est 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:

WILLIAM
DEAN
HOWELLS

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. Zoellner (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