ver darken her doors,' etc., etc., and
confessed that the foundation of her belief was the warning (sent to her
by an eminent Medium whose seances the Commission had attended) that she
should have nothing to do with 'the Seybert men, that they would do her
no good.' Even in instances where Mediums have expressed their
willingness to appear before us, we have been embarrassed by demands for
compensation which we could not but deem extortionate and, practically,
prohibitory; as in the case of Mr. Keeler, the Spiritual Photographer,
whose terms will be found in the Appendix, and in that of Dr. Henry
Rogers, whose terms were five hundred dollars if he should be successful
before us, and the half of that sum if he failed.

Although the number of Mediums whose manifestations we have been able to
examine has been thus restricted, we feel ourselves justified in giving
as a result of our examination of Independent Slate Writing that,
whether the agency be Spiritual or Material, its mode of manifestation
almost wholly precludes any satisfactory investigation.

There are not wanting eminent expounders of the Spiritualistic Faith who
assert that this is as it should be, and that if in the attempt to apply
the laws of the material world to Spiritual manifestations we are
baffled, the fault lies in us, and not in the Mediums. If this be so, we
must accept our fate and enlarge the adage that 'poets are born, not
made,' and include Spiritualists.

Yet, as a rule, Mediums assert that they invite investigation. Our
experience has been, as we have just said, that as soon as an
investigation, worthy of the name, begins, all manifestations of
Spiritualist power cease.

The bare statement of the conditions whereunder the Mediums maintain
that the manifestations of Independent Slate Writing are alone possible,
involves the extreme difficulty, we might almost say the impossibility,
of any genuine or rational investigation. Even the very spirit of
investigation, or of incredulity, seems to exercise a chilling effect
and prevents a successful manifestation. Indeed Mr. Hazard once told us
that the true spirit in which to approach the study of Spiritualism is
'an entire willingness to be deceived.' In Independent Slate Writing, in
our experience, there is a period, of longer or shorter duration, when
the slate is concealed. During this period the investigator's eye must
not watch it. When the slate is held under the table, knees and feet
and c