But Miss A. still sat unmoved and helpless, so we waited.
Presently she remarked that the influence wanted her to do
something she knew not what, only that she had to get up and go
across the room, which she did with the feeble step of an old man.
She crossed the room and took down from the wall a colored French
lithograph, and, coming to me, laid it on the table before me, and
by gesture called my attention to it. She then went through the
pantomime of stretching a sheet of paper on a drawing-board, then
that of sharpening a lead pencil, following it up by tracing the
outlines of the subject in the lithograph. Then followed in
similar pantomime the choosing of a water-color pencil, noting
carefully the necessary fineness of the point, and then the
washing-in of a drawing, broadly. Miss A. seemed much amused by
all this, but as she knew nothing of drawing she understood
nothing of it. Then with the pencil and her pocket handkerchief
she began taking out the lights, "rubbing-out," as the technical
term is. This seemed to me so contrary to what I conceived to be
the execution of Turner that I interrupted with the question, "Do
you mean to say that Turner rubbed out his lights?" to which she
gave the affirmative sign. I asked further if in a drawing which I
then had in my mind, the well-known "Llanthony Abbey," the central
passage of sunlight and shadow through rain was done in that way,
and she again gave the affirmative reply, emphatically. I was so
firmly convinced to the contrary that I was now persuaded that
there was a simulation of personality, such as was generally the
case with the public mediums, and I said to my brother, who had
not heard any of my questions [He says above that they were
mental. Ed.] that this was another humbug, and then repeated what
had passed, saying that Turner could not have worked in that way.

Six weeks later I sailed for England, and, on arriving in London,
I went at once to see Ruskin, and told him the whole story. He
declared the contrariness manifested by the medium to be entirely
characteristic of Turner, and had the drawing in question down for
examination. We scrutinized it closely, and both recognized beyond
dispute that the drawing had been executed in the way that Miss A.
indicated. Ruskin advised me to send an account of the affair to