bout, 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 seances.'"

"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 seance, 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
discover