mrs. Quigg secretary, and Garland can be the director of the awful rites. Miss Brush, you shall be the 'mejum.'"

"Oh no, no!" she cried, "please let some one else be it."

This amused me, but I seized upon Cameron's notion. "I accept the arrangement provided you do not hold me responsible for any ill effects," I said. "It's ticklish business. There are many who hold the whole process diabolic."

"Is the house ready for the question?" asked Cameron.

"Ay, ay!" shouted every one present.

"The society is formed," announced Cameron. "As president, I suggest a sitting right now. How about it, Garland?"

"Certainly!" I answered, "for I have an itching in my thumbs that tells me something witching this way comes."

The guests rose in a flutter of pleased excitement.

"How do we go at it?" asked Mrs. Cameron.

"The first requisite is a small table—"

"Why a table?" asked Mrs. Quigg.

"The theory is that it helps to concentrate the minds of the sitters, and it will also furnish a convenient place to rest our hands. Anyhow, all the great investigators began this way," I replied, pacifically. "We may also require a pencil and a pad."

Miller was on his dignity. "I decline to sit at a table in that foolish way. I shall look on in lonely grandeur."

The others were eager to "sit in," as young Howard called it, and soon nine of us were seated about an oblong mahogany table. Brierly was very serious, Miss Brush ecstatic, and Mrs. Harris rather nervous.

I was careful to prepare them all for failure. "This is only a trial sitting, you know, merely to get our hands in," I warned.

"Must we keep still?"

"Oh no! You may talk, if you do so quietly. Please touch fingers, so as to make a complete circuit. I don't think it really necessary, but it sometimes helps to produce the proper mental state; singing softly also tends to harmonize the 'conditions,' as the professionals say. Don't argue and don't be too eager. Lean back and rest. Take a passive attitude toward the whole problem. I find the whole process very restful. Harris, will you turn down the lights before—"

"There!" said Miller, "the hocus-pocus begins. Why not perform in the light?"

"Subdued light will bring the proper negative and inward condition sooner," I replied, taking a malicious delight in his disgust. "Now will some one sing 'Annie Laurie,' or any other sweet, low song? Let us get into genial, receptive mood. Miller, you and your fellow-doubters please retire to the far end of the room."

In a voice that trembled a little, Mrs. Harris started the dear old melody, and all joined in, producing a soft and lulling chorus.

At the end of the song I asked, matter-of-factly: "Are the conditions right? Are we sitting right?"

Mrs. Quigg sharply queried, "Whom are you talking to?"

"The 'guides,'" I answered.

"The 'guides'!" she exclaimed. "Do you believe in the guides?"

"I believe in the belief of the guides," was my cryptic rejoinder. "Sing again, please."

I really had no faith in the conditions of the circle, but for the joke of it I kept my sitters in place for nearly an hour by dint of pretending to hear creakings and to feel throbbings, until at last little Miss Brush became very deeply concerned. "I feel them, too," she declared. "Did some one blow on my hands? I felt a cold wave."

Harris got up abruptly. "I'll join the doubters," said he. "This tomfoolery is too idiotic for me."

Cameron followed, and Mrs. Quigg also rose. "I'll go with you," she said, decidedly. I was willing to quit, too, but Mrs. Harris and Miss Brush pleaded with me to continue.

"Close up the circle, then. Probably Harris was the hoodoo. Things will happen now," I said, briskly, though still without any faith in the experiment.

Hardly had Harris left the table when a shudder passed over Mrs. Harris, her head lifted, and her eyes closed.

"What's the matter, Dolly?" whispered Mrs. Cameron. "Do you feel faint?"

"Don't be alarmed! Mrs. Harris is only passing into a sleep. Not a word, Harris!" I said, warningly. "Please move farther away."

In the dusky light the faces of all the women looked suddenly blanched and strange as the entranced woman seized upon the table with her hands, shaking it hard from side to side. The table seemed to wake to diabolic energy under her palms. This was an unexpected development, and I was almost as much surprised as the others were.

"Sing again," I commanded, softly.

As they sang, Mrs. Harris withdrew her hands from the table and sat rigidly erect, yet with a peaceful look upon her face. "She does it well," I thought. "I didn't think it in the quiet little lady." At length one hand lifted and dropped limply upon the table. "It wants to write," said I. "Where is the pad? I have a pencil."

As I put a pencil under the hand, it was seized in a very singular way, and almost instantly Mrs. Cameron gasped, "That's very strange!"

"Hush!" said I. "Wait!"

Holding the pencil clumsily as a crippled person might do, the hand crept over the paper, and at last, after writing several lines, stopped and lay laxly open. I passed the pad to Brierly. "Read it aloud," I said.

He took it to the light and read:

"Sara, be not sceptical. Believe and you will be happier. Life is only the minutest segment of the great circle.

Martin."

"My father!" exclaimed Mrs. Cameron. "Let me see the writing." Brierly handed the pad to her. She stared upon it in awe and wonder. "It is his exact signature—and Dolly held the pen just as he did—he was paralyzed toward the last—and could only write by holding his pen that way."

"Look! it's moving again," I exclaimed.

The hand caught up the pencil, and, holding it between the thumb and forefinger in a peculiar way, began moving it in the air. Brierly, who sat opposite, translated these movements. "She is drawing, free-hand, in the air. She is sketching the outline of a boat. See how she measures and plumbs her lines! Are you addressing me?" he asked of Mrs. Harris.

The sleeper nodded.

"Can't you write?" I asked. "Can't you speak?"

A low gurgle in the throat was the only answer at the moment, but after a few trials a husky whisper began to be heard. "I will try," she said, and suddenly began to chuckle, rolling upon one hip and throwing one foot over the other like a man taking an easy attitude. She now held the pencil as if it were a cigarette, laughing again with such generous tone that the other women recoiled. Then she spoke, huskily. "You know—San Remo—Sands," came brokenly from her lips.

"Sands?" queried the painter; "who is Sands?"

"Sands—San Remo—boats."

The painter was puzzled. "I don't remember any Sands at San Remo. It must be some student I knew in Paris. Is that what you mean?"

Mrs. Harris violently nodded. As abruptly as it came, this action left her, and then slowly, imperceptibly, her expression changed, a look of ineffable maternal sweetness came into her face; she seemed to cradle a tiny babe upon her arm. At last she sighed, "Oh, the pity of it, the pity of it!"

For a minute we sat in silence, so compelling were her gestures and her tone. At last I asked, "Has any one here lost a little child?"

Mrs. Cameron spoke, hesitatingly, "Yes—I lost a little baby—years ago."

"She is addressing you—perhaps."

Mrs. Harris did not respond to this suggestion, but changed into an impersonation of a rollicking girl of rather common fibre. "Hello, Sally!" she cried out, and Mrs. Cameron stared at her in blank dismay as she asked, "Are you talking to me?"

"You bet I am, you old bag o' wool. Remember Geny? Remember the night on the door-step? Ooo! but it was cold! You were to blame."

"What is she talking about?" I asked, seeing that Mrs. Cameron was reluctant to answer this challenge.

"She seems to be impersonating an old class-mate of mine at college—"

"That's what!" broke in the voice.

Mrs. Cameron went on, "Her name was Eugenia Hull—"

"Is yet," laughed the voice. "Same old sport. Couldn't find any man good enough. You didn't like me, but no matter; I want to tell you that you're in danger of fire. Don't play with fire. Be careful of fire—"

Again a calm blankness fell upon the psychic's delicate and sensitive face, and the hand once more slowly closed upon the pencil.

"My father again!" exclaimed Mrs. Cameron. "How could Dolly have known that he held his pen in just that way? She never saw him."

"Do not place too much value on such performances," I cautioned. "She has probably heard you describe it. Or she might have taken it out of your subconscious mind."

The pencil dropped. The hand lifted. The form of the sleeper expanded with power. Her face took on benignity and lofty serenity. She rose slowly, impressively, and with her hand upraised in a peculiar gesture, laid a blessing upon the head of her hostess. There was so much of sweetness and tolerance in her face, so much of dignity and power in every movement that I was moved to applaud the actress. As we all sat thus, deeply impressed by her towering attitude, Mrs. Cameron whispered: "Why, it is Bishop Blank! That is exactly the way he held his hand—his robe!"

"Is it the bishop?" I asked.

The psychic bowed and in solemn answer spoke. "Tell James all will yet be well," she said, and, making the sign of blessing once more, sank back into her chair.

Meanwhile the irreverent ribalds in the far end of the room were disturbing the solemnity of all this communion with the shades, and at my suggestion we went up-stairs to Mrs. Cameron's own sitting-room, where we could be quiet. Seizing a moment when Mrs. Harris was free from the "influence," I woke her and told her what we were about to do. She followed Mrs. Cameron readily, although she seemed a little dazed, and five of us continued the sitting, with Mrs. Quigg and Cameron looking on with perfectly evident doubt of our psychic's sincerity. Harris was rigidly excluded.

In the quiet of this room Mrs. Harris passed almost immediately into trance—or what seemed like a trance—and ran swiftly over all her former impersonations. Voice succeeded voice, almost without pause. The sweet mother with the child, the painter of San Remo, the jovial and slangy girl, the commanding and majestic figure of the bishop—all returned repeatedly, in bewildering mixture, dropping away, one after the other, with disappointing suddenness. And yet each time the messages grew a little more definite, a little more coherent, until at last they all cleared up, and this in opposition to our thought, to our first interpretations. It developed that the painter was not named "Sands," but "Felipi," and that he was only trying to tell Brierly that to succeed he should paint rocks and sands and old boats at San Remo. "Pauline," the woman who had seemed to hold a babe, was a friend of Mrs. Cameron's who had died in childbirth. And then swiftly, unaccountably, all these gentle or genial influences were scattered as if by something hellish, something diabolic. The face of the sweet little woman became fiendish in line. Her lips snarled, her hands clawed like those of a cat, and out of her mouth came a hoarse imprecation. "I'll tear your heart out!" she snarled. "I'll kill you soul and body—I'll rip you limb from limb!" We all recoiled in amazement and wonder. It was as if our friend had suddenly gone insane.

I confess to a feeling of profound astonishment. I had never met Mrs. Harris before, but as she was an intimate friend of Mrs. Cameron, and quite evidently a woman of culture, I could not think her so practised a joker as to be "putting all this on."

While still we sat in silence, another voice uttered a wail of infinite terror and despair. "I didn't do it! Don't kill me! It was not my work." And then, still more horrible to hear, a sound like the gurgling of blood came from the psychic's lips, mixed with babbled, frantic, incoherent words. I had a perfectly definite impression that she was impersonating some one with his throat cut. Her grimaces were disgusting and terrifying. The women shivered with horror. A few seconds later and her face changed; the hideous mask became white, expressing rigid, exalted terror. Her arms were drawn back as if tied at the elbow behind her back. Her head was uplifted, and in a low, monotonous, hushed voice she prayed: "Lord Jesus, receive—"

A gasping, gurgling cry cut short her prayer, and, with tongue protruding from her mouth, she presented such a picture of a strangling woman that a sudden clear conception of what it all meant came to me. "She's impersonating a woman on the scaffold," I explained. "She has shown us a murder, and now she is depicting an execution. Is it Mrs. R., of Vermont?" I asked.

She nodded slowly. "Save me!" she whispered.

"Waken her, please. Don't let her do that any more," pleaded Mrs. Cameron, in poignant distress.

Thereupon I called out, sharply: "That is enough! Wake! Wake!"

In answer to my command she ceased to groan; her face smoothed out, and with a bewildered smile she opened her eyes. "What are you saying? Have I been asleep?"

"You have, indeed," I replied, "and you've disclosed a deal of dubious family history. How do you feel?"

"I feel very funny around my neck," she answered, wonderingly. "What have you been doing to me?" She rubbed her throat. "My neck feels as if it had a band round it, and my tongue seems swollen. What have you been about?"

I held up a warning hand to the others. "You went off into a quiet little trance, that's all. I was mistaken. Either you are a psychic or you should have been an actress."

As we stood thus confronting one another, Mrs. Cameron came between us, saying, "Do you know, Pauline came and talked with me—"

At the word Pauline the spell seemed to fall again over the bright spirit of Mrs. Harris. Her eyelids drooped, her limbs lost their power, and she sank into her chair as before, a helpless victim, apparently, to the hidden forces. For a moment I was at a loss. I could not believe that she was deceiving us, but it was possible that she was deceiving herself. "In either case, she must be brought out of this," I decided, and, putting my hands on her shoulders, I said: "If there is any 'control' here, let them stop this. We want no more of it. Stop it!"

My command was again obeyed, and the psychic slowly came back to herself, and as she did so I said, warningly, to Mrs. Cameron: "Do not utter another word of this in Mrs. Harris's presence. She seems to be extremely sensitive to hypnotic influence, and I think she had better go out into the air at once."

In rather subdued mood we went below to rejoin the frankly contemptuous members of the party.

"Well, what luck?" cried Howard.

"You all look rather solemn," said Harris. "What about it? Dolly, what have you been doing?"

Mrs. Cameron described the sitting as wonderful, but Mrs. Harris only smiled vaguely, and I said: "Your wife seemed to go into a trance and impersonate a number of individuals. She shows all the signs of a real sensitive."

Harris, who had been studying his wife with half-humorous intentness, now took command. "If you've been shamming, you need discipline; and if you haven't, you need a doctor. I think we'll go home and have it out," he added, and shortly after led her away. "Some nice cool air is what we need," he said at the door.

No sooner were the Harrises out of the door than the women of the party fell upon me.

"What do you think of it, Mr. Garland?" asked Mrs. Cameron.

"If Mrs. Harris were not your friend, and if I had not seen other performances of the same sort, I should instantly say that she was having her joke with us. But I have seen too much of this sort of thing to take it altogether lightly. That's the way this investigating goes. One thing corroborates another. 'Impersonation' in the case of a public medium may mean nothing—on the part of a psychic like your friend Mrs. Harris it means a very great deal. In support of this, let me tell you of a similar case. I have a friend, a perfectly trustworthy woman, and of keen intelligence, whose 'stunt,' as she laughingly calls it, is to impersonate nameless and suffering spirits who have been hurled into outer darkness by reason of their own misdeeds or by some singular chance of their taking off. My friend seems to be able in some way to free these poor 'earth-bound souls' and send them flying upward to some heaven. It's all very creepy," I added, warningly.

"Oh, delightful! Let it be very creepy," called Mrs. Quigg.

"To begin with, my friend is as keen-eyed, as level-headed as any woman I know—the last person in the world to be taken for a 'sensitive.' I had never suspected it in her; but one night she laughingly admitted having been 'in the work' at one time, and I begged for a sitting. We were dining at her house—Jack Ross, a Miss Wilcox, and I, all intimate friends of hers, and she consented. After sitting a few minutes she turned to me and said: 'My "guide" is here. Be sure to keep near me; don't let me fall.' She still spoke smilingly, but I could see she was in earnest.

"'You see,' she explained, 'I seem to leave the body and to withdraw a little distance above my chair. From this height I survey my material self, which seems to be animated by an entirely alien influence. Sometimes my body is moved by these forces to rise and walk about the room. In such cases it is necessary for some friend to follow close behind me, for between the going of "the spirit" and the return of my "astral self" there lies an appreciable interval when my body is as limp as an empty sack. I came very near having a bad fall once.'

"'I understand,' said I. 'I'll keep an eye on you.'

"In a few moments a change came over her face. She sank into a curious negative state between trance and reverie. Her lips parted, and a soft voice came from them. She spoke to Miss Wilcox, who sat opposite her: 'Sister—I am very happy. I am surrounded by children. It is beautiful here in the happy valley—warm and golden—and oh, the merry children!'

"Miss Wilcox was deeply moved by this message and for a moment could not reply. At length she recovered her voice and asked, 'Are you speaking to me?'

"'Yes. I am worried about mother. She is sick. Go to her. She needs help. Good-bye!' The smile faded; my friend's face resumed its impersonal calm.

"'Did you recognize the spirit?' I asked.

"Miss Wilcox hesitated, but at last said: 'My sister was active in the work of caring for orphan children. But that proves nothing. Anna may have known it—there is no test in this. It may be only mind-reading.'

"'You are quite right,' I replied. 'But the message concerning your mother can be tested, can it not?'

"At this moment the face of the psychic squared, and a deep, slow voice came pulsing forth. 'Why do you wilfully blind your eyes? The truth will prevail. Mystery is all about you. Why doubt that which would comfort you?'

"'Who are you?' I inquired.

"'I am Theodore Parker, the psychic's control,' was the answer.

"Soon after this my friend opened her eyes and smiled. 'Do you know what you've said?' I asked. 'Yes, I always have a dim notion of what is going on,' she answered, 'but why I am moved to speak and act as I do I don't know. It is just the same when I write automatically. I know when I do it, but I can't see the connection between my own mind and the writing. It is as if one lobe of my brain kept watch over the action of the other.'

"She now passed into another period of immobility and so sat for a long time. Suddenly her face hardened, became coarse, common, vicious in line. Flinging out her hand, she struck me in the breast. 'What do you want of me?' she demanded, in the voice of a harridan. 'What are you all doing here? You're a nice lot of fools.'

"'Who are you?' I asked.

"'You know who I am,' she answered, with a hoarse laugh. 'A sweet bunch you are! Where's Jim?'

"'Does any one recognize this "party"?' I asked. 'Ross, this must be one of your set.'

"Ross laughed, and the 'influence,' thrusting her face close to his, blurted out, menacingly: 'Don't know me, hey? Well, here I am. I wanted a show, and they let me in. What you going to do about it?'

"'I reckon you lit in the wrong door-yard,' I replied; 'nobody knows you here. Skiddoo!'

"She made an ugly face at me, and struck at me with her claw-like hand. 'I'd like to smash you!'

"'Good-bye,' said I. 'Get out!' And she was gone.

"Before a word could be spoken, a look of hopeless, heart-piercing woe came over my friend's face. She began to moan and wring her hands most piteously. 'Oh, where am I?' she wailed. 'It is so cold, so cold! So cold and dark! Won't somebody help me? Oh, help me!'

"I gently asked: 'Who are you? Can't you tell us your name?'

"'Oh, I don't know, I can't tell,' moaned the voice. 'It's all so dark and cold and lonely. Please tell me where I am. I've lost my name. All is so dark and cold. Oh, pity me! Let me come in. Let me feel your light. I'm freezing! Oh, pity me. I'm so lonely. It's so dark.'

"'Come in,' I said. 'We will help you.'

"The hands of the psychic crept timidly up my arm and touched my cheek. 'Thank you! Thank you! Oh, the cheer! Oh, the light!' she cried, ecstatically. 'I see! I know! Good-bye!' And with a sigh of ecstasy the voice ceased.

"I can hardly express to you the vivid and yet sombre impression this made upon me. It was as if a chilled and weary bird, having winged its way from the winter's midnight into a warm room, had been heartened and invigorated, had rushed away confident and swift to the sun-lands of the South.

"One by one other 'earth-bound souls' who, from one cause or another, were 'unable to find their way upward,' came into our ken like chilled and desperate bats condemned to whirl in endless outer darkness and silence—poor, abortive, anomalous shadows, whose voices pleaded piteously for release. Nameless, agonized, bewildered, they clung like moths to the light of our psychic.

"Some of them appeared to be suffering all the terrors of the damned, and as they moaned and pleaded for light, the lovely face of my friend was convulsed with agony and her hands fluttered about like wounded birds. Singular conception! Wonderful power of suggestion!

"At length, with a glad cry, the last of these blind souls saw, sighed with happiness, and seemed to vanish upward, as if into some unfathomable, fourth-dimension heaven. Then the sweet first spirit, the woman with the glad children, returned to say to Miss Wilcox, 'Be happy—George is coming back to you.'

"After she passed, my friend opened her eyes as before, clearly, smilingly, and said, 'Have you had enough?'

"'Plenty,' said I. 'You nearly took my eye out in your dramatic fervor. I must say your ghosts are most unhappy creatures.'

"She became very serious. 'Please don't think that these spirits are my affinities. My work is purely philanthropic, so Theodore Parker used to tell mother. It was my duty, he said, to comfort the cheerless, to liberate the earth-bound, and so I had to have these poor creatures waiting around. That's why I gave it up. It got to be too dreadful. We never could tell what would come next. Murderers and barnburners and every other accursed spirit seemed to be privileged to come into my poor empty house and abuse it, although Parker and his band promised to protect me. I stopped it. I will not sit again,' she said, firmly. 'I don't like it. It would be bad enough to be dominated by one's dead friends, or the dead friends of one's friends, but to be helpless in the hands of all the demons and suicides and miscreants of the other world is intolerable. And if I am not dominated by dead people, I fear I am acting in response to the minds of vicious living people, and I don't like that. It's a dreadful feeling—can't you see it is?—this being open to every wandering gust of passion. I wouldn't let any one of my children be controlled for the world. Don't ask me to sit again, and please don't let my friends know of my "gift."'

"Of course we promised, but the effect of that sitting I shall not soon forget. By-the-way, Miss Wilcox 'phoned and proved the truth of her message. Her mother really was ill and in need of her."

As I closed this story, Cameron said: "Garland, you tell that as if you believed in it."

"I certainly do believe in my friend. It's no joke with her. She is quite certain that she is controlled by those 'on the other side,' and that to submit is to lose so much of her own individuality. You may call it hysteria, somnambulism, hypnotism, anything you like, but that certain people are moved subconsciously to impersonate the dead I am quite ready to believe. However, 'impersonation' is the least convincing (from my point of view) of all the phases of mediumship. I have paid very little attention to it in the course of my investigation. It has no value as evidence. You are still in the tattered fringes of 'spiritism,' even when you have seen all that impersonation can show you."

"Well, what do you suggest as the proper method for the society?"

"As I told you at beginning, I have had a great deal of experience with these elusive 'facts,' and it chances that a practised though non-professional psychic with whom I have held many baffling sittings, is in the city. I may be able to induce her to sit for us."

"Oh, do, do!" cried Mrs. Cameron and Miss Brush together.

"Who is she?" asked Miller.

"I'll tell you more about her—next time," I said, tantalizingly. "She is very puzzling, I assure you. When and where shall we meet?"

"Here," said Cameron, promptly. "I'm getting interested. Bring on your marvels."

"Yes," said Miller, and his mouth shut like a steel trap. "Bring on your faker. It won't take us long to expose her little game."

"Bigger scientific bigots than you have been conquered," I retorted. "All right. I'll see what I can do. We'll meet one week from to-day."

"Yes," said Cameron; "come for dinner."

As I was going out, Mrs. Quigg detained me. "If it had been anybody but nice little Mrs. Harris, I should say that you had made this all up between you. As it is, I guess I'll have to admit that there is something in thought transference and hypnotism. You were her control."

"That will serve for one evening," I retorted. "I'll make you doubt the existence of matter before we finish this series of sittings." And with this we parted.

II

I was a little late at Cameron's dinner-party, and no sooner had I shown my face inside the door than a chorus of excited inquiry arose.

"Where is the medium?" demanded Cameron.

"Don't tell us you haven't got her!" exclaimed Mrs. Quigg.

"I haven't her in my pocket, but she has promised to appear a little later," I replied, serenely.

"Why didn't you bring her to dinner?" asked Mrs. Cameron.

"Well, she seemed a little shy, and, besides, I was quite sure you would all want to discuss her, and so—"

"Yes, do tell us about her. Who is she? Does she perform for a living? What kind of a person are we to expect?" volleyed Miss Brush.

To this I replied: "She is a native of the Middle West—Ohio, I believe. No, she does not do this for a living; in fact, she makes no charge for her services. She is very gentle and lady-like, and much interested, naturally, in converting you to spiritualism; for, like most psychics, she believes in spirits. She says her 'controls' have especially urged her to give me sittings. I am highly flattered to think the spirit folk should consider me so particularly valuable to their cause. Seriously, I hope you will appreciate the wonderful concessions Mrs. Smiley is making in thus putting herself into our hands with the almost certain result of being discredited by some of us. I believe she really is doing it from a sense of duty, and is entitled to be treated fairly."

"Has she been in the business long?" asked Mrs. Quigg, with lurking sarcasm.

"Ever since she was about ten years old, I believe, but she sits only 'to spread the glad tidings.'"

"Is she married?"

"Yes, and has a devoted husband, and a nice little American village home. I know, for she sent me a photograph of it. She has two children 'in the other world.' Please don't think all mediums the ignorant and vicious harpies which the newspapers make them out to be. I know several who are very nice, serious-minded women."

At this point dinner was announced, and the dining-room became the field of a hot verbal warfare. The members of the society were all present excepting Mrs. Harris, who had been greatly upset by her own performance. Bart Brierly, the painter, was there to defend the mystery of life against our scientific friend Miller, whose conception of the universe was very definite indeed. Mrs. Quigg supported Miller. Young Howard was everywhere in the lists, and his raillery afforded Cameron a great deal of amusement.

I contented myself with listening for the first half-hour, but at last took occasion to say to Miller: "Like all violent opponents of the metapsychical, you know very little of the subject you are discussing. To sustain this contention, let me ask if you have ever read the account of Sir William Crookes's experiments with psychic force?"

Miller confessed that he had not. "I have avoided doing so, for I respect Crookes as a chemist," he added.

I continued: "Crookes began by pooh-poohing the whole subject of spiritualism, very much as you do, Miller; but after three years of rigid investigation, he was forced to announce himself convinced of the truth of many of the so-called spirit phenomena. It is instructive to recall that when he was willing to hazard his scientific reputation on a report of this character to the Royal Society, of which he was a member, his paper was thrown out. The secretary refused even to enter it upon the files of the institution."

"I know about that," replied Miller, "and I consider the secretary justified. To his thinking, Crookes had lost his head."

"No matter what he thought," I replied. "Any paper by a man of Crookes's standing, with his knowledge of chemistry and of life, and his long training in exact observation, should have been considered. The action of the secretary was due simply to prejudice, and many of those who voted to ignore that report are to-day more than half convinced that Sir William has been justified. Each of his experiments has been repeated and his findings verified by scientific men of Europe. It is a pleasure to add that our own Smithsonian Institution published two of his speculative papers some years ago. So it goes—the heresy of to-day is the orthodoxy of to-morrow."

"Didn't Crookes afterward repudiate that early report?" asked Miller.

"On the contrary, in 1898, upon being elected to the presidency of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, he said (I think I can recall almost his exact words): 'No incident in my scientific career is more widely known than the part I took in certain psychic researches. Thirty years have passed since I published an account of experiments tending to show that outside our scientific knowledge there exists a force exercised by intelligences differing from the ordinary intelligence common to mortals. This fact in my life is well understood by those who honored me with the invitation to become your president. Perhaps among my audience some may feel curious as to whether I shall speak out or be silent. I elect to speak, although briefly. I have nothing to retract. I adhere to my published statements. Indeed, I might add much thereto.' And when you realize that this includes his astounding experience with 'Katie King,' his words become tremendous in their significance."

"What was the 'Katie King' experience?" asked Mrs. Cameron. "I never heard of it."

"It is a long and very interesting story, but in substance it is this: While in a condition of contemptuous disbelief as to the alleged phenomena of spiritualism, Sir William chanced to witness a séance wherein a young girl named Florence Cook was the medium. Her doings so puzzled and interested him that he went again and again to see her. Dissatisfied with the conditions under which the wonders took place, he asked Miss Cook to come to his house and sit for him and his friends. This she did. She was a mere girl at the time, about seventeen years of age, and yet she baffled this great chemist and all his assistants. You sometimes hear people say, 'Yes, but he was in his dotage.' He was not. He was in his early prime. He brought to bear all his thirty years' training in exact observation, and all the mechanical and electrical appliances he could devise, without once detecting anything deceitful."

"Even in the 'Katie King' episode?" asked Harris.

"Even Katie stood the test. But before going into that, let me tell you some of his other experiments. He says (among other amazing things) that he has seen a chair move on its own account, without contact with a medium. He saw Daniel Home—another medium with whom he had sittings—raised by invisible power completely from the floor of the room. 'Under rigid test condition,' he writes, 'I have seen a solid, self-luminous body the size of an egg float noiselessly about the room!' But wait! I will quote from my notes his exact words." Here I produced my note-book, and read as follows: "'I have seen a luminous cloud floating upward toward a picture. Under the strictest test conditions, I have more than once had a solid, self-luminous, crystalline body placed in my hand by a hand which did not belong to any person in the room. In the light, I have seen a luminous cloud hover over a heliotrope on a side-table, break a sprig off, and carry it to a lady; and on some occasions I have seen a similar luminous cloud condense to the form of a hand and carry small objects about. During a séance in full light, a beautifully formed small hand rose up from an opening in a dining-table and gave me a flower. This occurred in the light in my own room, while I was holding the medium's hands and feet. I have retained one of these perfectly life-like and graceful (spirit) hands in my own, firmly resolved not to let it escape, but it gradually seemed to resolve itself into vapor, and faded in that manner from my grasp.'"

"Oh, come now," shouted Howard, "you're joking! Crookes couldn't have written that."

I continued to read: "'Under satisfactory test conditions, I have seen phantom forms and faces—a phantom form came from the corner of the room, took an accordion in its hand, and glided about the room playing the instrument.'"

As I paused, Harris said: "Was all that in his report to the Royal Society?"

"It was."

"Well, I don't wonder they thought he was crazy. The whole statement is preposterous."

"But that is not all," I hastened to say. "Under rigid conditions scales were depressed without contact, and a flower, separating itself from a bouquet, passed through a solid table."

Miller made a gesture of angry disgust. "To save the reputation of a really great scientist, don't quote any more of that insane dreaming."

"I didn't know any one but campers in 'Lily Dale' could be so bug-house," added Howard.

I went on. "Crookes might have induced his brother scientists at least to listen to his report had he stopped with this. But he proceeded to say that he had witnessed the magic birth of a sentient, palpable, intelligent human being, who walked about in his household, conversing freely, while the medium, from whom the spirit form sprang, lay in the cabinet like one dead. It was his account of this 'spirit,' who called herself 'Katie King,' that caused the whole scientific world to jeer at the great chemist as a man gone mad."

"We have a right to draw the line between Crookes the chemist and Crookes the befuddled dupe," insisted Miller.

Mrs. Cameron drew a long breath. "Do you mean to say that this 'Katie King' phantom actually talked with the people in the room? Does Sir William Crookes say that?"

"Yes. Over and over again he declares that 'Katie King' appeared as real as any one else in his house. He becomes quite lyrical in description of her beauty. She was like a pearl in her purity. Her flesh seemed a sublimation of ordinary human flesh. And the grace of her manner was so extraordinary that Lady Crookes and all who saw her became deeply enamoured of her. She allowed some of them to kiss her, and Crookes himself was permitted to grasp her hand and walk up and down the room with her."

"How was she dressed?" asked Mrs. Brush.

"There! Now we are getting at the essentials," I exclaimed. "Usually in white with a turban."

"Did she look like the medium?"

"She was utterly unlike Miss Cook in several physical details. She was half a head taller, her face was broader, her ears had not been pierced, and she was free from certain facial scars that Miss Cook bore; and once when Miss Cook was suffering from a severe cold, Sir William tested 'Katie King's' lungs and found them in perfect health. On several occasions he and several of his friends, among them eminent scientists, saw 'Katie' and the medium together, and at last succeeded in photographing them both on the same plate, although never with Miss Cook's face exposed, because of the danger, to one in a trance, from the shock of a flash-light."

"I don't take any stock in that excuse," said Howard. "But go on, I like this."

"For months the great chemist brought all his skill to bear on Miss Cook's mediumship without detecting any fraud or finding any solution of the mystery. The sittings, which took place in his own library, were under his own conditions, and he had the assistance of several young and clever physicists, and yet he could not convict Miss Cook of double-dealing. The story of the final séance, when 'Katie King' announced her departure, is as affecting as a scene in a play. She had said that her real name was 'Annie Morgan,' but that in the spirit world she was known as 'Katie King.' She came, she said, to do a certain work, and now, after three years, that work was done, and she must return to the spirit world."

"What was that work?"

"To convince the world of the spirit life, I imagine. 'When the time came for "Katie" to take her farewell,' writes Crookes, 'I asked that she would let me see the last of her. Accordingly when she had called each of the company up to her and had spoken a few words in private, she gave some general directions for the future guidance and protection of Miss Cook. From these, which were taken down in shorthand, I quote the following: "Mr. Crookes has done very well throughout, and I leave Florrie [the medium], with the greatest confidence, in his hands." Having concluded her directions, "Katie" invited me into the cabinet with her, and allowed me to remain until the end.'"

"Touching confidence!" interrupted Harris.

"'After closing the curtain she conversed with me for some time, and then walked across to where Miss Cook was lying senseless on the floor. Stooping over her, "Katie" touched her and said: "Wake up, Florrie, wake up! I must leave you now."

"'Miss Cook then woke, and tearfully entreated "Katie" to stay a little time longer.

"'"My dear, I can't; my work is done. God bless you," "Katie" replied, and then continued speaking to Miss Cook for several minutes. For several minutes the two were conversing with each other, till at last Miss Cook's tears prevented her speaking. Following "Katie's" instructions, I then came forward to support Miss Cook, who was falling onto the floor, sobbing hysterically. I looked round, but the white-robed "Katie" had gone, never to return to the earth-plane.'"

I glanced about the table at my silent listeners, and added: "Could anything be more dramatic than this sad farewell? Evidently the fourth dimension is both near and very far."

All the women were deeply impressed with this story, but to Miller it was as idle as the blowing of the wind. "The man was duped. It is absolutely impossible to think that he was not grossly deceived."

"Wait a moment," said I. "I defy you or any man to remain unchanged by it. The world is just catching up to this brave pioneer. At that time there were very few scientific men in the metapsychical field. Sir William stood almost alone. But public sentiment changed rapidly as the years passed. The English Society for Psychical Research was formed, and one by one Wallace, Lodge, and other scientific men were convinced of the truth of these phenomena. In Europe, as early as 1853, the work was taken up in the true scientific spirit, and Professor Marc Thury and the Count de Gasparin completely demonstrated the fact of telekinesis; and at about the same time that the Dialectical Society was getting into action, Flammarion, the astronomer, took up his study of the subject. But it was not until 1891 that anything like Crookes's searching analysis was made of a medium. This important sitting—a sitting which marks an epoch in science—took place in Milan, and was attended, among others, by Lombroso and Richet. For the first time, so far as is known, a flash-light photograph was taken of a table floating in the air."

At this moment the bell rang, and Mrs. Cameron exclaimed: "There! that may be your wonder-worker."

I looked at my watch. "I shouldn't wonder. She is a prompt little person."

III

We trooped into the sitting-room, where Mrs. Smiley, a plain little woman with a sweet mouth and bright black eyes, was awaiting us. She was perceptibly abashed by the keen glances that the men directed upon her, but her manners were those of one natively thoughtful and refined. She made an excellent impression on every one.

"Did you bring your magic horn, Mrs. Smiley?" I asked, to relieve her embarrassment.

"Oh yes!" she answered, brightly. "I carry that just as a fiddler carries his fiddle—ready for a tune at any moment."

She brought a large package from the foot of the sofa and gave it to me. I took it, but turned it over to Miller. "Here, open this parcel yourself, Mr. Scientist. I want you to be satisfied as to its character."

Miller undid the package as cautiously as if it were an infernal machine. As the paper opened and fell away, a short, truncated cone of tin was disclosed, with another smaller one loosely held within it. The two sections, when adjusted, made a plain megaphone, about twenty-four inches in length and some five inches in diameter at the larger end.

"What do you do with that?" asked Mrs. Cameron.

In a perfectly matter-of-fact way Mrs. Smiley replied: "Many of the spirit voices are very faint, and cannot be heard without this horn. I am what they call a 'trumpet medium,'" she added, in further explanation.

"Do you mean to say spirits speak through that horn?"

"Yes. That is my 'phone.'"

The ladies looked at one another, and Harris said: "Isn't it rather absurd to expect an immaterial mouth to speak through a tin tube, like the grocer's boy?"

She smiled composedly. "I suppose it seems so to you, but to me it just happens."

I set briskly to work arranging the library for the circle. In the middle of the room I placed a plain oaken table, which had been procured specially for the sitting. On this I stood the tin horn, upright on its larger end; beside it I laid a pad, a pencil, and a small slate.

"Mrs. Smiley, you are to sit here," I said, drawing an arm-chair to the end of the table nearest the wall. She took her seat submissively; and looking around upon my fellow-members with a full knowledge of what was in their minds, I remarked: "If all goes well to-night, this little woman, alone and unaided, except by this megaphone, will utterly confound you. We have had many sittings. We understand each other perfectly. I am going to treat her as if she were an unconscious trickster. I am going to use every effort to discover how she accomplishes these mysterious results, and Miller is to be notably remorseless. We are going to concede (for the present) the dim light required. I don't like this, but Mrs. Smiley is giving us every other condition, and as this is but a trial sitting, we grant it." I turned to Miller. "The theory is that light acts in direct opposition to the psychic force, weakening it unaccountably. Nevertheless, darkness is not absolutely essential. Maxwell secured many convincing movements in the light, and no doubt we shall be able to do so later."

"Who is Maxwell?" asked Miss Brush.

"Dr. Joseph Maxwell, Deputy Attorney-General of the Court of Appeals at Bordeaux and Doctor of Medicine. He is a noted experimenter with psychic forces. Indeed, he has the power himself. Now, Mrs. Smiley, I wish to begin my tests by tying your wrists to the arms of your chair. May I do so?"

"Certainly," she cheerfully answered. "You may padlock me, or put me in an iron cage, if you please. I leave it all to you."

"Well, there is a certain virtue in knotting a silk thread, for the reason that it is almost impossible to untie, even in the light, and to break it, we will agree, invalidates the sitting. For to-night we will use the thread. Miller, will you watch me?"

"With the greatest pleasure in the world," he answered, "and as a scientist I am going to treat you as a possible confederate."

"Very good. Let each watch the other."

Beneath the gaze of the smiling company, I took from my pocket a spool of strong silk twist, and proceeded to fasten the psychic's wrists. Each arm was tied separately in such wise that she was unable to bring her hands together, and could not raise her wrists an inch from the chair. Next, with the aid of Mrs. Cameron, I looped a long piece of tape about Mrs. Smiley's ankles, knotted it to the rungs of the chair at the back, and nailed the loose ends to the floor. I then drew chalk marks on the floor about the chair legs, in order that any movement of the chair, no matter how slight, might show. Finally, I pushed the table about two feet away from the psychic's utmost reach.

"With this arrangement we ought to be able to detect any considerable movement on your part," I said to my prisoner; "at any rate, I think we can keep you from jumping upon the table. Miller, you are to sit at her left; I will keep watch and ward at her right; the others of the society may take seats as they please—only the tradition is that the sexes should alternate. Cameron, please lock both doors and keep the keys in your pocket."

As soon as we were all seated and Cameron had locked the doors, I asked him to turn down the light, which he did, grumbling: "I don't like this part of it."

"Neither do I, but at a first sitting we must not expect too much. I am sure we shall be able to have more light later on. And now, while we are all getting into a harmonious frame of mind, suppose we ask Mrs. Smiley to tell us a little about herself. Where were you born, Mrs. Smiley?"

She replied, very simply and candidly: "I was born near Cincinnati. My father was a spiritualist early in the 'craze,' as it was called, and I was about nine when I became a medium. At first we did not know that I was the psychic. Demons seemed to take possession of our house, and for a few weeks nothing movable was safe. After awhile my father became sure that I was the cause of these disturbances, because everywhere I went raps were heard: the movement of small objects near where I sat made me an object of aversion or of actual terror to my school-mates. So finally my father asked me to sit. I didn't want to do so at first, but he told me it was my duty. They used to tie me in every way and experiment with me. It was very wearisome to me, but I submitted, and I have been devoted to the work ever since. After my father and mother died I gave up all opposition to my gift, and now it is a great comfort to me; for now I get messages from my father and my little daughter almost every day."

"Do they speak to you directly?" I asked.

"Yes. Sometimes clairaudiently, but generally through this cone when I sit in the dark."

"What do you mean by speaking?" asked Howard. "Do you mean they sound like actual people?"

"Just as real as you or any one," she answered.

I was waiting to say: "Don't be in haste; you will all know from actual experience what she means by voices."

"Have you ever seen these forces at work?" asked Harris.

"No; not the way you mean. I had a terrible shock once that cured me of being too curious. I was holding an accordion under a table by its bellows end, as Home used to do, and while the playing was going on I just believed if I looked under the table I could see something. So I lifted the cover and peeped under. I didn't know any more for a long time. When I came to my father was bathing my face and rubbing my hands. I never tried to 'peek' after that."

"Do you mean that they did this to punish you for your peeping?"

"Yes. They don't like to have you look directly at them when they are at work."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I never was punished again. I didn't need it."

"Would 'they' bat me if I were to peek?" asked Howard.

"They might not; but they refuse to 'work' while any one is looking."

"All that is suspicious."

"I know it is, but that is the way they act."

"You believe 'they' are spirits?"

"I know they are," she repeated. "If I didn't, I would be desolate. I have been sitting now for over thirty years, and these friendly voices are a part of my life. They comfort me more than I can tell."

She gave this account of herself with an air of quiet conviction that deeply impressed the circle, and at the end of her little speech I added: "She has agreed to put herself into our hands for a series of experiments, and if her health does not fail I think we shall be able to rival the doings of Florence Cook and Daniel Home, whose mediumships were the basis of Crookes's report. Now let each one of you spread his hands, or her hands, upon the table, just touching the little fingers, in order that a complete circuit may be established. Miller and I will make connection with our psychic."

"It all seems childish folly, but we'll do it," said Harris.

"What may we expect to happen first, Mrs. Smiley?" asked Mrs. Cameron, after we were in position.

"I don't know," she answered, frankly. "I have very little control over these forces. Often, when I am most anxious, nothing happens. Please don't expect much of anything to-night: my first sittings in a new place are seldom very good, and so much depends upon those who make up the circle. I never sit without a fear that my power has gone never to come back."

I helped her out in explanation: "The honest medium does not advertise to perform regularly, for the reason that this force, whatever it is, seems to lie almost wholly outside the will. Flammarion says 'it may be set down as a rule that all professional mediums cheat.' That is putting it pretty strong; but it seems true that the condition which leads to these phenomena is a very subtle physical and mental adjustment, and that the slightest distraction or mental unrest defeats everything. If the medium is paid for her work she is too eager to serve, and everything tempts her to deceive. Furthermore, it has been proved that the psychic is in the very nature of the case extremely liable to suggestion, and the combined wills of the sitters focussed on one desired phenomena becomes an almost irresistible force to certain psychics. On the other hand, the best observers say that the most striking proofs of spiritualism lies in the fact that the most amazing phenomena come in opposition to the will of both the psychic and the sitters. We may not secure a single movement to-night, and, indeed, we may have two or three barren sittings, but I am confident that in the end you will be satisfied. I am going to attempt to put Mrs. Smiley to sleep now, and when she is in her trance we can discuss her methods freely."

I began to hum a low, monotonous tune, and one by one the others joined in the refrain; soon the psychic's breath became labored, and in the pauses of the song she moaned. At length she drew her hands as far away from Miller's and mine as the threads would permit, thus breaking the circuit.

"She is in trance," I reported. "Now we have nothing to do but wait. You may say anything you please, or tell stories or sing songs, only don't argue. We will remain as we are for a while, and if the 'guides' are dissatisfied, they will order a change. Generally speaking, the 'controls' are very notional, and when we get into full communication with 'them' the entire present arrangement may be broken up. The theory is that all success is due to the co-operation of those 'on the other side.'"

"It looks to me like a plain case of hypnotism from this side," remarked Harris.

"Aren't there any fixed rules to the game?" asked Howard.

"After many years' exhaustive study of these antic spirits (approaching them always from the naturalistic side), Maxwell deduces certain helpful rules: 'Use a small room,' he says, 'and have it warm. Medium and sitters must not have cold hands or feet.'"

"I can understand the psychic having cold feet now and then," interjected Harris.

"Maxwell finds dry air and clear weather most favorable; rainy and windy weather often cause failures. There seems to be some connection with the electrical condition of the atmosphere. After proving that a white light deters phenomena, he uses green, violet, or yellow screens for his lamps. 'Any kind of a table will do for the raps, or for levitation,' he says, 'but one with a double top seems to give best results.' His sitters use wooden chairs with cane seats, and my own experience is that a bare floor helps. He especially directs that the guide be consulted—'let the phenomena come as spontaneously as possible,' he adds."

"Does he find this sandwiching of the sexes helpful?"

"Yes. He says six or eight people, men and women alternating, make the best circle. 'Take things seriously, but not solemnly,' he advises. 'Don't argue; address the "control," and follow his advice. Avoid confusion by electing a director and asking for only one thing at a time. Keep the same people in the group for at least six sittings. Sit in a circle and touch hands. Be patient and good-tempered. A worried, irritated, sullen medium is a poor instrument. Finally'—and this is most important—'don't overwork the medium.' And with this important statement he ends: 'I am persuaded of the absolute harmlessness of these experiments, provided they are properly conducted.'"

"I am glad to know that," said Mrs. Quigg. "After seeing Mrs. Harris's trance, I was in doubt."

"Maxwell's hints are extremely valuable to me," I continued, "for they confirm my own methods, some of which I had to learn by tedious experience. If I had known, for instance, the folly of allowing everybody to quiz the psychic, I might have been spared many hours of tiresome sitting. Maxwell is, indeed, an ideal investigator—he has made a great advance in methods, and his conclusions, though tentative, are most suggestive. No unprejudiced reader can finish his book, Metapsychical Phenomena, without feeling that its author is a brave and fearless writer, as well as a cautious and sane reasoner. His published experience throws a flood of light on mediums and their puzzling peculiarities."

"But it seems to me those rules give the medium and his 'guides' the free hand," said Miller, discontentedly.

"By no means," I retorted. "Maxwell plainly says, 'Where the "control" is insisting upon something which I do not like, I politely resist, and end by getting my own way.' Note the 'politely.' In short, he recognizes that a genuine medium is a very precious instrument, and he does not begin by clubbing him—or her—into submission. For all their wondrous powers, the people who possess these powers are very weak. They are not allowed to make anything more than a living out of the practise of the magic, and they live under the threat of having the power withdrawn. They are helpless in the face of a challenge to produce the phenomena, and yet the hidden forces are themselves helpless without them—"

"Is the table throbbing?" asked Brierly.

"I don't feel it."

"Have you ever had any convincing evidence of this psychic force—such as movement of objects without contact?" asked Harris.

"Yes. I have had a table rise at least twenty inches from the floor in the full light, with no one present but the medium and myself, and while our finger-tips alone touched the top. It felt as if it were floating in a thick and resilient liquid, and when I pressed upon it, it oscillated, in a curious way, as if the power were applied from below and in the centre of the table. The psychic was a young girl, and I am certain played no trick. I could see her feet on the floor, and her finger-tips were, like mine, on the top of the table. This was the clearest test of levitation I ever had, but the lifting of a pencil in independent writing is the same thing in effect."

"I see you have acquired all the 'patter,'" remarked Miller.

"Oh, yes indeed; all the 'patter,' and some of the guile. For instance, when I want to use 'those who have passed on' I do so, and when I don't I invent means to deceive them."

Mrs. Quigg caught me up on that. "Can you deceive 'them'?"

"I don't know that I do, really; but, at any rate, 'they' are not always mind-readers—that I have proved very conclusively. In all my experience I have never had any satisfactory evidence of the clairvoyance of these manifesting intelligences."

"I thought 'they' could read one's every thought."

"I do not find that 'they' can read so much as one of my thoughts, and I would not invest a dollar on their recommendations. Seldom does so much as a familiar name come up in my sittings, and no message of any intimate sort has ever come from the shadow world for me. The messages are intelligent, but below rather than above the average. 'They' always seem very fallible, very human to me, and nothing 'they' do startles me. I have no patience with those who make much of the morbid side of this business. To me it is neither 'theism' nor 'diabolism,' and is neither destruction of an old religion or the basis of a new one—But all this verges on the controversial, and is not good for our psychic. Let's sing some good old tune, like 'Suwanee River' or 'Lily Dale.' We must keep to the genial side of conversation. Spread your hands wide on the table and be as comfortable as you can. We may have to wait a long time now, all on Miller's account."

"Because he is a sceptic?"

"No; because he's belligerent," I answered. "It doesn't matter whether you believe or not if you do not stir up controversy. Miller's 'suggestion' is adverse to the serenity of the psychic, that's all. The old-time sleepy back-parlor logic has no weight with me. Maxwell and Flammarion are my guides."

For four hours we sat thus, and nothing happened. How I kept them at it I do not now understand, but they stayed. We sang, joked, told stories, gossiped in desperate effort to kill time, and not one rap, tap, or crackle came to guide us or to give indication of the presence of any unusual power. Part of the time Mrs. Smiley was awake and sorely grieved at her failure. She understood very well the position in which I seemed to stand. To Miller I was a dupe, the victim of a trickster. He himself afterward confessed that at the time he almost regretted his preternatural acuteness, and was ready to take himself away in order to let the show go on. But he didn't, and from time to time I encouraged our psychic by saying: "Never mind, Mrs. Smiley, there are other evenings to come. We will not despair."

At last she sank into profound sleep, and at exactly twelve o'clock I heard a faint tapping on top of the piano, just behind Miller. "Hooray, here they are!" I exclaimed, with vast relief. "What is the matter?" I asked of "the presence." "Aren't we sitting right?"

"No," was the answer, by means of one decided tap.

"Am I right?"

"No," answered the taps.

I may explain at this point that in the accepted code of signals one tap means "No," three taps mean "Yes," and two taps, "Don't know," "Will try," or any other doubtful state of mind. One has, of course, to guess at the precise meaning; but one may confirm one's interpretation by putting it in the form of a question that can be answered by "Yes" or "No."

"Shall I change with Miller?" I asked.

Three brisk taps made affirmative answer.

I exchanged places with Miller, but did not again touch Mrs. Smiley's hand. Immediately thereafter the sound of soft drumming came from the piano at a point entirely out of reach of the psychic, and at my request the drummer kept time to my whistling. After some minutes of this foolery "the force" left the piano abruptly, as if with a leap, and dropped to the middle of the table. A light, fumbling noise followed, and I called out: "Is every hand in the circle accounted for?"

While the members of the group were, in turn, assuring me of this, a small bell on the table was taken up and rung, and the table itself was shoved powerfully toward the circle and away from the psychic. I assure you, my sitters were profoundly interested now, and some of the women were startled. A sharp, pecking sound came upon the cone. I called attention to the fact that this took place at least six feet from the psychic, and a moment later, with intent to detect her in any movement, I leaned far forward so that my head came close to her breast. I could not discern the slightest motion; I could not even hear her breathe. All this, while very impressive to me, was referred by the others to trickery on Mrs. Smiley's part.

At my request, the drumming on the cone kept time to "Dixey" and "Yankee Doodle," and at length I said to "the spirit": "You must have liked topical songs when you were on the earth-plane."

Instantly the cone was swept violently from the table, and a deep, jovial, strong whisper came from the horn to me. "I do now," was the amazing answer.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Wilbur Thompson."

"Oh, it is you, is it? Well, I am glad you've found a voice; I felt rather helpless up to this moment. Are we sitting right?"

"All right."

"What are you going to do for us to-night? Can you raise the table?"

"I'll try," he whispered again.

"Are there other 'spirits' here?"

"Yes; many."

"Can't 'they' write their names on the pad?"

There was a moment's silence, and then the sound of writing began in the middle of the table. When this had finished, I said, "Did you succeed?"

Again the cone rose, and another whisper, a fainter voice, answered: "Yes, but the writing is very miserable."

The rest of the sitters were silent with amazement till Miller said, in a tone of disgust: "That is of no value. It is so easy for Howard, or some one else, to break the circle and write or speak through the cone."

"Yes, we'll have to trust one another for to-night," I admitted.

The psychic now began to twist and moan and struggle, choking, gasping in such evident suffering that Mrs. Cameron cried out: "Mr. Garland, don't you hear? She is ill! Let me go to her!"

"Don't be alarmed," I replied. "This struggle almost always precedes her strongest manifestations. It seems cruel to say so, but, remember, Mrs. Smiley has been through these paroxysms hundreds of times. It appears very painful and exhausting, but she has assured me that 'they' take care of her. She suffers almost no ill effects from her trance."

Miller, living up to his character as remorseless scientist, remarked: "I'd like to control her hands. Shall I try?"

"Not now, not till the 'guides' consent to it," I replied. "It is said to be dangerous to the psychic to touch her unexpectedly."

"I can understand that it might be inconvenient," remarked Harris, with biting brevity.

Again we sat in expectant silence until several of the group became restless. "What is she about now?" asked Cameron, wearily.

"She is in dead trance, apparently. Please be patient a little while longer. Are you still with us, 'Wilbur'?"

I was delighted to hear the three taps that answer "Yes."

"Will you be able to do something more for us?"

Tap, tap, tap—given apparently with the pencil.

I observed: "From a strictly scientific standpoint, the movement of that pencil, provided it can be proved to have taken place without the agency of any known form of force, is as important as the fall of a mountain. It heralds a new day in science. Is every hand accounted for?" Each answered, "Yes." At this moment there was a rustling at the base of the cone. "Listen! 'they' are at work with the horn."

The cone rocked slowly on its base, and at last leaped over the shoulders of the sitters and fell with a crash to the floor. "Mercy on us!" gasped Mrs. Cameron.

"Don't touch it! Don't move!" I called out. "Everybody clasp hands now. Here is a chance for a fine test. 'Wilbur,' can you put the cone back on the table?"

Tap, tap, answered "Wilbur." The two taps were given slowly, and I understood them to mean "Don't know" or "Will try."

"Miller," I said, impressively, "unless some one of our circle is betraying us, we are having as good a demonstration as we could expect, barring the absence of light. Be watchful. 'Wilbur,' we're trusting to you now. Let's see what you can do."

As I spoke, the horn, with a ringing scrape, left the carpet, and a moment later bumped down upon Mrs. Quigg's head. "Oh!" she shrieked, "it hit me!"

Almost immediately a breathy chuckle came from the horn: "Ha, ha! That shook you up a little, I reckon."

The other women were frozen with horror. "Don't let it touch me," pleaded Miss Brush.

And Mrs. Quigg, much shaken, called out: "Frank Howard, are you doing this?"

He was highly indignant. "Certainly not. Are you not holding one hand and Miss Brush the other? I am in-no-cent; I swear it!"

I commented on their dialogue severely. "See how you all treat an event that is wonderful enough to convulse the National Academy of Science. I do not believe the psychic's hands have moved an inch, and yet, unless some one of you is false to his trust, the miraculous has happened—Are you there, 'Wilbur?'" I queried of the mystic presence.

The cone swung toward me, and "Wilbur" answered: "I am, old horse."

"Well, Wilbur, there are two bigoted scientific people here to-night, and I want you to put them to everlasting rout."

"I'll do it, don't you worry," replied the voice, and the cone dropped with a bang on the table, again making everybody jump.

"That brought the goose-flesh!" remarked "Wilbur," with humorous satisfaction.

I took a malicious delight in the mystification of my fellows. "Go down and shake up young Howard at the foot of the table," I suggested. "He is a little in the conjuring line himself."

Almost instantly Howard cried out: "The blooming thing is touching me on the ear!"

"Observe," called I, in the tone of a man exhibiting some kind of trained animal, "the cone is now at least six feet from the psychic's utmost reach. How do you account for that, Miller?"

"The boy lied," said Miller, curtly.

Howard was offended. "I'll take that out of you, old chap, when we meet in the street. I am telling the square-toed truth. I am not doing a thing but hold two very scared ladies' hands."

"Oh, come now!" I interposed. "If we are to be so 'tarnal suspicious of one another, we might just as well give up the sitting. If each of us must be padlocked, proof of any phenomenon is impossible."

A firmer hand now seemed to grasp the cone, and a deep whisper that was almost a tone came from it. "You are right," this new personality said, with measured and precise utterance. "We come with the best tests of a supremely important revelation; we come as scientists from our side of the line; and you scoff, and take it all as a piece of folly, as an entertainment. Is this just? No, it is unworthy men of science."

"You are entirely justified in your indignation," I responded. "But who are you?"

"My name on the earth-plane was Mitchell."

"I am glad to make your acquaintance, 'Mr. Mitchell,' and your rebuke is deserved. I, for one, mean to proceed in this matter seriously. What can you do for us to-night?"

"Be very patient. Carry this investigation forward, and this psychic will astonish the world. Do not abuse her; do not tax her beyond her strength." He spoke with the precise and rather pedantic accent of an old gentleman nurtured on the classics, and produced upon me a distinct impression of age and serious demeanor utterly different from the rollicking, not too refined "Wilbur."

"I will see that she is treated fairly, 'Mr. Mitchell,' but of course this is not a rigid test. Will you be able to permit conditions more convincing?"

"Yes, very much more convincing," he replied, slowly and ponderously, "but do not worry the instrument to-night. Narrow your circle; be harmonious, and not too eager, and you will be abundantly rewarded."

"Won't you tell me who you were on the earth-plane?"

"I was a friend of the father of the instrument," he answered.

The horn returned to the table quietly, and young Howard was the first to speak. "That is a fine piece of ventriloquism, any way you look at it," said he. "It is a nice trick to give that peculiar tinny sound to a whisper."

"So far as I can judge, so far as my sense of hearing goes (and I have kept my ear close to the psychic's face), Mrs. Smiley has not moved, nor uttered a sound. What is your verdict, Mr. Cocksure Scientist?"

For the first time Miller's voice indicated some slight hesitation. "I haven't been able to detect any movement on the part of the psychic," he replied, "but of course I can't answer for the rest of the company. The performance has no scientific value. In the dark, deceit is easy. Harris may be the ventriloquist."

"Why not accuse the arch-conspirator of us all, our director?" exclaimed Mrs. Quigg.

"You flatter me," I responded. "If I could produce those voices I would go on the vaudeville stage to-morrow. I give you my word I am acting in entire good faith. I am quite as eager for the truth as any of you.—But, hark! the cone is on the wing again."

The megaphone was indeed moving, as if a weak, unskilled hand were struggling with it, and at last it swung feebly into the air, and a whisper that was hardly more than a breath was directed toward Mrs. Quigg: "Daughter!"

"Are you speaking to me?" she asked, in a voice that trembled a little.

The answer was but a sibilant sigh: "Yes."

"Who are you?"

"Mother."

The answer was so faint that no one save Mrs. Quigg could distinguish the word. Almost at the same moment I caught the sound of other moving lips in the air just before me. "Who is it?" I asked. Like a little, hopeless sigh the answer came: "Jessie." This was the name of my younger sister. Then the cone dropped as though falling from exhausted hands, and I had no further message from this "spirit."

As we waited breathlessly the clear, silver-sweet voice of a little girl was heard by every one at the table. "Good-evening, everybody. I am Maud; I came with my mamma. I have come to ask you to be very kind to her."

"I am very glad to hear you, 'Maud,'" I answered. "Are there other spirits present?"

"Yes, many, many spirits. My grandpa is here; he is treating my mamma so that she will not be sick. Some one is here to see you, but is too weak to speak. My grandpa says 'we are trusting you.'"

With astonishing clearness this voice created in my mind (not as light would create it) the vision of a self-contained, womanly little girl, whose voice and accent formed a curious silvery replica of the psychic's, and yet I could not say that the psychic's vocal organs gave out these words. At last she said "Good-bye," and the cone was softly laid upon the table.

All of this was performed in profound silence. There was no sound in the cone, except that of the voice, no rustle of garments, no grasp of fingers on the tin; and though I leaned far over, and once more placed my ear close to the psychic's lips, I could not trace the slightest movement connecting her with the movements on the table. I had the conviction at the moment that she sat in a death-like trance at my side.

A few moments later the cone was jammed together and thrown upon the floor—a movement, I had learned to know, that announced that the sitting was ended.

While the sitters still waited, I said: "Now, Cameron, you may turn on the gas, but do so very slowly. Mrs. Smiley seems in deep sleep, and we are warned not to startle her."

When the light became strong enough to see a form, we found our psychic sitting limply, her head drooping sidewise, her eyes closed, her face white and calm. The cone was lying not far from her chair, separated into two parts. The threads that bound her to her seat were to all appearance precisely as at the beginning of the sitting, except that they were deeply sunk into the flesh of her wrists. Her chair had not moved a hair's-breadth from the chalk-marks on the floor.

A moment later she opened her eyes, and, smiling rather wanly, asked of me: "Did anything happen?"

"Oh yes, a great deal. 'Wilbur' came, and 'Maud,' and 'Mr. Mitchell.'"

"I am very glad," she answered, with a faint, happy smile.

Mrs. Cameron bent to her pityingly. "How do you feel?"

"Very numb, but I'll be all right in a very short time. My wrists hurt; your thread is very tight. My arms always swell. Please give me a drink of water."

As I held the glass to her lips I was conscience-smitten to think that for five hours she had been sitting in this constrained position—a martyr to science; but I deferred the moment of her release till Miller had examined every bond. I used a small pair of scissors to cut the thread out of the deep furrows in her wrist, and it took a quarter of an hour of chafing to restore her arms to their normal condition, all of which had a convincing effect upon the doubters.

Miss Brush was indignant. "I think it is a shame the way you have treated your psychic."

"Oh, this is nothing," responded Mrs. Smiley. "I'd be unhappy and uneasy if you didn't tie me. I'm like the old man's chickens (you've heard the story?): he had moved so much that the chickens, whenever they saw him put a cover on his wagon, would lie down and cross their feet to be tied."

After Mrs. Cameron had taken Mrs. Smiley to the dining-room for a cup of tea, the rest of us remained staring at one another.

"Now, which of us did that?" I asked.

"So far as the psychic was concerned, I don't see how she could have had any hand in it," said Miller. "But, then, it was all in the dark."

I had to admit that this diminished the value of the experiment. "But now listen," I said: "as we all seem to be suspicious of one another, I propose that we resort to a process of elimination. I shall take 'Mitchell's' advice and narrow the circle. Howard, you are a suspect. You are ruled out of the next sitting."

"Oh no," protested Howard. "That isn't fair. I did nothing, I swear!"

"You admit being a prestidigitator?"

"Yes, but I had nothing to do with this performance."

"Nevertheless, so far as conclusive proof is concerned, your presence in the circle invalidates it. Now I propose that Mrs. Smiley go to Miller's house, with no one present but Mr. and Mrs. Cameron and Mr. and Mrs. Miller. If we secure these same phenomena under Miller's conditions, we will then readmit one by one the entire membership of the society."

Mrs. Quigg resented being left out, and I pretended surprise.

"I thought from what you had said that these 'dark shows' were of no value?"

"The next one ought to have decided value if Professor Miller has any share in the test," she answered, quickly. "I believe in him."

"And not in me? That's a nice thing to say."

"I mean in his method. He is a cold, calm, merciless scientist. You're a man of imagination."

"Thank you," said I. "My critics would take issue with you there. However, if we get anywhere in this campaign we must begin with the smallest possible circle and slowly enlarge it. We hope also to increase the amount of light."

After some further argument, Cameron settled the matter by saying: "Garland is right; and, to show my own scientific temper, I rule Mrs. Cameron and myself out of the next sitting. That will put the whole problem up to Miller and Garland."

Miller and I walked away to the club together, pondering deeply on the implications of the night's performance.

"I don't see how it was done," Miller repeated. "Certainly she did not rise from her chair, not for an instant, and yet to believe that she did not have a hand in what took place is to admit the impossible. You have had other sittings with her, haven't you? You believe in her?"

"Yes, I think she is sincere, but possibly self-deceived. The fact that she is willing to put herself into our hands in this way is most convincing."

"There is nothing of the trickster about her appearance, and yet I wish she had permitted us to hold her hands to-night."

"Miller," said I, earnestly, "if you'll go with me into this experimentation with an open mind, I'll convince you that Crookes and Flammarion are the true scientists. It is the fashion to smile at Flammarion as a romantic astronomer, but I can't see now that he is lacking in patience and caution. For all his rather fervid utterances, he keeps his head and goes on patiently investigating. He has had more experience than even Crookes or Lombroso. For forty years he has been searching the dark for these strange forces, and yet he says: 'We create in these séances an imaginary being; we speak to it, and in its replies it almost always reflects the mentality of the experimenter. Spirits have taught us nothing. They have not led science forward a single step.... I must say that if there are spirits, or beings independent of us, in action, they know no more than we do about the other world's.' And yet as regards the physical facts of mediumship, he sustains all the investigators. 'These phenomena exist,' he says."

"Candidly, Garland, what is your own belief?" asked Miller, a few moment's later.

I evaded him. "I have seen enough to make me believe in Zöllner's fourth dimension, but I don't. My mind is so constructed that such wonders as we have seen to-night produce very little effect on me. They are as normal to me now as the popping of corn or the roasting of potatoes. As I say, I have demonstrated certain of these physical doings. But as for belief—well, that is not a matter of the will, but of evidence, and the evidence is not yet sufficient to bring me to any definite conclusion; in fact, in the broad day, and especially the second day after I have been through one of these astounding experiences, I begin to doubt my senses. Richet speaks of this curious recession of belief, and admits his own inability to retain the conviction that, at the moment of the phenomenon, was complete. 'No sooner is the sitting over than my doubts come swarming back upon me,' he says. 'The real world which surrounds us, with its prejudices, its schemes of habitual opinions, holds us in so strong a grasp that we can scarcely free ourselves completely. Certainty does not follow on demonstration, but on habit.' And in that saying you have my own mental limitations admirably put."

Miller plodded along by my side in silence for a few minutes, and then asked, abruptly: "What is the real reason that you keep up the fiction of the 'guide' when you don't believe in him?"

"For the reason that I think Mrs. Smiley honest in her faith, and that to be polite to the 'guides' is one of the first requisites of a successful sitting. Suppose the whole action to be terrestrial. Suppose each successful sitting to be, as Flammarion suggests, nothing but a subtle adjustment of our 'collective consciousness' to hers. Can't you see how necessary it is that we should proceed with her full consent? After an immense experience, following closely Crookes, de Rochas, Lodge, Richet, Duclaux, Lombroso, and Ochorowicz, Maxwell says: 'I believe in these phenomena, but I see no need to attribute them to any supernatural intervention. I am inclined to think they are produced by some force within ourselves—'"

"Just what does he mean by that?"

"I can't precisely explain. It's harder to understand than the spirit hypothesis. He himself admits this, and goes on to say that while he is certain that we are in the presence of an unknown force, he is convinced that the phenomena will ultimately be found orderly, like all other facts of nature. 'Therefore, in the critical state of research, the scientific problem, it seems to me, is not whether spiritism be true or false, but whether metapsychical phenomena are real or imaginary. Some future Newton will discover a more complete formula than ours,' he prophesies. 'Every natural fact should be studied, and if it be real, incorporated in the patrimony of knowledge.' He then adds, with the true scientist's humble acknowledgment of the infinite reach of the undiscovered universe: 'Our knowledge is very limited and our experience young.'"

"That is good talk," said Miller in reply, "but the question is, Does he really experiment in that condition of mind? An astronomer with his eye to a telescope is a highly specialized and competent being. An astronomer listening to whispers in the dark may be as simple and credulous as a child."

"I grant all that. But I see in it the greater reason why men like yourself should take up the investigation of these illusive and disturbing problems. These phenomena, as Flammarion says, introduce us into uncharted seas, and we need the most cautious and clearest-sighted scientists in this world as pilots. Will you be one of them?"

"You flatter me. As a matter of fact, I'm a very poor sailor," he answered, with a smile.

IV

If there is any one thing true in these manifestations of "spirit power," it is that the psychic is the agent for their production. Actively or passively, consciously or unconsciously, she completes the formula—her "odic force" is the final chemical which permits precipitation. Sometimes her will to produce, her wish to serve, hinders rather than helps. Often when she is most persistent nothing happens. Sometimes an aching foot or a disturbing thought cuts off all phenomena. For the best results, apparently, the psychic should be confident, easy of mind, and not too anxious to please.

I approached this sitting at Miller's house with some fear that it might end in disappointment to him and be a source of chagrin to Mrs. Smiley. The house was strange, our attitude intensely critical, and she was very anxious to succeed. It would be remarkable, indeed, if under these conditions she were able to meet us half-way. As we walked up the street together I did my best to reassure her.

"You may trust me fully, Mrs. Smiley," said I; "and Miller, though an inexorable scientist, is a gentleman. I am sure he will not insist on any experiment which will injure your health or give you needless pain. This is but our second sitting, and I, for one, do not expect you to be at your best."

"I hope we will have good work," she replied, earnestly, "but it is always harder to sit for tests. Tell me about Mrs. Miller. Is she nice? Will I like her?"

"She is very gentle and considerate; you will like her at once. I am sure she will be a help to you."

Her voice was very sincere as she said: "You don't know how anxiously I watch the make-up of my circle. It isn't because I am afraid of sceptics; I have no fear of those who do not believe; but each person brings such diverse influences, and these influences conflict and worry me, and then nothing takes place. I don't want to disappoint you and your friends, and that may hinder me."

The Millers occupied a modest little house far up-town, and were suburban, almost rural, in their manner of living. The chemist himself met us at the door, and, after greeting us cordially, ushered us into his library, which was a small room at the back of the hall. I observed that it had only one door and two windows, rather high up in the east wall—an excellent place for our sitting.

"So this is the den of inquisition," I began; and turning to Mrs. Smiley, I added: "I hope you are not chilled by it."

"Not a bit," she answered, cheerily.

As Mrs. Miller, a quiet little woman (not so far removed from Mrs. Smiley's own type), entered the door and greeted us both, the psychic's face lighted up with pleasure. This argued well for our experiment.

I could see that Miller had made careful preparation along the lines of my suggestion. A plain old table was standing lengthwise of the room, the windows were hung with shawls, and a worn hickory chair stood with arms wide-spread to seize its victim. After surveying the room, Mrs. Smiley turned to me with a note of satisfaction in her voice, and said: "I like this room and this furniture; I feel the right associations here. The air is full of spirit power."

"I am glad your mind is at ease," said I, "for I am anxious for a very conclusive sitting. You tell 'Mitchell' that Miller is decidedly worth converting. I want 'Wilbur' to do his best, for I intend to tighten the bonds on you to-night."

She fearlessly faced me. "I am in your hands, Mr. Garland; do as you like. Mr. Mitchell told me this morning that he would yet convince you of the reality of the spirit world. He is assembling all the forces at his command, and will certainly do everything in his power."

"I am delighted to get that assurance," I responded.

"You are to sit here," said Miller, indicating the hickory chair, which he had placed near the north wall.

She took her seat meekly, placing her hands resignedly on the wings of the chair. "I like this chair," she said, with a smile; "it is so old-fashioned."

"Now," said I, "I am going to ask Mrs. Miller to fasten this long tape about your ankles. We mean to take every precaution in order that you may not involuntarily or subconsciously move your limbs."

Under close scrutiny, Mrs. Miller secured each foot in such wise that the knots came in the middle of the tape, and to make untying them absolutely impossible, I drew the two ends of the long ribbon back under the psychic's chair and tacked them securely to the shelf of a bookcase about two feet from the hind legs. To loosen them was entirely out of our victim's power.

Miller then unreeled a spool of silk twist, and this I tied squarely to the arm of the chair at a point about six feet from the loose end which I intended to hold. I knotted the silk about the psychic's wrists, drawing it to a hard knot each time, and gave the spool to Miller, while retaining the loose end of the thread in my own hands. The psychic could neither touch the tips of her fingers together nor lift her arms an inch from the chair. She was as secure as if bound with a rope, but as an extra precaution I passed the thread beneath the chair-arm and pulled it taut. "This will enable us to feel the lightest movement of her hands," I said to Miller, who had copied my device. "Are you satisfied with the conditions?"

He answered, with some reservation: "They will do. I would like to have light, but that I suppose is impossible."

"No, not impossible," replied Mrs. Smiley, "but the work is always weaker in the light; the voices are stronger in the dark."

Mrs. Miller took her seat exactly opposite Mrs. Smiley. I was at her right. Miller, after turning out the gas, sat opposite me and at the psychic's left.

At first the room was black as ink, but by degrees I (from my position, opposite the window) was able to perceive a faint glow of light through the curtain. Mrs. Smiley's back was near a wall of books, and, the room being narrow, Miller's chair pretty well filled the space between the table and the window behind it. The action of a confederate was excluded by reason of the bolted door. To enter the room by the window was impossible, for the reason that the slightest noise could be heard and the least movement of the curtain would admit the light. Barring the darkness, conditions were all of our own making.

However, we were hardly settled in place when Miller was moved to further precaution. "Mrs. Smiley, I would like to pin over your dress a newspaper, so that any slightest movement of your knees or feet could be heard. Do you object?"

"Not at all," she instantly replied. "I am sure my guides will do anything they can to meet your wishes. You may nail my dress to the floor if you wish."

Miller turned on the light, and together we pinned a large, crisp newspaper over her knees and tacked it securely to the floor in front of her feet. The corners where the pins were inserted were well out of the reach of her tethered hands.

Again the lights were lowered, and at my direction Miller placed his right hand on the psychic's left and touched fingers with Mrs. Miller. I did the same, thus connecting the circle. In this way we sat quietly conversing for some time.

"I want to make it quite plain to you," I said to them all, "that I am trying to follow Crookes's advice, which is to strip away all romance and all superstitious religious ideas from this subject. I am insisting on the normal character of these phenomena. Whatever happens to-night, Mrs. Miller, please do not be alarmed. There is nothing inherently uncanny or unwholesome in these phenomena. No one knows better than your husband the essential mystery of the simplest fact. Materialization, for example, is unusual; but if it happens it cannot be supernatural. Nothing is supernatural. Am I right, Miller?"

"We explain each mystery by a deeper mystery," he replied.

"All depends upon the point of view. I am interested in these obscure phases of human life. If they are real they are natural. To me the spiritistic 'demonstrations' are intensely human and absorbingly interesting as dramatic material, and yet I hope I am sufficiently the scientist to be alive to the significance of these telekinetic happenings, and enough of the realist to remain critical in the midst of the wildest carnival of the invisible forces."

"Don't you believe in them?" asked Mrs. Miller, with a note of surprise in her voice.

I replied, cautiously: "I am at this moment convinced of the reality of some of these phenomena by reason of my own experiments; but leaving one side my personal investigation, I must believe that Crookes, Maxwell, and Flammarion are competent witnesses. As to spiritualism—well, that is another matter."

"But where does all this lead to if not to spiritualism?" asked Mrs. Miller.

"As to the exact country, no one knows," I answered; "but the best of our experimenters are agreed that the gate opens upon a new field of science. These powers seem to be in advance of us and not a survival, and they may prove of value in the evolution of the race. That is why I want to enlist men like your husband in the work. Mediumship needs just such critical attention as his. Nothing like Maxwell or Richet's thoroughness of method has ever been used by an American physicist, so far as I know. On the contrary, our leading scientific men seem to have let the subject severely alone."

"Why?" asked Mrs. Smiley.

"Partly because of inherited prejudice, and partly because of their allegiance to opposing theories; and finally, I suspect, because they are connected with institutions that would not sanction such work. You can imagine how the physical department of a denominational college would investigate spirit phenomena! It was much the same way in England during the early part of last century, but they are far in advance of us now. The first notable step in the right direction was taken—as perhaps you may know—in 1869, by the Dialectical Society of London, which appointed a committee to look into the subject of spiritualism, with the expectation, no doubt, of being able to stop the spread of the delusion.

"The investigations which followed were under the especial charge of Alfred Russel Wallace; Cromwell Varley, chief of Electrical Engineers and Telegraphers; and Professor Morgan, president of the Mathematical Society. This committee, after careful investigation, reported voluminously to this effect: 'The phenomena exist.... There is a force capable of moving heavy bodies without material contact, which force is in some unknown way dependent upon the presence of human beings.'"

"Which was a long way from saying that spiritism was true," remarked Miller.

"It certainly was sufficiently vague, you would think, to be harmless; but several of the committee refused to join in even this cautious report, insisting that the conclusions ought to be verified by some other scientist. They suggested Sir William Crookes, who was at this time in the early prime of his life and a renowned chemist—just the man for the work. This suggestion was acted upon by Crookes a little later, and his report on this 'psychic force' had a good deal to do with the formation of the now famous Society for Psychical Research."

"I'd hate to be held responsible for that," said Miller, with humorous intent—"of all the collections of 'hants' and witches."

"On the Continent scientific observation had already begun. Count Agénor de Gasparin, of Valleyeres, was one of the first to take up this problem of telekinesis in the modern spirit. He made a long and complicated study of table-tipping in 1853, and published his conclusions in two large volumes in Paris a year later. His experiments were careful and searching, and drew the line squarely between the supernatural and the natural. He said, positively, 'The agency is not supernatural; it is physical, and determined by the will of the sitters,' and may be called the Charles Darwin of the subject. A year later Professor Marc Thury, of Geneva, added his testimony. He also said: 'The phenomena exist, and are mainly due to an unknown fluid, or force, which rushes from the organism of certain people.' To this force he gave the name 'psyscode.' The spirit hypothesis, he was inclined to think, was not impossible or even absurd. He used absurd in the scientific sense, of course."

"It is the most natural thing in the world to me," said Mrs. Smiley. "I would be desolate without it."

"Some ten years later Flammarion, the renowned French astronomer, began his studies of these unknown forces, and for a long time fought the battle alone in France as Sir William Crookes endured the brunt of the assault in England."

Miller here interposed with a covert sneer in his voice: "Yes, but Flammarion has always had the reputation of being more of the romancer than of the astronomer."

"You scientists do him an injustice," I answered, with some heat, "just as you have all been ignorantly contemptuous of Crookes. I confess I used to share in some small degree your estimate of Flammarion; but if you will read his latest book with attention and with candor, you cannot but be impressed with his wide experience and his patient, persistent search for the truth. I am persuaded that he has been a genuine pioneer all along. I cannot see but that he has examined very critically the scores of psychics who have come under his observation, and his reports are painstaking and cautious. His work must be considered by every student of this subject. It won't do to neglect the words of a man who has seen so much.—But here we go along lines of controversy when we should be sitting in quiet harmony. Let us defer our discussion until after our séance. Have patience, and I believe we can duplicate, if not surpass, the marvellous doings of even Richet and Lombroso. We may be able some day to take flash-light photographs of the cone while it is floating in the air."

"Has that ever been done?" asked Mrs. Miller.

"Oh yes; Flammarion secured photos of a table floating in the air. These pictures show conclusively that the psychic had nothing to do with it—at least, not in any ordinary way. Richet succeeded in fixing the apparition of a helmeted soldier on several plates. Crookes photographed 'Katie King' and her medium once or twice, and Fontenay has succeeded in getting clear-cut images of the 'spirit' hands which play round the head of Paladino. But it must be confessed that in Crookes's pictures there is a lack of finality in the negatives. He never succeeded in getting the faces of both 'Katie' and Miss Cook at the same time—and Richet's photographs have a made-up look."

Passing abruptly to a low, humming song, I made the attempt to put our psychic to sleep. In a few minutes her hands became cold and began to flutter. At last she threw my fingers away as if she found them scorching hot. Miller's hand was similarly repulsed. She then seemed to pass into quiet sleep, and I said: "Withdraw a little, Miller, but keep your silk thread taut."

Almost immediately faint raps came upon the table, and I asked: "Are you there, 'Mitchell'?"

Tap, tap, tap—"Yes."

"Are we sitting right?"

Tap, tap, tap—"Yes," answered the force, in a grave and deliberate way.

"As to these raps," I remarked, "they are easily simulated, but they have been absolutely proven by several of our best investigators. They have been obtained on a sheet of paper held in the air, on pencils, on a strip of cloth, on an open umbrella—under every possible condition. Maxwell secured them by pinching his own ear or by squeezing the arm of his neighbor. I have heard them on a man's shirt-front. They are the first manifestations of intelligent spirit power, and may be regarded in the light of established fact."

"I wouldn't be hasty about admitting even that," remarked Miller. "In the dark—or in the light—these obscure sounds may seem very ghostly, and yet be due to purely physical causes."

We sat in silence for a few moments, and at last I asked: "Is any spirit present?"

Almost immediately a childish voice came from the direction of the psychic, apparently issuing from her lips. "Mr. Mitchell would like to have you tie the threads to the legs of the table."

"Are you 'Maud?'" I asked.

"Yes, I am Maudie," she answered. "Mr. Mitchell wants to try some experiment. He wishes you to tie the threads to the legs of the table."

I confess I didn't like the looks of this, but as a compromise measure I was willing to grant it. "If you don't object, Miller, we will do as the guides desire."

He hesitated. "It weakens our test. I don't understand the reason for the demand."

"I suggest we yield the point for the present. Perhaps 'they' will permit us to resume the thread a little later. I have found that by apparently meeting the forces half-way at the beginning we often get concessions later which will be of greater value than the tests we have ourselves devised."

Accordingly, I tied my end of the silk twist to the table leg at a distance of about twenty-six inches from the utmost reach of the psychic's hands. Miller did the same with his end. We then resumed our seats, and waited for over an hour.

During this time the psychic was absolutely silent and apparently in deep trance, and I was beginning to feel both disappointed and chagrined. Miller's tone was a bit irritating. I knew exactly what was in his mind. "I've fixed her now," he was exultantly saying to himself. "She can't do a thing; even her request to have the threads tied to the table does not avail her. Accustomed to have everything her own way, she fails the first time any real restraint is applied to her."

I was quite at the end of my confident expectancy, when the psychic began to stir uneasily and "Maudie" spoke complaining of the thread on her mother's right wrist. "It's so tight it stops the blood," she said. "Please loosen the thread a little. You may turn up the light," added the little voice.

While Miller gave me a light, I loosened the thread on her right wrist, which was very tight; but I tied a second thread about her arm in such wise that I would surely know at the end of the sitting if it had been disturbed. The table, I observed at the time, was more than two feet from her finger-tips. I called Miller's attention to this, and said: "She can't possibly untie these threads, and if she breaks them the sitting is invalidated."

Soon after the light was turned out "Maudie" requested that we all move away from Mrs. Smiley, down to the lower end of the table; and although Miller thought this permitted too much liberty of action on the part of the medium, I urged consent. "There are other sittings coming," I repeated once more.

Mrs. Smiley fell again into deep sleep, but nothing took place for a long time. During this period of waiting I told stories of my experience and the curious folk I had met in search for the true explanation of these singular phenomena.

"Have you ever witnessed any materializations?" asked Mrs. Miller.

"Yes; but none of it was of the sort that I could swear to. I mean that it seemed to me to be either downright trickery or subconscious actions on the part of the psychic, and yet I've seen some very puzzling phantoms. I am persuaded that a great deal of what is called 'fraud' arises from the suggestibility of the psychics. Lombroso speaks of this 'fixed idea' of the mediums, and their persistent, almost insane, attempt to produce the phenomena desired by the circle. You can understand how this would be if there is anything at all in hypnotism. Sometimes it all seems to belong to the realm of hypnotic visions. One medium helps another to build up this unreal world. Early in my career as an investigator I went to Onset Bay, where in July of each year all the spiritualists and 'mejums' of New England used to gather (do yet, I believe), and I shall never forget the singular assemblage of 'slate-writers,' 'spirit artists,' 'spirit photographers,' 'palmists,' and 'psychometrists' whose signs lined the street and pointed along the paths of the camp.

"In its way it was as dramatic a contrast of light and shade, of the real and the unreal, as this otherwise prosaic republic can show. There under the vivid summer sun, beside the glittering sea, men and women met to commune on the incommunicable, to question the voiceless, and to embrace the intangible. It was, indeed, such a revelation of human credulity as might well have overpowered a young novelist. From the warm, pine-scented afternoon air I crept into one of these tiny cabins, and sat with my hands upon a closed slate in order to receive a message from Lincoln or Cæsar; I slipped beneath the shelter of a tent to have a sealed letter read by a commonplace person with an Indian accent; and I sat at night in dark little parlors to watch weak men and weeping women embrace very badly designed effigies of their lost darlings."

"Isn't it incredible? Can you imagine any reasonable person believing such things?" asked Miller.

"Millions do," I replied.

"Please go on," entreated Mrs. Miller. "What happened to you?"

"Nothing really worth reporting upon. In that day of utter credulity no tests were possible, but immediately after my return to Boston I had my first entirely satisfactory test of the occult. I went with Mrs. Rose, one of our members, to sit for 'independent slate-writing'—that is to say, writing on the inner surfaces of closed slates. Up to this moment I was profoundly sceptical, but I could not doubt the reality of what happened. I took my own slates—the ordinary hinged school slates; but whether they were my own or not made no difference really, for the final test which I demanded was such that any prepared slates were useless. I'm not going into tiresome detail. I only say that while sitting at the table with both Mrs. Rose's hands and my own resting upon the slates I dictated certain lines to be drawn upon the inside of the slates."

Miller's voice expressed growing interest. "And this was done?"

"It was done. I had in mind the test which Alfred Russel Wallace had used in a similar case. He dictated several words to be written while holding the slates securely in his own hands. In this instance I asked for the word 'Constantinople' to be written. The psychic smiled, shrugged her shoulders, and replied: 'I'll try, but I don't believe they can spell it.' 'Draw a straight line, then,' said I. 'I'll be content with a single line an inch long.' She laughingly retorted: 'It's hard to draw a straight line.' 'Very well, draw a crooked line. Draw a zigzag—like a stroke of lightning. Draw it in yellow. Draw a circle.' She said no more, but became silent, and we waited without change of position. Remember that I was holding the slate during all this talk. It did not leave my hands."

"What were the conditions? Was it light?" asked Miller.

"It was about two o'clock of an afternoon, and we sat in the bay-window of the parlor. It was perfectly light. No one moved. The psychic sat opposite us, leaning back in a thoughtful pose. Her hands lay in her lap, and she seemed to be merely waiting. At last a tapping came upon the slate, and she brightened up. 'It is done!' she called, exultingly. I opened the slates myself, and there, drawn in yellow crayon, was a small circle with a zigzag yellow line crossing it exactly as I had dictated, and under Mrs. Rose's hands in the corner of the slate was a gayly colored bunch of pansies. There were messages also, but I paid very little attention to them. The production of that circle under those conditions overshadowed everything else. It was a definite and complete answer to my doubt. It was, in fact, a 'miracle.' I recall going directly to a meeting of the society and reporting upon this sitting. You will find the bald statement of my experiment in the minutes of the secretary."

Miller was silent for a moment, then asked: "You're sure it was done after you took the slates in hand?"

"I am as certain of it as I am of anything."

"How do you account for it? Of course it was a trick."

"Trickery can't account for that yellow line. The messages could have been written beforehand, but no trick of prepared slates can account for my dictated design. I have had other cases of slate-writing which were almost as inexplicable, and Crookes and Wallace and Zöllner, as you remember, were quite convinced by evidence thus secured. Crookes saw the pencil at work. I have never witnessed the writing, but I have heard it at work under my hands and I have felt it under my feet. I have had writing on ten separate pages in a closed Manila-pad held between my hands."

Miller seemed to be impressed by these statements. "I have always considered slate-writing a cheap trick, but I don't quite see how that was done—always providing your memory is not at fault."

"I would not place much dependence on my present recollection," I frankly responded, "but I reported on the case at once while my mind was most accurate as to details. Speaking further of these tricks, if you choose to call them such, I have had several failures, where the failure meant as much as a success. I have held two slates with a psychic (while we were both standing) when the creaking and scratching and grinding went on between my hands. I give you my word I was convinced at the moment of holding between my palms a sentient force. I felt as Franklin must have felt when he played with the lightning in the bottle at the tail of his kite. Once I heard the writing going on in a half-opened slate, but I did not see the pencil in motion. Some of these cases of 'direct-writing' are the most convincing of all my experiences. People ask me why I didn't talk with the spirits about heaven and angels. I was not interested in their religious notions. I kept to this one line—I wanted to see a particle of matter move from A to B without a known push or pull. I paid very little attention to 'trance-mediums' like Mrs. Piper; and although I saw a great deal of what is called 'mind-reading' and 'thought-transference,' I did not permit the cart to get before the horse. 'Independent slate-writing' interested me, for the reason that I could put the clamps on it. Materialization, on the contrary, is so staged and arranged for that to prove its genuineness seems impossible at present; but slate-writing under your hand is a different matter."

"I'd like to have it under my hand," said Miller, grimly.

"You can have it if you'll go after it," I retorted, "and you can have it hard."

Mrs. Miller was deeply interested. "Tell us more. Have you had other messages written in that wonderful way?"

"Yes, many of them. One of the most curious examples of this kind I have ever seen came to me in Chicago. It was a 'new one,' as Howard would say. Old Mr. MacVicker told me one day that there was a woman on the West Side who had a trick of producing independent slate-writing beneath the stem of a goblet of water—"

"Why under a goblet of water?" interrupted Miller.

"As a test. You see, nearly every one who goes to a psychic wants first of all to witness a miracle. Each seeker demands that his particular message shall come hard—that is to say, under conditions impossible to the living. His reasoning is like this: 'The dead are free from the limitations of our life, therefore they should manifest themselves to us as befits their wider knowledge of the laws of the universe, and especially is it their business to outdo the most skilful conjurer! Hence each man insists on locked slates and sealed letters. These the poor psychics are forced to grant. To be just to them, I must say that I have found most mediums fairly willing to meet any reasonable test; in fact, many of them seem perfectly confident of the inscrutable, and venture upon what seems to be the impossible with amazing imperturbability. All they ask is to be treated like human beings. They are seldom afraid of results. Sometimes they bully the forces sadly, and make them work when they don't want to.

"Well, this particular psychic ushered me into her back parlor (which was flooded with sunlight), and asked me to be seated at a small table covered with a strip of cloth. She was a comfortable, plump person, evidently from Kansas, in manner somewhat like the humorous wife of a prosperous village carpenter. I remember that we were rather sympathetic on various political questions. After some remarks on populism and other weighty matters, she filled a goblet with water, and, placing it upon a slate, passed it under the table with her right hand, asking me to put my hand beneath hers."

"There it is!" said Miller, with infinite scorn. "Always in the dark or under the table. No wonder Emerson called it 'a rat-hole philosophy.'"

"Suppose it's all the work of an 'astral' who can't abide the light?" I suggested.

"I know the theory, but I can't allow it."

"Why not? You permit the photographer his dark-room."

Then, with malicious delight in his petulance, I calmly continued: "I put my left hand beneath hers and my right upon the table. I could see her left hand lying in her lap, and as she turned sidewise to the table I was able to keep in view both of her feet. We held the slate so that the top of the goblet lightly touched the under side of the stand. The psychic was all accounted for, except the hand which was resting outspread on the under side of the slate. We sat for several minutes in this way, while she explained that 'they' would probably take words out of our conversation as a test, if I desired it. 'I am here to be shown,' I replied. She laughed at me, and on two different occasions brought the slate from beneath the table with writing under the stem of the goblet. This was all very well, but I said: 'A better test would be to have them write words that I dictate.'

"'I will ask them,' she said. She seemed to listen as if to voices inaudible to me, and at last said: 'They will try it.'

"Again we placed the goblet of water on the clean slate under the table, and while holding it as before, I said: 'Now ask them to write the name "William Dean Howells."'

"Almost immediately there was a decided movement of the slate—or so it seemed to me. A power seemed to wake on the slate, not through the psychic's hand, but independent of it. I heard plainly the scratching of a pencil, at the same time that the psychic's left hand and both of her feet were in full view, and at the same time that her hand was outspread, apparently motionless, upon the under side of the slate. In a few moments the scratching paused, and the psychic, with an embarrassed smile, said: 'They don't know how to spell the middle name.'"

"That is to say, she was the one who could not spell the name," said Miller.

"That's what I thought at the time, but I helped her out, and a moment later a decided tapping on the top of the table announced the completion of the task.

"As she slowly drew the slate out from under the table I was alert to see what had happened. The glass remained in the middle of the slate as before, with the water undiminished, and under the glass and confining itself to the circle of the stem were the words:

written as though acknowledging the barrier of the glass where its edge rested upon the slate."

"Wonderful!" exclaimed Mrs. Miller.

"Are you sure the writing was there as she drew the slate out?" queried Miller.

"Yes, I saw the writing as she was removing the goblet; and while with her left hand she drew a little circle around the outer edge of the stem I read the words. Now to say that the psychic wrote this with her finger-nail on the bottom of the slate and then turned the slate over is to me absurd. The glass of water prevented that. And yet she did it in some occult way. The transaction remains unexplained to me. I am perfectly sure she willed it, but how she caused the writing—the physical change—is quite another problem. Zöllner (I believe it was) secured the print of feet on the inside of a closed slate, and reasoned that only on the theory of a fourth dimension could such phenomena be explained. That reminds me of a sitting I once had with a young man wherein, to utterly confound us, the invisible hands removed his undershirt while his coat-sleeves were nailed to the chair."

"Oh, come now, you don't expect us to believe a miracle like that, even on your serious statement?" remarked Miller.

"I certainly do not," I responded, readily. "I wouldn't believe it on any one's statement. That is the discouraging thing about this whole business; you can't convince any one by any amount of evidence. A man will stand out against Zöllner, Crookes, Lodge, and Myers, discounting all the rest of the great investigators, and then crumple up like a caterpillar at the first touch of The Invisible Hand when it comes to him directly. This same young man gave me the most convincing demonstrations of materialized forms I have ever seen. In his own little home, under the simplest conditions, he commanded forth from a little bedroom a figure which was unmistakably not a mechanism. A lamp was burning in the room, and the young fellow was perfectly visible at the same moment as the phantom which stood and bowed three times."

"What did it look like?"

"It looked like a man's figure swathed in some white drapery. I could not see the face, but it was certainly not a 'dummy.' But come, let us see what the forces can do for us here to-night. I think we will need 'Annie Laurie' to clear the air of debate."

Mrs. Miller began the song, and we all joined in softly.

"Our newspaper is a trusty watch-dog," remarked Miller, significantly.

As he spoke the psychic began to toss and writhe and moan pitifully. Her suffering mounted to a paroxysm at last; then silence fell for a minute or two—absolute stillness; and in this hush the table took life, rose, and slid away toward us as if shoved by a powerful hand.

"So far as my hearing goes, the psychic does not move," I said. "Barring the light, this is a very good demonstration of movement without control. Every movement of the table our way removes it farther from the reach of the psychic."

"I hear nothing from the paper," confessed Miller, "and yet the table is certainly moving."

"I can believe this, because I have proved these movements without contact. In this case Mrs. Smiley cannot reach the table with her knees and her feet secured by tape nailed to the bookcase. You cannot believe she has gotten out of her skin. The newspaper is still on guard, and has uttered no alarm."

"It is very perplexing," Miller admitted; "but anything can happen in the dark."

"I admit it is very easy to deceive our senses, but the silk thread is not to be fooled."

Three times the table was urged in the same direction, each paroxysm of suffering, of moaning, of struggle, on the part of the psychic, being followed a few seconds later by absolute silence. It was in these moments of profound sepulchral hush that the heavy table lurched along the floor. It was a strange and startling fact.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked of the forces. "As a test?"

"Yes," the raps replied.

"How do you account for it, Miller?" I asked, with challenge in my voice. "My conviction is that we are confronting a case of telekinesis—not as convincing as Flammarion's, but still inexplicable. If that table has moved an inch, it is the same as if it had moved a foot. You should feel rewarded."

Miller did not reply; and even as he pondered the megaphone, which had been standing on the top of the table, began to rock on its base, and a pencil which lay beside it was fumbled as if by a rat or a kitten. In our state of strained expectancy this sound was very startling indeed.

"What about that, Miller?" I asked, in a tone of exultation. "Who's doing that? Last time you suspected Howard, now here you must suspect the psychic. The movement of that pencil is of enormous significance. How can she possibly reach and handle that cone?"

"She can't, unless she has freed her hands," he admitted. "Let us touch hands." I gave him my left hand, and sitting thus, with all hands accounted for, we entered into communication with the "spirit" that was busy in the centre of the table.

"Are you present, 'Wilbur'?"

Tap, tap, tap.

"Are you moving the table?"

Tap, tap, tap.

"To get it out of reach of the psychic?"

Tap, tap, tap.

Suddenly, with a loud bang, something heavy fell upon the table. Releasing the hands of my fellow-investigators, I felt about for this object and found that a book had been brought and thrown upon the table. A shower of others followed, till twenty-four were piled about the cone. They came whizzing with power, yet with such precision that no head was touched and the cone remained undisturbed. It was as if some roguish poltergeist had suddenly developed in the room.

"Miller, I find this exciting!" said I, after silver fell upon the table. "Suppose we ask 'Wilbur' to fetch some small object whose position you know."

Mrs. Miller then said: "There is a box of candy on a shelf back of Mrs. Smiley. It is quite out of her reach. Can you bring that to me, 'Wilbur'?"

Tap, tap, tap! was the decided answer, and almost immediately the box was placed on the top of the table and shoved along toward Mrs. Miller.

"That's a good demonstration," I remarked, and 'Wilbur' drummed a sharp tattoo of satisfaction.

At my request he then wrote his name on a pad while Miller waited and listened, his mind too busy with surmise to permit of speech. (He told me afterward that he was perfectly sure the psychic had wrenched free of her tacks and he was wondering how she would contrive to put herself back again.)

Finally I asked: "Are you still with us, 'Wilbur'?"

The force tapped smartly on the tin.

"Now, just to show you that the psychic is not doing this, can't you hold up a book between me and the light? I want to see your hand."

Instantly, and to my profound amazement, a book rose in the air, and I could see two hands in silhouette plainly and vigorously thumbing the volume, which was held about three feet above the table, and to the psychic's left.

"Miller," I said, excitedly, "I see hands!"

"I do not," he answered; "but I hear a rustling."

Swift on the trail, I called out: "Now, show me your empty hand, 'Wilbur.' I want to see how big it is." A moment later I exclaimed, in profound excitement: "I can see a large hand against the window, and, strangest part of all, the spread fingers are pointing toward Mrs. Smiley, the wrist is nearest you and at least six feet from the psychic. It is a man's hand. You are not doing this, Miller?"

"Certainly not!" he answered, curtly.

"This is astonishing! It certainly is a hand and much larger than that of a woman, and the wrist is toward you. It is still at least four feet from the psychic. Oh, for a flash-light camera now! I was perfectly certain that this is not the psychic's hand, and yet to admit that it is not is to grant the whole theory of materialization."

At last the shadow disappeared. The book fell. With a ringing scrape the cone rose in the air and the voice of "Wilbur" came from it life-like—almost full-toned, and with a note of humorous exultation running through it. "I told you I'd astonish you!" he said. "Don't get in a hurry; there's more coming."

For nearly two hours thereafter this "spirit voice" kept us all interested and busy. He was very much alive, and we alternately laughed at his quaint conceits or pondered the implications of his casual remarks. It was precisely as if a rollicking Western, or, rather, Southern, man were speaking to us over the 'phone. I asked: "Who are you? Is 'Wilbur' your surname?"

"No; my middle name. My family name is Thompson."

His characterization was perfect. He responded to every question with readiness and perfect aplomb. At times he played jokes on us. He bumped Miller on the head, and touched him on the cheek farthest from the psychic. At my request he covered Mrs. Miller's ear with the large end of the horn, then reversed and nuzzled her temple with the small end. She said it felt like a caress, as if guided by a tender hand. She had become clairvoyant also, and saw many forms about the room. I could see nothing.

"Tell us more about yourself, 'Wilbur'?" I asked. "Who are you? What did you do on the earth?"

"I was a soldier."

"In the Civil War?"

"Yes."

"On which side?"

"That's a leading question," he answered, with some hesitation.

"Oh, come now, the war is over!"

"I was on the Southern side. I am Jeff. W. Thompson. I was a brigadier-general."

"Where were you killed?"

"I was invalided home to Jefferson City, and passed out there."

"How do you happen to be 'guide' to this little woman?"

He hesitated again. "I was attracted to her," he said, and gave no further explanation.

"Mitchell" then came and said: "We are deeply interested in your experiments, Mr. Garland, and will afford you all the aid in our power. It is hard to meet your tests—hard, I mean, for our medium, but we will assist her to fill the requirements."

"Thank you. I don't see how any psychic could be more submissive."

Mrs. Miller, deeply impressed by all this, began to inquire concerning those of the invisible host whose names were familiar to her. It was evident that she, at least, was convinced of their reality.

Meanwhile, the movement of the cone interested Miller more than the messages. "How does she do it?" he exclaimed several times. "To touch Mrs. Miller means that the psychic must not only have free use of her hands: she must rise from her chair and pass behind me and the wall."

"The precision of the action is my amazement," I replied. "I've noticed this same thing many times. Apparently, darkness is no barrier to action on the part of these forces. That cone, you will observe, can touch you on the nose, eyelid, or ear, softly, without jar or jolt. It came to me just now like a sentient thing—like something human. Such unerring flight is uncanny. Could any trickster perform in the dark with such precision and gentleness? Of course this is not conclusive as argument, but at the same time it has weight. Whose is the eye that directs this instrument? Can you tell us, 'Wilbur'?"

A chuckle came through the cone. "I'm doing it."

"How can you see?"

"Day and night are all the same to me."

Miller held up his right hand. "Prove it; touch my knuckles!" he commanded.

After a moment's silent soaring the cone struck his left hand, which was farthest from the psychic, and a voice followed it with laughter, asking: "What made you jump?"

Before Miller had recovered from the surprise of this, the table seemed to be grasped and shaken as if by a man of giant strength—and yet the cone and the books did not shift position. Hands patted the pillows on a sofa at Miller's right, and one of these cushions was flung against his chair. The room seemed to swarm with tricksy Pucks. At last the cone took flight again, and moved about freely among the heap of books and over Miller's head, while a variety of voices came successively from it, some of them speaking to Mrs. Miller and some to me. Several of the names given were known to Mrs. Miller, and a few were recognizable by me. They all claimed to be spirits of the dead with messages of good cheer for friends on "the earth-plane," but they were all rather vague and stereotyped. Once I thought I could see the cone passing between me and the window, high above the table. It seemed to float horizontally as if in water. Some of the spirits were too weak to raise the cone—so "Wilbur" said; too weak, even, to whisper.

During all this time the psychic remained in trance—deathly still; but "between the acts" her troubled breathing and low moans could be heard. So far as hearing could define, she was still at the end of the table, where she had been placed at the beginning of the sitting. None of these movements occasioned the slightest rustling of the newspaper. When the cone was moving no sound was heard. The floor was of hard-wood, and, as one's hearing becomes very acute in the darkness, I am certain the psychic did not rise from her chair. She was, for the most part, silent as a dead woman.

The force expended on the table was very great, almost furious, and even if the psychic had been able to extend her foot or release a hand she could not have produced such movement, and if she had done so we could have detected it. Intelligent forces were plainly at work on the table, and writing was going on. So far as I was concerned, I was convinced that the psychic had externalized her power in some occult fashion, and that it was she who was speaking to us. It was as if she were able to will the cone to rise and then to project her voice into it, all of which seems impossible the moment it is stated.

At length "Wilbur" said: "Good-night." I rose, and Miller, eagerly, expectantly, turned the light slowly on. Mrs. Smiley sat precisely as we had last seen her. Her eyes were closed, her head leaning against the back of her chair. Her hands were fastened exactly as we had left them, and, strangest thing of all, the table was pushed away from her so that the silk threads were tight.

"Do you see that, Miller?" I exclaimed. "Will you tell me how that final movement was made? 'Wilbur' has given us an unexpected test. Even if she had freed her hands, she could not have tied the threads and returned to her bonds; and if she first returned to her bonds, how could she, then, have pushed the table away? The two things are mutually exclusive. Her feet are nailed to the floor, and the newspaper still on guard. Are we not forced to conclude that the table was moved by some supernormal expenditure of force? Her hands were here, the table there. Does it not seem to you a case of the 'psychic force,' such as Crookes and Richet describe?"

Miller was confounded, but concealed it. "She may have shoved the table with her feet."

"How? Your newspaper is unbroken. Not a tack is disturbed. But suppose she did! How about the books? Did she get the books with her feet? How about the broad hand which I saw? How about the candy-box which was moved from a point seven feet away? How could she slip from her bonds? See these threads, actually sunk into her wrists!" I continued. "No, my conviction is that she has not once moved."

"I cannot admit that."

"You mean you dare not!"

Mrs. Miller was indignant at our delay. "The poor thing! It is a shame! Unfasten her at once! You are torturing her!"

"Wait a few moments," said Miller, inexorably. "I want to make a few notes."

Meanwhile I took the psychic's pulse. It was very slow, faint, and irregular. It was, indeed, only a faint, sluggish throb at long intervals, and each throb was followed only by a feeble fluttering. Her skin was cold, her arms perfectly inert and numb, and she came very slowly back to consciousness. I had a conviction at the moment that she had been out of her body.

While I rubbed her hands and arms, Miller took notes and measurements. There were more than two dozen books on the table, and some of them had come from shelves three feet distant and a little above the psychic's shoulders. It was true she could have reached them with a free arm, but she had no free arm! The pad in the middle of the table was scrawled upon. "Wilbur" was written there, and short messages from "Mr. Mitchell" and other "ghosts." Therefore, it is of no value to say we were collectively hypnotized.

As she came to life, Mrs. Smiley complained of being numb. "My arms are like logs," she said, "and so are my feet. My 'guides' say that if you will put one palm to my forehead and the tips of your fingers at the base of my brain it will help me to liven up."

I did as she requested, and was at once conscious of great heat and turmoil in her head. It appeared to throb as if in receding excitement. I thought of Richet's observations (that in cases of materialization the psychic seemed shrunk and weakened), and narrowly scanned the helpless woman. She seemed at the moment small and bloodless.

"Were you conscious of groaning and gasping?" I asked.

"No, I have no recollection of anything. I am told I do make a great fuss, but I don't know it. Did anything happen?"

"A very great deal happened," I answered.

She smiled in quiet satisfaction.

"I'm glad. Mr. Miller has been good and patient; it would have been a shame to disappoint him. If you will only keep from being too anxious you'll get anything you want."

"That's what 'Mitchell' said."

Mrs. Miller patted her hands. "You must be very tired, poor thing?"

"I do feel weak, but that will soon pass away. What time is it?"

Miller looked at his watch. "Great Scott! It's after one o'clock."

"Absorbing business, isn't it?" said I.

Mrs. Miller invited Mrs. Smiley to stay the remainder of the night and took her away to bed, leaving us to measure and weigh and surmise. It seemed absurd—like a dream; and yet there lay the visible, tangible proofs of the marvel.

"Everything took place within her reach, provided she could have freed her hands," Miller repeated, as he sat in her chair and studied the books on the table.

"Miller," said I, with conviction, "that woman did not lift her wrists from that chair!

"I don't see how she did it; but to say she did not, is to admit the preposterous. I wish she had permitted us to hold her hands."

"I don't know of another psychic in America who would have submitted to the test we put upon Mrs. Smiley to-night, but 'Mitchell' has assured me he will go further: he will let us hold her hands and turn on the light. I feel as if the great mystery were almost within our grasp. By the ghost of Euclid! I have the conviction at this moment that we are at the point of proving for ourselves the elongation of the psychic's limbs! Suppose Flammarion is right? Suppose that the psychic can extend her arms beyond their normal proportions? You should be ready to give a year, ten years, to demonstrating a single one of these physical effects. If I am any judge of character, this little woman is as honest and as wholesome as Mrs. Miller herself. It isn't this one performance alone which proves it. It is the implication of a dozen other sittings, almost as convincing as this, that gives me hope of proving something. Let us have our next sitting at Cameron's. It is only fair to readmit them, for we have proven that they had nothing to do with our performance that first night. Let us ask to be permitted to hold the hands and feet of the psychic, and also to take a flash-light picture of the floating cone. We may yet see these ghostly hands in the light of the lamp."

Miller was shaken. I could see that. He sat like one who has been dealt a stunning blow.

"I don't believe it—I can't believe it," he repeated.

"Crookes got some photos of 'Katie King,' and I fully believe that Mrs. Smiley may be developed further. Anyhow, let's test her. Now for a word of theory. This is the way it all appears to me at this time. She seems to enter successively three stages of hypnotic sleep. In the first stage the 'spirits' speak through her own throat—or she impersonates, as Mrs. Harris did. Her second and deeper sleep permits of the movement of the cone—'telekinesis,' 'independent slate-writing,' etc. But in this final deathly trance she has the power of projecting her astral hands, whatever that may mean, and the production of spirit voices. Perhaps she has an astral head—"

"I don't believe a word of it! It is all impossible, monstrous!"

"Well, how will you explain this performance? What about the tacks, the threads, the tapes that bound her? She brought books, shook the table, touched us—How?"

"I don't know; but there must be some perfectly natural way of explaining it. There is no place for the supernatural in my world. She seems a nice, simple little woman, and yet this very simplicity may be a means of throwing us off our guard. I will give a hundred dollars for permission to hold her hands while the cone is moving."

"If you do not believe in tacks, will you believe in the touch of your fingers?"

"If she permits me to hold her and the cone moves I will surrender."

"No, you won't. You think you will, but you won't. Don't deceive yourself. I've been all through it. You can't believe until some fundamental change takes place in your mind. You must struggle just as Richet did."

"Anyhow, let's turn the screws tighter. Let's devise some other plan to make ourselves doubly certain of her part in the performance."

With this understanding I said good-night, and took my lonely way to my apartment.

It was deliciously fresh and weirdly still in the street, and as I looked up at the glowing stars and down the long, empty street my mind revolted. "Can it be that the good old theory of the permanence of matter is a gross and childish thing? Do the dead tell tales, after all? I wish I could believe it. Perhaps old Tontonava was right. Perhaps if we were all to pray for the happy hunting-grounds at the same moment and in perfect faith, the lost paradise would return builded by the simple power of our thought."

Then Richet's moving confession came to me: "It took me twenty years of patient research to arrive at my present conviction. Nay (to make one last confession), I am not yet absolutely and irremediably convinced. In spite of the astounding phenomena which I have witnessed, I have still a trace of doubt—doubt which is weak, indeed, to-day, but which may, perchance, be stronger to-morrow. Yet such doubts, if they come, will not be due so much to any defect in the actual experiment as to the inexorable strength of prepossession which holds me back from adopting a conclusion which contravenes the habitual and almost unanimous opinion of mankind."

V

At this point the sittings, which had begun so interestingly, suddenly began to fail of results. The power unaccountably weakened. Miller and several others of the circle believed these failures to be due to the increased rigidity of the restraint we had imposed upon the medium. The next "session" was held in Fowler's down-town office, against the hesitating protest of the psychic, who said: "The atmosphere of the place is not good." By which she meant that the associations of the office, with the hurry and worry of business, were in opposition to the mood necessary for the production of the phenomena.

"The real reason," declared Howard, "is this: we're now getting down to brass tacks in her business."

This was literally true. At Miller's suggestion a strong tape, perhaps half an inch wide, had been passed about the psychic's wrist and tied in a close, square knot, and finally a long brass tack was driven down through both strands of the tape into the chair-arm. This was in reality as secure as a handcuff. Nothing happened this night beyond the movement of the table and some rather weak raps, and we all rose from our seats worn and disappointed.

When we met the next night in the same place, and adjusted the ever-tightening bands upon the psychic, she sat helplessly for three hours. I began to lose confidence in her power to do anything beyond the ordinary. Howard, Mrs. Quigg, and Miss Brush dropped out before the sitting was over. Only Brierly and myself met the psychic at the Camerons' on the following Thursday. Again we sat patiently for long hours, with only the movement of the table and a drumming upon the top in response to our requests. Miller now said: "I would like to have one more sitting in my library, to see if we can duplicate the marvels of our previous séance."

We did not. The table alone moved, but it did this under absolutely test conditions. Over each of the psychic's arms a lady's stocking was drawn, and pinned to her dress at the shoulder. On each hand a luminous pasteboard star was fastened, and her wrists were tied and tacked, as before. Again we nailed her dress to the floor and covered her knees with a newspaper, and Miller and I held threads which were knotted to her wrists. Nevertheless, under these conditions the table moved while no one touched it, but always in a line away from the psychic. At the moment of the sliding of the table I closely watched the luminous stars, and asserted to the others that her hands did not stir. So that this movement, though slight, was genuinely telekinetic.

A very curious incident now cut short our sitting. Miller, who thought the left hand of the psychic was not in place, twitched the string which he held, and immediately Mrs. Smiley began to twist and sigh, and "Maud" complained that her mamma had been injured by the jerking of the thread by Professor Miller, and said that the sitting would have to stop. We lighted up and found the psychic apparently suffering keenly from a severe cramp all through her left side, and a good deal of rubbing was necessary to restore her to anything like a normal condition.

It really seemed like failure for my psychic, and I began to wonder whether the books really did fly from Miller's shelves. I could not suspect the gentle little lady of conscious deceit, but with a knowledge of the wonderful deceptions of somnambulists and hysterics, I began to doubt. I urged Miller to try one more sitting. He consented, and we met at Brierly's house. Nothing happened during the first two hours, and at ten o'clock, or thereabouts, Miller, Brierly, and Fowler withdrew, leaving me to untie and restore Mrs. Smiley, who was still apparently in deep sleep.

It was evident that the guides had not released the psychic, and "Maudie" soon spoke, asking me to put her mamma into a wooden chair, and to take the cone apart and put the smaller end upon the table. I did as she requested, and drew the psychic's chair and table together. "Wilbur" insisted that I tie the psychic as before, but I replied, rather dejectedly: "Oh no; let things go on as they are."

He insisted, and, with very little faith in the power of the psychic, I did as I was told. I tied her wrists separately and then together, and, drawing both ends of the tape into my left hand, I passed them under the tip of my forefinger in such wise that I could feel any slightest movement of the psychic's hands. The guides asked me to fasten her wrists to the chair, but I replied: "I am satisfied."

Again I was brought face to face with the mystery of mediumship. Sitting thus, with no one present but Mrs. Brierly, a woman to be trusted, the cone was drummed upon and carried about as if by a human hand. It touched my cheek at a distance of two feet from Mrs. Smiley's hands, and "Wilbur's" voice—strong, vital, humorous—came to me, conversing as readily, as sensibly, as any living flesh-and-blood person, and all the time I held to my tapes, carefully noting that no movement, beyond a slight tremor, took place in the psychic's arms. Just before each movement of the cone she shivered convulsively and sighed, but while the cone moved she was deathly still. Each time as the cone left the table it seemed to rock to and fro as though a hand were trying to grasp it, and a moment later it rose with a light spring. My impression was—my belief at the moment was—that Mrs. Smiley had nothing to do in any ordinary way with the movement of the horn. If there is any virtue in a taut tape and my sense of touch, her arms lay like marble during the precise time the voice was speaking to me. I could detect no connection between herself and the voice.

"Mitchell" assured me that he approved of every test we were putting upon "the instrument," and expressed confidence that she would triumph over Miller. "But the circles have been too often changed," he asserted, "and the places have not been well chosen. All must be unhurried and harmonious," he added, and I replied that I had been discouraged, but that this sitting had given me new interest. "I will be faithful to the end," I assured him.

"Wilbur" and "Mitchell" were perfectly distinct personalities, and appeared to confer and act together. I had a sense of nearness to the solution of the mystery that thrilled me. Here in the circle of my out-stretched arms the incredible was happening. I held Mrs. Brierly's hands, and controlled (by means of my tightly stretched tape) the movements of the psychic, and yet the megaphone was lifted, handled, used as a mouthpiece by "spirits." I felt that if at the moment I had been able to turn on a clear light I could have seen my ghostly visitors. This final hour's experience revived all my confidence in Mrs. Smiley, and not even another long series of absolute failures could destroy my faith in her honesty or my belief in her occult powers.

My patience was sorely tried by twelve almost perfectly useless sittings, during which everybody dropped away but Mr. and Mrs. Fowler, Dr. Towne, Brierly, and myself. They were not utterly barren sittings, but the phenomena were repetitious or slight and fugitive.

Mr. and Mrs. Fowler were friends of Brierly, and, like him, avowed spiritists, but they both lent their best efforts to make the tests complete and convincing. After trying sittings here and there, we finally settled upon a series of afternoon sessions in Fowler's own house. This was the twenty-sixth sitting of the series, and Cameron's Amateur Psychical Society was practically a memory. I was now going ahead pretty much on my own lines, but with an eye to catching Miller and the Camerons at a successful séance before concluding my search.

Mrs. Smiley was in great distress of mind over the failure of her powers. "I guess I'm no good any more," she said. "I never sit now without a feeling that perhaps my power is gone forever. This Eastern climate is so harsh for me, and I long for my own California. If you will not give up, I will keep trying as long as my guides advise it."

"You have done your part," I said, with intent to console her.

"Please don't give up," she pleaded.

"I am not giving up—on the contrary, I am only beginning to fight," I assured her, paraphrasing General Grant, or some other obstinate person. "I recognize the truth of what you complain about, but I am sure that at Fowler's, in a small, warm, well-aired room, you will feel at home and be secure of interruption."

Mrs. Fowler, a very sensitive, thoughtful, dark-eyed little lady, received us at the appointed hour with quiet cordiality, and suggested that her own room up-stairs would be a comfortable and retired place.

To this I agreed, and we set to work to prepare it for the sitting. Fowler and I assumed control of the psychic, though Brierly insisted that, as the house belonged to Fowler, it would be more convincing if he were not connected with the preparation of the room. "I don't think we need to consider hair-drawn objections," I retorted.

As before, we placed Mrs. Smiley in an arm-chair at one end of a small table; as before, we secured her ankles by looping a long tape about them and nailing the two ends to the floor behind her. Mrs. Fowler introduced an innovation by sewing the tape to the sleeves of our psychic. This made slipping out of the tape an impossibility, but, to push security still further, I drove a long brass tack down through both tape and doubled sleeve. Not content even with this, Fowler put a second tape about each wrist, to add further security and to take off the strain in case of any unconscious movement. Another tape was carried across Mrs. Smiley's dress about four inches below her knees, and pinned there. Next the ends were drawn tight and tied to the back rung of her chair. By this we intended to prevent any pushing action of the knees. As a final precaution, we nailed her dress to the floor in front with three tacks. The small end of the tin cone was then placed on the table (at the request of the psychic) and the large end deposited upright on the carpet near Fowler. Some sheets of paper and a pencil were laid upon the table. Everything movable was entirely out of the psychic's reach.

It was about three o'clock of the afternoon when, after darkening the windows, we took our seats in a little circle about the table. As usual, I guarded the psychic's right hand, while Fowler sat at her left. Brierly and Mrs. Fowler were opposite Mrs. Smiley. The room was lighter than at any other of our sittings—both on account of the infiltering light of day, and also because an open grate fire in the north wall sent forth an occasional flicker of red flame.

We sat for some time discussing Miller and Harris and their attitude toward the psychic. I remarked:

"To me our failures, some of them at least, have been very instructive, but the gradual falling away of our members makes evident to me how unlikely it is that any official commission will ever settle the claims of spiritualism. As Maxwell has said: 'It is a slow process, and he who cannot bring himself to plod patiently and to wait uncomplainingly for hours at a time will not go far.' I confess that the half-heartedness of our members has disappointed me. I told them at the outset not to expect entertainment, but they did. It is tiresome to sit night after night and get nothing for one's pains. It seems foolish and vain, but any real investigator accepts all these discomforts as part of the game. Failures are sure to come when the psychic is honest. Only the juggler can produce the same effects. A medium is not a Leyden-jar nor an Edison battery; materialization is not precisely a vaudeville 'stunt.'"

"I don't call the last sitting a failure," said Fowler. "The conditions were strictly test conditions, and yet matter was moved without contact. Of course, the mere movement of a table, or even of the trumpet, seems rather tame, as compared with the doings of 'Katie King'; but, after all, a single genuine case of telekinesis should be of the greatest value to the physicist; and, as for the psychologist, the fact of your friend, Mrs. Thomas, becoming entranced by 'Wilbur' was startling enough, in all conscience."

"I don't think Miller believed in her trance," said I.

"What happened?" asked Brierly, who had not been present at this particular sitting.

I answered: "Mrs. Thomas, a friend of mine, a very efficient, clear-brained person, whom, by-the-way, we had asked to come in order to fully preserve the proprieties, suddenly felt a twitching in her left hand, which was touching mine. This convulsive movement spread to her shoulder, until her whole arm began to thresh about like a flail in a most alarming way. The action became so violent at last that she called upon me for aid. I found it exceedingly difficult to subdue her agitation and silence her rebellious limb, but I did finally succeed. Nor was this all. A few moments later, while helping us in the singing, my friend suddenly stopped singing and began to laugh in a deep, guttural fashion, and presently a voice—the voice of a man, apparently—came from her throat: 'Haw! haw! I've got ye now! I've got ye now!' It sounded like 'Wilbur.'"

This seemed to amuse Mrs. Smiley. "It was 'Wilbur,'" she said. "He loves to jump in and seize upon some one's vocal chords that way. It's a favorite joke with him."

"What horrible taste!" Mrs. Fowler shudderingly exclaimed.

"Oh, I don't know," remarked Brierly. "It is actually no worse than having your hand controlled."

"To have a spirit inside of one's throat is a little startling, even to me," I admitted, sympathetically. "But there was more of this business. Another member of the circle—a young man—became entranced, and proceeded to impersonate lost souls, 'earth-bound spirits,' in the manner of our friend Mrs. Harris, and wailed and wept and moaned in most grewsome fashion. However, I think Miller considered both of these performances merely cases of hysteria, induced by the darkness and the constraint of sitting about the table. And perhaps he was correct."

"Anything a doctor doesn't understand he calls hysteria," put in Brierly. "I consider these specialists nuisances."

"Well, anyhow, our 'Amateur Spook-spotter Association' seems to have come to an untimely end," said I, regretfully. "Of the original number, only Brierly remains. Wouldn't our deserters be chagrined if we should now proceed to enjoy a really startling session?"

"We will," Mrs. Smiley responded. "I feel the power all about me."

"Good!" cried Fowler. "That is the way you should feel. If you are at ease, the spirits will do the rest."

"Sit back and rest," I said. "We have plenty of time. You've been too anxious. Don't worry."

In the mean while, between the sitting at Miller's house and this present one, I had been reading much on the subject of the trance and of "the externalization of the fluidic double," of which the Continental philosophers have much to say. If not convinced, I was at least under conviction that the liberation of the astral self was possible (if at all) only in the deepest trance, and I now attempted to discover by interrogation of Mrs. Smiley precisely what her own conception of the process was.

"You told me once that you are conscious of leaving your body when in trance," I said. "Do you always have that sensation?"

"Yes, I almost always have a feeling of floating in the air," she answered. "It often seems as if I had risen a few feet above and a little to one side of my material self, to which I am somehow attached. I can see my body and what goes on around it, and yet, somehow, it all seems kind of dim, like a dream. It's hard to tell you just what I mean, but I seem to be in both places at once."

"Do you ever have any perception of a physical connection between yourself and the sitters?"

She seemed to me to answer this a bit reluctantly. "Yes, I sometimes feel as though little shining threads went out from me and those in the circle, and sometimes these threads meet and twine themselves around the cone or the pencil. This means that I draw power from all my sitters."

This was in accord with the accounts of a "cobwebby feeling" which both Maxwell and Flammarion had drawn from their mediums. Maxwell makes much of this curious physical sensation which accompanied certain of M. Meurice's phenomena. Here also seemed to be an unconscious corroboration of Albert de Rochas's experiments in the "externalization of motivity," as he calls it. The "cobwebby feeling" of the fingers might mean an actual raying-out of some subtle form of matter. Indeed, M. Meurice, Maxwell's medium, declared he could see "a sheath of filaments pass from his fingers to the objects of experimentation."

"Tell us about your journeys into the spirit land," I suggested. "You sometimes seem to go far away, do you not?"

Her voice became very wistful as she complied. "Yes, sometimes I seem to go to a far-off, bright world. I don't always want to come back, but there is a little shining white ribbon that unites my spirit with my body and holds me fast. Once when I had resolved never to return, that little band of light began to tug at me, and, although it broke my heart to leave my children, who were there with me, I yielded, and came back to life. It was very cheerful and lovely in that land, and I hated to come back to the cold and cruel earth-plane."

"Can't you tell us about it more particularly?"

"No; it is so different from this plane that I have no words in which to describe it. All I can say is that it seems glorious and happy and very light."

Something in her gentle accent excited Fowler's sympathy. "Mrs. Smiley, you have the blood of the martyrs in you. It takes courage to put one's self into the hands of a cold-blooded scientist like Miller. Even Garland, here, has no pity. He's like a hound on the trail of a fawn. It's all 'material' for him. Now, I am nothing but a mild-mannered editor. I have all the facts I require concerning the spirit world. I am busied with trying to make people happy here on this earth. But these scientific 'sharps' are avid for any fact which sustains the particular theory they happen to hold. Not one in a hundred will go where the facts lead. Their investigation is all a process of self-glorification, wherein each one thinks he must prove all the others liars or weak-minded in order to exalt himself."

To this I could only reply: "I'm not a scientist, though, I must say, I sympathize with the scientific method. And as for my treatment of Mrs. Smiley, I am following exactly the advice of her controls. They assure me that they will take care of her."

"And so they will," responded the devoted little psychic.

By the closest questioning I had never been able to change a single line of her simple faith. She was perfectly certain of the spirit world. She had daily messages from "Wilbur" and her spirit father, partly by voices, but mainly by intuition. Her children hovered over her while she slept. "Mitchell" healed her if she were ill. "Maudie" comforted her loneliest hours. These voices, these hands were an integral part of her world—as necessary and as dear to her as those of her friends in the flesh. As she talked on I experienced a keen pang of regret. "Why disturb her belief in the spirit world?" I asked myself. "Why attempt to reduce her manifestations to natural magic? To rob her of her conviction that 'Maudie' is able to come back to her would leave her poor indeed."

However, as the scientist cannot permit pity to hinder his purpose, I was determined to disassociate the facts of spiritualism from the cult of spiritualism. I was not concerned with faith or consolation. I returned to a study of the facts as a part of nature. I was now observing closely the three levels of sleep into which Mrs. Smiley seemed to lower herself at will, or upon the suggestion of those in the circle. I had adopted the theory that in the lighter trance she spoke unconsciously and wrote automatically. In the second, and deeper, trance she became the somnambulist possessed of diabolic cleverness, when, with the higher senses in abeyance, she was able to deceive and to elude all detection. In the third, or death-like, trance, I was ready to admit, for the sake of argument, that she was able, as De Rochas and Maxwell seem to have demonstrated, to exert an unknown form of force beyond the periphery of the body—that is to say, to move objects at a distance and to produce voices from the horn.

To prove that she actually left the body would do much to explain the phenomena, and I was very eager to push toward this demonstration. I had now been her chief inquisitor for nearly thirty sittings, and had developed (apparently) the power to throw her into trance almost instantly. A few moments of monotonous humming, intoned while my hand rested upon hers, generally sufficed to bring the first stage of her trance. As we had been sitting for half an hour, I now proceeded to chant my potent charm, with intent to liberate the "spirits" to their work.

In a few moments she responded to my suggestion. A nervous tremor, now expected and now familiar, developed in her hands. This was followed by a slight, convulsive, straining movement of her arms. Her fingers grew hot, and seemed to quiver with electric energy. Ten minutes later all movement ceased. Her temperature abruptly fell. Her breath grew tranquil, and at last appeared to fail altogether. This was the first stage of her trance. "Take your hand away, Fowler," I said. "We have nothing to do now but wait. The psychic is now in the hands of 'Mitchell.'"

Fowler remarked, with some humor: "I can tell by your tone that you're still unconvinced."

"I'm like the Scotchman—ready for convincement, but I'd like to see the man who could do it."

After a few minutes' silence Mrs. Fowler asked: "What is the most conclusive phenomenon you have ever witnessed, Mr. Garland?"

"That's a little difficult to answer," I replied, slowly, "but at the moment I think the playing of a closed piano, which I once heard, is the most inexplicable of all my experiments."

"What do you mean by 'the playing of a closed piano'?" queried Brierly.

"I'll tell you about it. It happened during the second sitting I ever had with Mrs. Smiley. I was lecturing in her home town at the time, and after the close of my address, and while we were talking together, some one who was aware of Mrs. Smiley's mediumship suggested: 'Let's go somewhere and have a sitting.' The plan pleased me, and, after some banter pro and con, we made up a party of six or eight people, and adjourned to the home of the chairman of the lecture committee, a certain Miss Halsey. I want to emphasize the high character of Miss Halsey, as well as the casual way in which we happened to go to her rooms, for it puts out of the way all question of collusion. There was no premeditation in the act, and Miss Halsey, who was the librarian of the city, and a pronounced disbeliever in spiritistic theories, had never met Mrs. Smiley before.

"The circle was made up about equally of men and women, all of them well-known residents of the town. So far as most of the phenomena resulting from this sitting are concerned, they have very little value, for they took place in the dark and the medium was not closely guarded. It was only toward the end of the sitting, which, by-the-way, took place in Miss Halsey's library and music-room, that the unexpected suddenly happened, the inexplicable came to pass.

"We were gathered about a long table, with Mrs. Smiley at one end sandwiched between the editor of the local paper and myself. Behind me, and just within reach of my hand, stood an upright piano, with its cover down, but not locked. We had heard drumming on the table for some time, and writing had apparently taken place on the pads in the middle of the table. But all this was inconclusive, for the reason that Mrs. Smiley was not fastened as she is now. I took it all with a pinch of salt. My mental reservations must have reached the minds of the 'guides,' for with startling suddenness they left the table and fell upon the top of the piano. After drumming for some time, the invisible fingers seemed to drop to the strings beneath, and a treble note was sounded as if plucked by a strong hand."

"You are sure the piano was closed?"

"I am coming to that. Highly delighted by this immediate response to my request, I said to the 'forces': 'Can't you demonstrate to us that these sounds are not accidental or caused by the jarring of cars in the street? Can't you pluck the bass strings?' Instantly, and with clangor, the lower strings replied. Thereupon I said: 'Can't you play a tune?' To this only a confused jangle made answer. I was unable to secure any orderly succession of notes. 'Can't you keep time while I whistle?' I insisted, with intent to show that intelligence guided these sounds. The 'spirits' twanged three times in the affirmative, and when I began to whistle 'Yankee Doodle' the invisible musician kept perfect time, playing according to my request—now on the treble, now on the bass. Leaning far back in my chair, I placed my hand upon the lid of the closed piano, and called out to the others in the circle: 'The lid of the piano is closed. My hand is upon it. So far as the sense of touch and hearing are concerned, we have here an action absolutely unaccounted for by any scientific law.

"This was at the moment absolutely convincing to me, as to the others, and I promptly reported the case to the American Psychical Society in Boston. Since then I may say I have had many experiments quite as convincing, but never a repetition of this peculiar phenomenon. It is useless to talk about secret wires, or a mouse running up and down the strings, or any other material explanation of this fact. It took place precisely as I relate it, and remains a mystery to this day."

Fowler remained very calm. "Crookes saw in a full light an accordion playing beneath the touch of invisible fingers."

"Yes," I retorted, in protest, "but this action of a closed piano happened in my presence, under my hand, and there is always so much more convincing quality in the miracle which happens in one's own house. But, seriously, that performance on the closed piano remains a profound mystification to me. If it had happened in the medium's house, or in the home of some one who knew her, I might have suspected fraud—but it did not! It happened in the study of one of the most respected women in the city, a student who did not believe in psychic phenomena. Furthermore, my own hand was on the lid of the piano. I was so convinced of Mrs. Smiley's possession of some occult force that I at once wrote to the society, telling them that a study of her phases would, in my judgment, be the most important work its directors could engage upon. This is one of my crack stories, and I wouldn't believe it as related by any one else. However, you may read my report, which I made at the time, if that will be of any satisfaction to you."

"Oh, I don't need it," responded Mr. Fowler. "I was merely trying to find out what your best experiments had been. Have they all been on the physical plane?"

"They are all on the physical plane—that is to say, on one plane for me. Any 'spirit manifestation,' so long as we are what we are, must be an agitation of what we call 'molecules of matter,' and is to that extent physical. I have no patience with those highfilutin teachers who speak of matter as though it were ignoble in some way. Matter to me is as mysterious as spirit."

At this moment a slight movement of the psychic arrested me, and as we listened the silvery sweet voice of "Maudie" issued from the darkness, saying: "Mr. Mitchell wants Mr. Garland to change places with Mr. Fowler. Be very careful as you move about. Don't joggle mama. It's very dangerous to her."

As I rose to comply, "Maude" called out: "Mr. Mitchell wishes the threads fastened to mama's wrists. He wants you and Mr. Fowler to hold them the way you did at Mr. Miller's house."

Turning up the lights, we tied a strong silk thread to each wrist, and passed the ends under each arm of the chair. Fowler took one of these ends while I retained the other. I then called the attention of Brierly to the fact that the table was seventeen inches from the feet of the psychic, and that the fastenings were unchanged. When his examination was completed, the lights were again turned off, and the circuit of hands restored.

"Maudie" then requested that the pieces of cone be put together and placed on the floor beside the table. Fowler did this, and drew a chalk mark about it, numbering it "Position No. 1." Immediately after his return to his seat the table was strongly pushed away from the psychic. It moved in impulses, an inch or two at a time, until it was certainly six or eight inches farther from the psychic.

It is impossible to conceive how this movement without contact takes place; but, then, what do we know about the action of the magnet on a pile of iron filings? How can a thought in the brain of man contract a set of muscles and lift a cannon-ball? At bottom we do not know how the will, as we call it, crosses the chasm between mind and matter—we don't even know there is a chasm.

"Do you feel any motion in your thread, Fowler?" I asked.

"Nothing but a faint quiver," he replied.

"Neither do I, and yet the table moved."

"The table is crowding against me!" called Mrs. Fowler, in some excitement.

The fact that the table moved toward us and directly away from the psychic was in itself suspicious; but, as a matter of fact, at other sittings we obtained sidewise movements of the table—generally to the left. The present experiment did not stand alone. You must remember also that the table was at this time more than two feet from Mrs. Smiley's toes, her dress was tacked to the floor, and her ankles controlled by a tape whose ends were nailed to the floor four feet behind her chair.

"So far as matter can testify, Mrs. Smiley is not concerned in this movement of the table," I said. "The question is now up to us. Which of us is doing this?"

"I am not," answered Brierly.

"Nor I," declared Fowler.

"Nor I," chimed in Mrs. Fowler.

At this moment the psychic began to stir again. "Look out!" I called, warningly. "Let every hand be accounted for. Some new demonstration is preparing. These periods of suffering are strangely like the pangs of childbirth. I wonder if, after all, Archdeacon Colley was not in the right when he asserted that he had seen the miraculous issue of phantoms. I confess that when I read it first I smiled with the rest, for his description of the process was not very poetic. He declared that he saw a white vapor steam from the side of the psychic, like vapor from a kettle, forming a little cloud, and from this nebulous mass various phantasms appeared, ranging from a little child to a full-grown man. It is curious how exactly similar all the reports of this process are. Crookes speaks of a milky-white vapor which condensed to a form, and Richet and Maxwell describe it as a sort of condensing process. I have seen it myself, but could not believe in the evidence of my own eyes. One can see all kinds of things in the dark."

Peace had again fallen upon our psychic—the peace of exhaustion; as if, her struggles being over, her flesh-free spirit were at large in the room. The silence was profound, yet somehow thrilling with potency.

In this hush the megaphone was lifted slightly and dropped, making us all start. It was as if a feeble hand had tried to manipulate it without success. "Let us keep test conditions," I urged. "Please do not make a movement now without warning me of your intentions. Keep the circuit closed." Here I addressed "Wilbur": "Let's see if you can handle the cone under strictly test conditions. Come now, lift it! Lift it!" I repeated the command with intent to concentrate all will-power of both psychic and sitters upon the thing desired, as Maxwell was accustomed to do in his experiments with Meurice.

Several times the forces strove to carry out my wishes, but could not. Twice the horn rose from the carpet, only to fall back helplessly. Fowler placed it in position each time, marking each new position, while I took note of the convulsive tremor which swept from time to time over the psychic. It was exactly as if she were a dynamo generating some unknown electrical energy, which, after accumulating for a time in her organism (as in a jar), was discharged along the direction of our will, and yet I could not detect any marked synchronism of movement between these impulses and the movement of the horn.

After each fall of the cone she moaned and writhed, but not till the hush of death came over her did the horn move. So intense was the silence each time that we could hear the slightest breath, the minutest movement of the tin as it scraped along the rug.

"It is useless to talk of a confederate," I remarked; "it is of no value to refer this action to the hands of the psychic. We must look to subtler causes for this phenomenon. Perhaps Maxwell's theory that some magnetic power is liberated by the contraction of the larger muscles will account for it, but in no other way."

At last the megaphone soared into the air, passed over our heads, and dropped gently upon the table. It did not fall with a bang; on the contrary, it seemed to descend gently—as if under perfect control of both hand and eye. And yet I assert there was nothing to indicate that the psychic shared in these movements. She lay as still as a corpse. Nothing but a minute continuous tremor in the thread told that she was still alive. I was enormously impressed by the silence. The darkness seemed athrill with mystery—not the mystery of the discarnate soul, but the mystery of the X-ray. I felt that we were ourselves involved in a production of each and every one of these movements.

"There is no use attempting to deny this fact," I insisted to the other sitters. "Either the psychic is able to control that cone by the exercise of her will over some unknown invisible force, or she has left her body and is now at work, a sentient entity in the air about us. There is the same precision in all this which Lombroso observed. It really seems that the medium has the faculty of using her senses at a distance. To say that she is handling that cone with her ordinary physical limbs is absurd. This single inexplicable moving of a mass of matter from A to B makes the experiments of Crookes and Maxwell very much more vital to me. I shall reread their books with new interest."

This result should have awed me, but it did not. I felt a deep interest, of course, but no bewilderment. My mind was perfectly clear and my senses alert to every sound, every ray of light.

At this moment the psychic again began to twist and turn as if in pain, and at last the little voice of "Maudie" anxiously asked: "Is Mr. Garland going to take a train at seven o'clock?"

This query convinced me that deep in the subconscious mind of the psychic lay the knowledge that I had thought of catching this train, and that a sense of my plan was disturbing her and interfering with our experiment. To remove the uneasiness, I replied: "No, I am going to stay; for I think 'Mr. Mitchell' has something very special in store for me. Tell her not to think of it any more. I am in no hurry. I have no appointment elsewhere."

To this "Maudie" replied: "Mr. Mitchell says, 'Thank you'; he will do the best he can for you. He says go down-stairs now and get your supper. Leave mama just where she is. He will take care of her."

As we had been sitting for nearly three hours in a dark close room we welcomed this suggestion from our thoughtful guide, although it tended to make the sitting less conclusive. As I followed my hostess down the stairs I shared her remorseful pity of poor Mrs. Smiley, bound and helpless in her inquisitorial seat. "Mitchell" did not ask that she be fed, only that she be covered with a shawl to keep her warm.

"If she is doing this for her own entertainment," I said, "she has singular tastes. If she is doing it to advance the cause of spiritualism, she is a noble creature—though a mistaken devotee, in the eyes of Miller."

Our hostess's uneasiness concerning the psychic made the meal a hurried one. None of us felt very much like eating, and I could see that Fowler was disposed to cut corners. "Well, Garland, what do you intend to do with the facts obtained this afternoon? You have plenty of authority behind which to shelter yourself. Why not admit the truth? So far as I am concerned, I am willing to swear that Mrs. Smiley had no actual hand in the movement of the cone."

To this I replied: "From one point of view, these phenomena are slight; but considered in the light of the manifestation of a totally new force, they are tremendous in their implication, and I must be absolutely sure of them before I assert their truth. The most impressive fact of all is that every phenomenon we obtain coheres with those obtained by Maxwell, Crookes, and Flammarion. It will not do to admit the spirit hypothesis, or grant the objectivity of phantasms, merely because we have proved the movements of a particle of matter from A to B without a known push or a pull, for such admission is far-reaching. If Maxwell is right, these phenomena—even the most complicated of them—are metapsychical, but perfectly normal. For example, he says: 'A movement without contact was forthcoming this afternoon. I placed a table upside down on a linen sheet. M. Meurice and I then put our hands on the sheet, some distance away from the table. The table turned completely over. The movement was performed slowly and gently. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, and the sunlight was streaming in through an open window.' Now here was a perfectly clear case of telekinesis, with no one present but Dr. Maxwell and his friend; but the turning over of the table does not imply the action of spirit hands."

"I don't see why not," responded Mrs. Fowler, "if Dr. Maxwell had mediumistic power."

"It was Meurice who had the power; but it was a physical power, which went out from his organism like heat. He was often ill after his experiments, and felt nausea and a disturbing weakness in the solar plexus, as though his bodily powers had been seriously drawn upon. I have felt this myself—or so it seemed; perhaps I imagined it."

Fowler struck in: "But what will you do with materializations such as Dr. Richet studied at the Villa Carmen in Algiers? What will you do with the photographs of the spectre of the helmeted soldier which he obtained under what he declares were test conditions?"

"But were they? That's the point."

"I am willing to trust a man of Richet's wide knowledge and known skill in experimentation. When he says he saw, touched, and heard the apparition of a man, I am ready to believe that he had taken quite as many precautions as his newspaper critics would have done. He saw a helmeted soldier leave the séance cabinet and walk about. He clasped his hand, he affirmed, and found it warm and jointed (perfectly real), and he secured the breath of this phantom in a tube of baryta so unmistakably that the liquid was chemically changed in accordance with his test. There are thousands of other well-authenticated cases of materialization. I have seen scores of them myself. I am only quoting Richet because I know you believe in his methods."

"I do, indeed; but he may have been deceived, all the same. The failure of all his experiments in Algiers lay in the fact that he was never able to nail his psychic down, as we have done. He was the on-looker, after all—not the experimenter he should have been and wished to be. Really his photographs of the spirit 'B. B.' have not the weight as evidence of the physical manifestation, as the phenomena which we have this evening secured."

Fowler rose. "I have his report in my library. Let me get it."

He returned in a few minutes with a small blue book in his hand, from which he began to read with gusto: "'I saw, as it were, a white luminous ball floating over the floor; then rising straight upward, very rapidly, as though issuing from a trap-door, appeared B. B., born, so to speak, out of the flooring outside the curtain, which had not stirred. He tries, as it seems to me, to come among us, but he has a limping, hesitating gait. At one moment he reels as if about to fall, limping on one leg; then he goes toward the opening of the curtains of the cabinet. Then, without (as I believe) opening the curtains, he sinks down, disappears into the floor.'"

"What are you reading from?" I asked.

"I am reading from the report which Richet made to the Annals of Psychical Science. He goes on to say: 'It appears to me that this experiment is decisive, for the formation of a luminous spot on the ground, which then changes into a living and walking being, cannot seemingly be produced by any trick. On the day after this experiment I minutely examined the flagstones [which made up the floor of the séance room], and also the coach-house and stable immediately under that part of the kiosque.' There was no trap-door, and the cobwebs on the roof of the stable were undisturbed. The photographs of the apparition were taken on five different plates simultaneously, and the figure is the same on each."

"Yes; but those experiments were afterward made of no value by the confession of a coachman, who admitted his complicity in the fraud."

"No; that story is not true. The experiments stand, and Richet still defends both himself and the circle against the charge of fraud."

"But read on," I insisted. "Does he not say that, in spite of all his proof, he will not even hazard an affirmation of the phenomena?"

"Yes, he does say that," admitted Fowler; "but he also says: 'I have thought it my duty to mention these facts in the same way as Sir William Crookes thought it his duty in more difficult times to report the history of "Katie King." I do not believe I have been deceived. I am convinced that I have been present at realities, not deceptions. Certainly I cannot say in what materialization consists. I am only ready to maintain that there is something profoundly mysterious in it, which will change from top to bottom our ideas on nature and on life.'"

"He apparently was profoundly affected by what he saw," I assented, "and I am perfectly willing to grant that the character of his friends in the circle add value to what he saw. But, after all, the fact of materialization is so tremendous in its implications that even to admit its possibility is to admit more than any man of our day, who has been trained in scientific ways, is willing to be answerable for. However, the most extraordinary story I have ever read is that of Archdeacon Colley, Rector of Stockton, Warwickshire, who declared in a public lecture—and many times since, over his signature—that he saw the miraculous issue of phantoms born directly from the side of a psychic. He declares he saw a winsome little girl emerge—a laughing, golden-haired creature, as alive as any one. I confess that this is too much for me, and yet if a Spanish soldier can be born from a spot of light, anything at all that anybody may imagine can happen.—But let us return to our own psychics."

We found Mrs. Smiley sitting precisely as we left her, and, picking up our thread, Fowler and I located the table and the cone and reassumed our positions. The table, which was quite out of reach of Mrs. Smiley's hands, now stood with its end toward the three of us, sitting in a crescent shape opposite the psychic—a position which produced, so the guides said, one pole of a battery.

Hardly were we seated in our places when the psychic suddenly awoke and spoke in her natural voice, and I for one felt that the sitting was over. I was perfectly certain that nothing could happen out of the ordinary unless the medium were in either one or the other of her states of trance.

I was now both amazed and delighted to find that the cone could be drummed upon and voices delivered through it while Mrs. Smiley, mentally normal, took part in the conversation. My theories were upset. I was completely mystified, though I said nothing of this to Fowler.

Once or twice Mrs. Fowler declared she heard the sound of lips, and at last a voice came to her speaking the name of her father. His voice answered some of her questions correctly, but could not utter the pet name which her father used to call her. This breakdown of the individuality of the phantom voices is very characteristic. This ended the sitting. The voices had not been as strong as we had hoped for, but as we threw on the light we found a number of messages written upon the sheets of paper which Fowler had put in the middle of the table. These messages were lying with the writing wrong side up, so far as the psychic was concerned. Altogether we felt that the results were both significant and encouraging, and we agreed to meet three days later in the same room and under the same conditions.

"What I want to do now is to hold your arms while the horn is in the air, or while the writing is going on," I said to Mrs. Smiley.

And to this she replied: "You may make any test you please. I feel that in this house my powers will return."

"That is a real gain," I said, to encourage her.

VI

The next sitting was an almost exact duplication of the last so far as the binding (and nailing) of the psychic was concerned, except that we sewed two bands of tape to her sleeves and four tacks were used at each wrist. Her feet were tied separately in the middle of a long tape, and the ends brought together, carried back beneath her chair, and tacked to the floor. As before, we placed the large end of the cone on the floor, out of her reach, leaving the smaller end on the table, which we left just out of her utmost reach. On the table we placed some sheets of paper specially marked and dated, and took our seats as usual.

No one was present at this sitting but Mr. and Mrs. Fowler and myself. Even the faithful Brierly had been unable to share in this, the twenty-ninth experiment. I was delighted to have the circle narrow down, for Fowler was a good investigator and a man of vast experience in psychic matters. Outside interference was absolutely excluded. "Whatever happens to-night, Fowler," I said, "you and I or the spirits must be responsible for it."

We began, as usual, by putting Mrs. Smiley into hypnotic sleep. In a few moments the familiar shuddering action took place. Her palms grew moist. She said she found it difficult to submit to our touch. She asked us to put our fingers above hers, and soon after, in the midst of our singing, her voice ceased, her hands grew heavy as lead, and lay perfectly limp and dead in their bonds.

Again following the guidance of the raps, Fowler and I moved back and sat opposite her, with Mrs. Fowler between us. "Maudie" then spoke from the psychic's lips, asking us to move the table farther away. This I did, leaving it at least twelve inches from the utmost tips of her fingers. "Maudie" then asked us to take up the larger half of the cone and unite it with the smaller part, and lay the entire cone flat across the table.

We did so, marking its position by means of chalk. It was nearly three feet from the utmost extension of the psychic's hands, and yet, almost immediately, tapping came upon the cone keeping time to our singing. Later, sounds were produced like the beating of a kettle-drum. A hammering was then carried on as if within the cone, and "Maudie" spoke, telling us to go down and get supper, as before.

I regretted this necessity very much, for up to this moment all had been clear sailing; the tapping on the cone was inexplicable on the basis of any normal action of the psychic; but to leave her alone, even while so well accounted for, weakened the test.

I said as much to Fowler as we sat at the dinner-table. He admitted his own disappointment. "However," he added, philosophically, "we have to take these things as they offer. We can't construct them."

We discussed the implications of the sittings we had already held. "It isn't one thing only," he reminded me; "it is because of the larger fact that one phenomenon supports another that one comes to believe. Thus far to-night we have proved that Mrs. Smiley is not concerned with the drumming on the cone, haven't we?"

"Yes; but I want to hold her hands while the drumming takes place. I want to hear her voice at the same time with 'Mitchell's.'"

"We'll get it," he responded, confidently. And a little later we returned to the room where our psychic was sitting, still in deep trance.

After some moments of waiting, "Maudie" said: "Mr. Mitchell says take the table away and put the cone in its place."

We moved the table a short distance to the left, and I put the cone in the centre of the rug where the table had stood, and marked the position of the cone. The psychic then passed through a period of suffering, of effort, but nothing took place. Again "Maudie" spoke, asking us to restore the table and cone to their former positions. "Evidently the experiment designed by 'Mitchell' has failed," I said, "but these failures instruct us."

A convulsive restlessness again seized upon the psychic, and "Maudie" asked us to sing. I hummed softly, in order to hear anything that might take place. A minute clicking sound at once developed, as though some one were lightly beating the cone with a key. These clicks answered our questions. It was "Wilbur" once more. I asked him if he were going to be able to speak to us, and he tapped "Yes." Soon after this the cone was swung into the air and "Wilbur's" throaty whisper was heard. I asked him if the psychic could not be awake and speak while he was present, and he answered: "Yes; we have planned that."

Even as he spoke Mrs. Smiley passed into what seemed like a struggle for breath and awoke!

"Are you with us, Mrs. Smiley?" asked Fowler.

"Yes. What time is it?"

"About half-past eight. How do you feel?"

"Very numb and cold," she answered, plaintively.

"I don't wonder at that," I remarked. "You've been sitting there for five hours."

"Is anybody present?" she asked, anxiously.

I knew what she meant, and answered: "Yes, 'Wilbur' is here—or was a few moments ago. Are you still with us, 'Wilbur'?"

A rapping on the cone made vigorous answer, and a few seconds later the cone took flight and "Wilbur's" voice resumed general conversation with us. It was noticeable to me all through this sitting, as at others, that neither "Wilbur" nor "Mitchell" nor "Maud" ever addressed the psychic; they spoke of her, but never to her.

I requested further tests. "'Wilbur,' I want the privilege of going to the psychic's side. I don't like this long-distance experiment. I want to get closer to these facts—if they are facts."

"You shall have the privilege," was the reassuring answer.

"Shall I go now?"

There was no reply through the horn, but a tapping on the table gave a doubtful "Yes," and I crept slowly forward and took a seat at Mrs. Smiley's right hand. "I am very close to the ultimate mystery, Mrs. Smiley," I said, as I placed my hand upon her wrist. "Proceed, 'Wilbur.' Let me hear your voice now."

With tense expectation, I put my ear close to the psychic's lips and listened breathlessly. The horn soared into the air and was drummed there, as if to show that it was out of the reach of the psychic, but no voice came from it! This was a disappointment to me, as well as to Fowler, and I banteringly said: "You know this failure is suspicious, Wilbur.' It seems to indicate that Mrs. Smiley is only a wonderful ventriloquist, after all. Can't you prove that she is independent of your voice? Can't you do something decisive at this moment?"

No reply came to this; but while my hand was firmly pressed upon her wrist (both sleeves being nailed to the chair), the loose leaves of the paper in the centre of the table were whisked away to the left. I could follow their flight, and we all heard their deposition on a couch in a corner of the room.

"Fowler," I said, "are you controlling your wife's hands?"

"Yes; we had nothing to do with that noise."

This was another tense moment, for the movement of those papers was very ghostly indeed. We had demonstrated clearly that their movement was supernormal.

"May I come forward?" asked Fowler.

Tap—"No," was the decided answer.

I then asked: "'Wilbur,' do you want me to change with Fowler and control Mrs. Fowler's hands?"

An emphatic "Yes" was rapped in reply.

"They seem as anxious for a conclusive test as we are," remarked Fowler. "Did you mean you didn't want Mrs. Fowler unaccounted for?"

A perfect fusillade of raps followed: "Yes, yes, yes."

Fowler then came forward to Mrs. Smiley's left, while I returned to the table. Taking both of Mrs. Fowler's hands in mine, and setting the toes of my shoes upon hers, I awaited developments. At this moment, while Fowler was pressing the psychic's imprisoned wrists, the cone banged about most furiously, describing wide circles entirely out of Mrs. Smiley's reach. This action was another perfectly convincing test of the psychic's supernormal powers. As the same movement had taken place with each of us in control of the psychic, each was absolved from any complicity in the matter; but I did not forget my further test. "Mrs. Smiley," I said, "I want Mr. Fowler to return to his seat, and I want to place my hand over your lips—or to muffle you in some way. I must prove that you have nothing to do with the production of those voices. Will you permit this test?"

"Certainly," she answered, with patient sweetness. "You may gag me in any way you please. I am perfectly sure you can secure the proof you want." Upon this hint I acted. Taking a large kerchief from my pocket, I tied it tightly around her mouth, knotting it at the back, and then, in growing excitement, challenged the ghostly voice: "Now, 'Wilbur,' let's hear from you."

A moment later the voice came from the cone, but apparently very much muffled and blurred. "You are not articulating well," I rather sarcastically observed.

Instantly the voice came out clearly, more sharply than ever before. "I was fooling you!" jeered "Wilbur."

We all applauded. "There, that's better," I said. "Your voice improved wonderfully."

"Wilbur" chuckled with glee. "I've taken a lozenge," he whimsically retorted, expressing a very human delight in our mystification.

Fowler then said: "Now let's consider this a moment, Garland. Suppose Mrs. Smiley has been able to loosen the gag. How does she handle the cone? We will suppose she is a marvellous ventriloquist. How does she write on the pads on the table, and how does she whisk them away? You see, it isn't the matter of one thing, but of all that has happened."

"Yes, I admit that everything points to an exercise of supernormal force. It really looks, so far as anything in the dark can look, like spirits, but I prefer to think Mrs. Smiley has the power to project her will in some way."

"I don't see how we are going to escape the spirit hypothesis," replied Fowler.

"'Mitchell,'" I said, addressing the phantom, "I want to examine that gag, and I want to hold both hands of the psychic. Will you permit that?"

There was no reply to this, and Fowler offered an explanation: "We had that test at a previous sitting."

I explained to the invisible ones: "'Wilbur,' it is absolutely essential that you should prove to me that your voice is not dependent upon the vocal chords of the psychic. You see the importance of this, do you not, Mrs. Smiley?"

"Indeed, I do," she earnestly answered, her voice sounding very faint and muffled through the kerchief. "I am anxious for the test."

"Very well, then. Now I want you to sing a song, and while you are singing I am going to insist on 'Wilbur's' speaking. Will you do that, 'Wilbur'?" The cone was drummed upon as if in vigorous promise of success.

Mrs. Smiley sang, or rather hummed; but there was no response on the part of the ghostly voices, and a moment later she called, faintly: "The kerchief is slipping down, Mr. Garland."

I rose and went to her side. As I untied the kerchief, she said, plaintively: "I am sorry we didn't get the voices. I am sure we can if we try again. Please try again." And a vigorous drumming on the cone seemed to second her plea.

However, it was getting very late, and I said: "I think we will postpone further experiment to-night. What are your sensations now?"

"I am almost paralyzed, and still deaf, too, but that often happens. My feet are as if they did not exist."

"But your mind is perfectly normal?"

"Yes, it seems to be."

Soon after this I returned to my seat; the cone was lifted high into the air silently, broken apart, and then, with the small end jangling inside the larger one, was carried over the table and back to the floor. It fell with a bang that seemed final and decisive. "That is 'good-bye,'" said Mrs. Smiley.

Upon lighting the gas we found our victim as before, sitting absolutely as we had left her. The table edge was twenty-four inches from her finger-tips. The place where the cone lay, which we had marked with chalk when it was first drummed upon, was thirty-six inches from one hand and forty inches from the other. But the most inexplicable of all—the tangible, permanent record—was the seven sheets of paper which were lying upon a couch six feet from Mrs. Smiley's left hand. They were all written upon legibly, and pinned together with a black pin, which had been thrust through the writing. "Wilbur" had scrawled his name, Mrs. Fowler's father's name was signed to a message, and there were other signatures unknown to any of us. The pencil was on the carpet, forty inches from Mrs. Smiley's hand. The leaves of paper, at the moment when they were grasped and lifted, were more than forty inches from her finger-tips. How this was done I do not know: but of this I am absolutely sure: the psychic did not remove them from the table by means of her ordinary, material limbs. Barring the failure to disassociate her voice from that of "Wilbur," she had met every demand upon her. Her powers were truly magical. I cannot say I saw the cone move, but I have proven that the psychic did not surreptitiously touch it or fraudulently write upon the papers during this sitting. I cannot swear that Fowler was controlling his wife's hands while the cone was floating (and while I held the psychic's imprisoned hands), but I believe he was. In short, barring the one sense of sight—an all-important one, I admit—these happenings were convincing and fitted in with phenomena which I had secured with other psychics.

Nevertheless, I was not satisfied. I wanted Brierly, or some other fifth person, in the room, in order that both of the psychic's hands could be controlled at the same time that Mrs. Fowler's were secured. So long as a single hand was left free, the doubter would be warranted in questioning our results.

The next two or three sittings were partial failures—so much so that I made no record of them. Possibly, conditions were not strict enough. At any rate, the final and most conclusive sitting came three days later. It was held in Fowler's house. We followed the conditions of the previous sitting very closely—the same room, the same table, the same fastenings as before.

There was present a friend of Fowler's, a young man who was possessed of some psychic power. We will call him Frank. Fowler and I took entire charge of the psychic, and her bonds were even more carefully nailed than before. We began the séance, as before, by putting her to sleep.

Not long after "Maudie" spoke, saying: "Mr. Mitchell wishes the thread fastened to mama's hands in the way Mr. Garland desires."

I fastened a strong thread to each wrist as I had done several times before, passing the ends under the chair-arm in such wise that any movement of the psychic would be plainly and instantly detected. We then returned to our seats, and, though conditions seemed favorable, no marked phenomena took place; the cone was lifted, it is true, but we were used to this now, and accepted it as quite commonplace.

At six o'clock the voice of "Maudie" came: "Please go down to supper. Mr. Mitchell says he will be able to give you what you ask for after you return."

I did not ask to what he referred, but I had in mind the test to prove the voices independent of the psychic's vocal organs, and at the dinner we discussed methods by which this could be made clear.

"If they will let me put my hand over her mouth," I said to Fowler, "I will be satisfied."

"Do you mean that you will believe in spirits?" he smilingly challenged me.

"Oh, I won't go so far as to promise that, but I confess it would help to prove their existence."

"We may be about to get something more conclusive than that."

"Let us fix our minds on two things: first, to get the writing, or at least movement, with every hand controlled; and, second, the voices, while one of us covers Mrs. Smiley's mouth with a hand."

"Very well," acquiesced Fowler. "But the unexpected is what usually happens in these performances."

We were gone but twenty minutes, so eager were we for our demonstration. We found everything quite as when we left: the psychic was asleep, the fastenings undisturbed. Fowler and I regained our threads and resumed our places at the sides of the table, while Frank and Mrs. Fowler sat close together at the end opposite Mrs. Smiley. I ask the reader to recall that the psychic's ankles were encircled with tape which was nailed to the floor behind her chair. Two bands of tape, after being sewn to her cuffs, had been tacked solidly to the chair, three strong tacks were driven down through the hem of her dress, and, finally, Fowler and I were holding the threads which, after encircling the psychic's wrists, passed under the chair-arm.

And yet, in spite of all these bonds and precautions, the cone was almost immediately lifted, and "Mitchell" spoke through it. In a deep, clear, well-delivered, and decidedly masculine whisper, and with stately periods, he promised the complete co-operation of the spirit world in the great work to which I was devoting myself. He directed his exhortation to me, as usual; and for the benefit of those who think the spirits are always trivial or foolish, I wish to say that "Mitchell's" remarks were dignified and very suggestive. He produced in my mind the distinct impression of a serious man of seventy, ornate of rhetoric, but never vague or wandering in his thought, and he never went outside the circle of Mrs. Smiley's mind.

For fully a quarter of an hour he discussed with me the value of the investigation which we were pursuing. "I and my band," he assured me, "are working as hard from our side as you are from yours, equally intent upon opening up channels of communication between the two worlds." He solemnly urged me to proceed in this "grand work," and at last said, "Good-bye for the present," and fell silent.

The cone was then deposited on the table, and "Maud" said: "If Mr. Garland and Mr. Fowler will go quietly up to mama's side, holding all the time tightly to the threads, 'Mr. Mitchell' will do what Mr. Garland so much desires. Please be very careful not to touch mama until I tell you. Keep as far apart as you can as you go up to her. When you reach my mama's side, you may put one hand on her head and one on her wrist. 'Mr. Mitchell' says please have Frank take Mrs. Fowler's hands, so that every hand in the circle is accounted for."

I was now very eager and very alert. I felt that at last, after many, many requests and many trials, I was about to secure a clear, complete, and satisfying demonstration. Surely no trickster would permit such rigorous control as that toward which we were now invited. I was sorry that Miller was not present to share with me the satisfaction of the moment. My admiration went out toward this heroic little woman, who was enduring so much pain and suspicion for the sake of science. "She believes in herself," I thought. "If she succeeds, all honor to her."

Slowly we crept to her side, being careful to touch nothing until directed by the voice of "Maud." At last the childish voice said: "Mr. Garland may put his right hand on top of mama's head and his left hand on her wrist. Mr. Fowler may place his left hand above Mr. Garland's and his right hand on mama's wrist. 'Mr. Mitchell' says he will then see if the voices will not come."

I then said aloud: "My right hand is on the psychic's head, my left is on her wrist."

Fowler repeated: "My left hand is above Garland's right, which is on the psychic's head, and my own right hand is on the right wrist of the psychic. Now, 'Wilbur,' go ahead."

Our challenge was almost instantly caught up. While thus double-safeguarding the psychic, the cone, which was resting on the table a full yard away, rose with a sharp, metallic, scraping sound, and remained in the air for fully half a minute, during which I called out, sharply: "We are absolutely controlling the psychic; her hands are motionless; Mrs. Fowler, be sure you are holding both of Frank's hands."

"I have both his hands in mine," she answered.

As the cone was gently returned to the carpet Fowler was moved to say: "Garland, that was a supreme test of the psychic. She was absolutely not concerned in any known way with that movement. Save for a curious throbbing, wave-like motion in her scalp, she did not move. If she lifted the horn, it was by the exercise of a force unrecognized by science."

To this I was forced to agree. I here definitely declare that the psychic was not concerned with the flight of the cone in any way known to biology. If she produced the voices, they too must have been examples of supernormal ventriloquism, for they came through the megaphone. Of that I am as certain as one can be of an auditory impression.

A few moments later we returned to our seats, while "Wilbur" and "Mitchell" and several other voices spoke to us. Fowler, now that I had admitted telekinesis, wanted me to go further. "Is the psychic speaking to us," he asked, "or are these voices independent of her?"

"An investigator is never satisfied," I answered. "I must have the voices through the cone while I am covering the psychic's mouth."

To this "Mitchell" replied: "We are doing all we can, and we will yet be able to meet every demand you make upon us."

"I am anxious for conviction," I said. "I want to secure the voice of the psychic and your voice at the same time, 'Mr. Mitchell.' Can you do that for me?"

He seemed to hesitate, and at last said: "We will try." I perceived in his tone a certain doubt and indecision. Again we were permitted to hold the psychic's wrists, and, as before, the cone was lifted and drummed upon as if to show its position high in the air; but no voices came. Hidden forces seemed to be struggling for escape beneath our hands; the woman's brain seemed a powerful dynamo. I could not rid myself of a sense that there was an actual externalization of the psychic's nerve force, and with this conviction I could well understand why the command had so often been given not to touch her unbidden. Suppose the poor naked "astral body" were abroad and a strong light were suddenly turned upon it!

Now came on a singularly engrossing game of "hide-and-seek." Convinced that Mrs. Smiley was innocent of any trick in the movement of the horn, I tried every expedient to satisfy myself that "Wilbur's" voice was independent of her own; but I did not succeed. Mrs. Smiley spoke almost at the same moment but never precisely synchronous with Wilbur's whisper. She answered all my questions perfectly unconcerned and unexcited, lending herself to my experiments. All in vain. At no time did I succeed in getting "Wilbur's" voice at precisely the same moment with her own, though the whisper, following swiftly on her speech, interjected remarks as if echoing her questions. There was always an approximate interval between her voice and the spirit whisper.

This was to me very significant, and strengthened me in my belief that the entire process, while inexplicable, was, after all, not the work of spirits.

When the gas was lighted we found the cone had been placed on the table, a distance of forty inches from the utmost reach of the psychic's hands. Her feet were twenty-three inches from the nearest leg of the table. We carefully examined the tapes which were sewed to her sleeves. They were tied, and the doubled ends tacked precisely as described so many times, and to remove the tacks we were forced to use a hammer. It is useless to talk of a possible release of her arms during the phenomena of the cone.

As I was about to leave the house that night, Mrs. Smiley said: "I do not feel able to sit any more for the present, Mr. Garland. I feel myself growing weaker, and 'Mitchell' tells me I would better stop for the present. I feel that my power belongs to the world, and I want to do all I can to convince you of the truth of spiritualism, but I feel the strain very greatly."

"I do not wonder at that," I responded, "and I cannot blame you for demanding a rest. No one could have endured more uncomplainingly. You have been a model subject, and we are deeply in your debt. I am sorry Miller was not with us to-night; he would have been convinced of your supernormal power at least. Have no fear of my report; for while I am not convinced of the spirit hypothesis, I have found you honest and patient and very brave. I thank you very sincerely for what you have done."

And in this spirit we parted.[1]

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Since these words were written I have seen the cone move. In the presence of another medium, with no one in the room but myself, I held the psychic's hands what time the horn circled over my head. It shone like a golden rod as it moved. I could see the gleam of light along its entire side. At last it came softly down and laid itself across my shoulder. In order to satisfy myself of its presence, I bent and touched it with my forehead. The touch seemed to disturb conditions, to break the current, for it dropped instantly to the floor. Twice it answered to my request in this manner until my doubts were satisfied. It seemed to move with the swiftness of a dragonfly as silent and horizontal it hung in the air about my head.

VII

Cameron's Amateur Psychic Club, which had so nearly disintegrated by reason of the long series of barren sittings, was drawn together again by the news of my startling success at Fowler's house. Cameron at once decided that the members should hear my report, and I was notified to be ready to relate my experiences in full. We met, as before, at Cameron's table, and even before the soup-plates were removed the interrogation began, and by the time the company was in full possession of the facts the coffee and cigars had appeared.

"Why didn't these wonders take place in our presence?" asked Mrs. Quigg, who had returned to something like her original truculence of doubt. "Why should you and Brierly be so favored?"

"In this business everything comes to him who waits," I replied, a tinge of malice in my voice. "You obtained a few results, Miller a few more; but Fowler and I, for our pains, reaped the rich reward. By remaining long on the watch-tower we saw the armies pass. Harmony and patience are essentials in the production of these marvels. With people yawning or shuffling about uneasily, results are necessarily unimportant."

Miller continued firm in his agnosticism. "Although puzzling, I cannot grant so much as even one of the phenomena. Belief in the smallest of those manifestations at my house would be uprooting to all established theories of matter—not to mention time and space."

"Were not the notions of Galileo and Darwin also subverting?" asked Fowler. "Is there anything sacred in error? If we are wrong in our theories about the universe, let's correct them. You do not stand out against wireless telegraphy or the Röntgen ray?"

Miller fired at this. "I'm not going to take instruction from a tipping table or a flying hair-brush!" he fiercely retorted.

"I'll take illumination from any source whatsoever," responded Fowler.

Here I interposed: "The only question that concerns me at this stage is: Does the table tip and the brush really fly? No physical fact is trivial, for it stands related to mountains and the clouds."

Fowler's eyes gleamed with contempt. "That's the way of you so-called scientists: you narrow the mighty fund of occult phenomena down to a floating feather. As a matter of fact, there is a sea of evidence accumulated by the investigations of men quite as scientific as Miller, testimony that is neither petty nor ignoble. It is because you and your associates are so trifling in methods that the tables and the chair play leading parts in your drama."

"Good for you!" cheered Brierly. "You're quite right. When these materialistic investigators get done with trying to prove that independent slate-writing exists, they'll begin to give some attention to the fundamental truths of the messages which the slates set forth. Going after small things, they get small things. If Miller and his like went forth seeking the essentials of the faith, they would find them instead of being amazed with foolish tricks of hand."

"Essentials such as what?" interrupted Harris, with snappy suddenness.

"Such as—as—direct spirit communication, a knowledge of the astral, the reincarnation of souls, and—and—faith in the upward progression of the self," stammered Brierly, much disturbed.

Here again I interposed a quieting word: "I confess that it begins to look as though the theosophist's theory of the astral (at which some of us have smiled) were in a fair way to be scientifically demonstrated. Since our last meeting I have been studying the bound volumes of The Annals of Psychic Science, and I have found them full of comfort. They sustain Mrs. Smiley at every point. To my mind, the most important event in the history of spiritism is the entrance of Eusapia Paladino into the clinical laboratory of Cesare Lombroso. Nothing since Crookes's experiments has had such value for the scientist."

"We have heard of Lombroso, but who is Paladino?" asked Mrs. Quigg. "Is she a psychic?"

"She is the most renowned now living. Though only an illiterate peasant woman, she has been able for more than twenty years to baffle every scientist who has studied her. Her organism remains the most potent mystery on this earth."

"Tell us about her! Who is she? Where does she live?"

"She was born at Minerva-murge, a mountain village near Bari, in Italy. According to Lombroso's daughter, who has written a sketch of her, she is about fifty-three years of age. Her parents were peasants. She is quite uneducated, but is intelligent and rather good-looking. Her hands are pretty and her feet small—facts which are of value when studying her manifestations, as you will see later on. Her mother died while Eusapia was a babe, and her father 'passed over' when she was twelve, leaving her at large in the world 'like a wild animal,' as she herself says. A native family of her village took her to Naples, and her own story is that she was adopted soon after by some foreigners 'who wished to make me an educated and learned girl. They wanted me to take a bath every day and comb my hair every day,' she explains, with some humor.

"She didn't like the life nor the people, and she soon ran away back to her friends, the Apulians, and it was while she was in their house and at the precise moment when they were planning to put her in a convent that her occult powers were discovered. Some friends came in to spend the evening, and, in default of anything better to do, formed a circle to make a table tip. No sooner were they all seated, as she herself relates, than 'the table began to rise, the chairs to dance, the curtains to swell, and the glasses and bottles to walk about, till everybody was scared.' After testing every other person present, the host came to the conclusion that the medium was his little ward, Eusapia. This put an end to her going into a convent. She was proclaimed a medium, much to her disgust, and made to sit whole evenings at the table. 'I only did it,' she says, 'because it was a way of recompensing my hosts, whose desire to keep me with them prevented their placing me in a convent. Finally I took up laundress work, thinking I might render myself independent and live as I liked without troubling about spiritualistic séances.'"

"It is remarkable how many of these women psychics begin their career when they are ten or twelve years old," said Miller. "Mrs. Smiley was about that age, wasn't she?"

"Yes, and so was Mrs. Hartley, another psychic of my acquaintance. Mrs. Smiley complained of the tedium of sitting. She tells me that her father kept her at it steadily, just as Eusapia was not permitted to escape her fate. One day an Englishwoman, wife of a certain Mr. Damiani, came to a séance, and was so impressed by what took place that she interested her husband in Eusapia's performances. Damiani then took up the young medium's development along the good old well-worn lines of American spiritualism, and she acquired all the tricks and all the 'patter.' Among other notions, she picked up the idea of an English 'control' known as 'John King,' who declared himself a brother of 'Kate King,' of Crookes fame, and from that day Eusapia has been a professional 'mejum.'"

"What does she do?" asked Cameron. "What is her 'phase,' as you call it?"

"It must be confessed that most of her phases are of the poltergeist variety, but they are astounding. She produces the movement of mandolins, chairs, sofas, and small tables without contact (at least, such is the consensus of opinion of nearly a score of the best-known scientists of France and Italy), and also materializes hands and arms. There is vastly more than the poltergeist in her, that is evident; for she has conquered every critic with her miracles. Take, for instance, Lombroso's conversion, a fairly typical case. He was not only sceptical of spirit phenomena, but up to 1888 was openly contemptuous of those who believed in them. However, in an article called 'The Influence of Civilization upon Genius,' published in 1888, he made this admission: 'Twenty or thirty years are enough to make the whole world admire a discovery which was treated as madness at the moment when it was made.... Who knows whether my friends and I who laugh at spiritualism are not in error, just like hypnotized persons, or like lunatics; being in the dark as regards the truth, we laugh at those who are not in the same condition.'"

"True enough," said Fowler. "The man who has made no study of these phenomena is like one color-blind: he has never seen a landscape."

"It was this candid statement by Lombroso that moved Professor Chiaia, a friend of Eusapia's, to write the great alienist a letter which was in effect a challenge. After recounting a score or two of the wonderful doings of Paladino, whom he had studied carefully, he ended in this amusing fashion: 'Now you see my challenge. If you have not written the paragraph cited above simply for the fun of writing it, if you have the true love for science, if you are without prejudices—you, the first alienist of Italy—please take the field. When you can afford a week's vacation, indicate a place where we can meet. Four gentlemen will be our seconds: you will choose two, and I will bring the other two.... If the experiment does not succeed, you will consider me but as a man suffering from hallucination, who longs to be cured of his extravagances.... If success crowns our efforts, your loyalty ... will attest the reality of these mysterious phenomena and promise to investigate their causes.'"

"I hope Lombroso was man enough to accept the challenge," said Cameron. "Nothing could be fairer than the spook-man's offer."

"He did not at once take up the gage. It was not, in fact, till February, 1891, that he was able to go to Naples to meet Eusapia, who had begun to interest some of his trusted scientific friends. He found the great psychic quite normal in appearance and rather attractive in manner. She was of medium size, with a broad and rather serious face lit with brilliant dark eyes. The most notable thing about her physical self was a depression in her skull caused by a fall in her infancy. This scar figures largely in nearly all the reports of her."

"Why?" asked Harris.

"Because they all agree that a singular sort of current of force, like a cool breeze, seems to come and go through this spot."

Harris groaned, and Howard said: "Oh, rubbish!"

"Rubbish or not, they all speak of this scar and its singular effects. At the time when Lombroso saw her first, Eusapia was just beginning to be known to scientists, but no one of special note had up to this time (1891) reported upon her. She was known as the wife of a small shop-keeper in Naples, and seemed a decent, matronly person, quite untouched by mysticism. Although not eager to sit for Lombroso and his party of scientists, she finally consented. Among those who took part in these celebrated experiments were Professor Tamburini, an eminent scientist; Dr. Bianchi, the superintendent of the Insane Asylum of Sales; and Dr. Penta, a young nephew of Lombroso, a resident of Naples. Lombroso had charge of the sittings, which were held in a room of his own choice and with the medium entirely under his control. He was astonished at the prompt response obtained. At the first sitting, while he and Professor Tamburini held the psychic's hands, a bell was carried tinkling through the air and a small table moved as if it were alive. Many other mysterious movements took place. Lombroso was very much disturbed by these inexplicable phenomena, and could not rest till he sat again. At the second séance spectral hands developed, profoundly mystifying every sitter, and Lombroso went away, promising to carry forward a study of spiritism. In a letter written the following June he manfully said: 'I am filled with confusion, and regret that I combated with so much persistence the possibilities of the facts called spiritualistic. I say facts, for I am opposed to the theory.'"

"Did Lombroso say that?" asked Harris.

"He wrote it, which is still more to the point, and it was his acceptance of the main facts of Paladino's mediumship that led other groups of scientists to take up her case. Professor Schiaparelli, Director of the Observatory at Milan; Gerosa, Professor of Physics; Ermacora, Doctor of Natural Philosophy; Aksakof, Councilor of State to the Emperor of Russia; and Charles du Prel, Doctor of Philosophy in Munich, were in the next group, which met at Milan with intent to settle the claims of this bold charlatan.

"The sittings took place in the apartment of Monsieur Finzi at Milan, and were more rigid and searching than any Paladino had ever passed through, but she was again triumphant. She bewildered them all. Lombroso himself was present during some of the sittings. The results of the series of experiments were very notable and very far-reaching. For the first time, so far as I know, a table was photographed while floating in the air—"

"No!" shouted Howard.

"Yes; and certain other telekinetic happenings were proved, to the stupefaction of most of those in the group. One special experiment, the success of which confounded the shrewdest, was the attempt to secure on a smoke-blackened paper the print of one of the spectral hands."