he reader is
referred to Mr F. W. H. Myers's articles in the _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol.
ix. p. 245, and vol. xi. p. 24.

[75] _Proc. of S.P.R._, vol. xiv. p. 36.

[76] Another communicator.

CHAPTER XIII

Professor Hyslop and the journalists--The so-called "confession" of Mrs
Piper--Precautions taken by Professor Hyslop during his
experiments--Impressions of the sittings.

The last report[77] we possess of the phenomena accompanying Mrs Piper's
trance is that of Professor James Hervey Hyslop, of Columbia University,
New York. This report appeared in November 1901. The minutes of the
sittings, the notes, the remarks of the sitter, the discussion of
hypotheses, the account of experiments made at the University in order
to throw light on certain points, all together make a report of 650
pages of close reading. It refers, notwithstanding, only to sixteen
sittings, of which the first took place on December 23, 1898. But the
smallest incidents and the slightest arguments are scrupulously weighed.
It is, in short, a work of considerable extent.

Professor Hyslop has an absolutely sincere and very lucid mind. It is a
pleasure to follow him through this mass of facts and arguments;
everything is scrupulously classified, and the whole is illuminated by a
high intelligence. Professor Hyslop occupies with good right an eminent
place amongst the thinkers of the United States. Besides his classes,
he gives numerous lectures, which are well attended.

The report he has published has been long waited for. As he is a man of
mark and has long occupied himself with Psychical Research, the
inquisitive journalists on the other side of the Atlantic quickly found
out that he had been experimenting with Mrs Piper. He was interviewed;
he was prudent, and contented himself with recommending the reporters to
study the preceding reports published upon the same case. But reporters
are not so easily contented; they have to satisfy an exacting master in
the public, which wants to know everything, and which would cease to
purchase any paper simple enough to say, "I have done all I could to get
information on this point for you, but I have failed." The public will
have none of such honesty as that, though if a falsehood is offered, it
is not angry; in the first place, because at the moment it does not
recognise the falsehood, and in the second, because by the time it finds
out it is busy over something else. Consequently, as they must live