tion 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 th