ollowing the birth of my first child." She had gone to Dr. J.
R. Cocke, the great authority on hypnotism and a practicing physician of
high scientific attainments. "During the interview," says Mrs. Piper, "I
was partly unconscious for a few minutes. On the following Sunday I went
into a trance."

She appears to have slipped into it unconsciously. She surprised her
friends by saying some very odd things, none of which she remembered
when she came to herself. Not long after she did it again. A neighbor,
the wife of a merchant, when she heard the things that had been said,
assured Mrs. Piper that it must be messages from the spirit world. The
atmosphere in Boston was full of talk of that kind, and it was not hard
for people to believe that a real medium of spirit communication had
been found. The merchant's wife wanted a sitting, and Mrs. Piper
arranged one, for which she received her first dollar.

She had discovered that she could go into trances by an effort of her
own will. She would sit down at a table, with her sitter opposite, and
leaning her head on a pillow, go off into the trance after a few minutes
of silence. There was a clock behind her. She gave her sitters an hour,
sometimes two hours, and they wondered how she knew when the hour had
expired. At any rate, when the time came around she awoke. In describing
her experiences she has said:

"At first when I sat in my chair and leaned my head back and went into
the trance state, the action was attended by something of a struggle. I
always felt as if I were undergoing an anesthetic, but of late years I
have slipped easily into the condition, leaning the head forward. On
coming out of it I felt stupid and dazed. At first I said disconnected
things. It was all a gibberish, nothing but gibberish. Then I began to
speak some broken French phrases. I had studied French two years, but
did not speak it well."

Once she had an Italian for sitter, who could speak no English and asked
questions in Italian. Mrs. Piper could speak no Italian, indeed did not
understand a word of it, except in her trance state. But she had no
trouble in understanding her sitter.

After a while her automatic utterance announced the personality of a
certain Dr. Phinuit, who was said to have been a noted French physician
who had died long before. His "spirit" controlled her for a number of
years. After some time Dr. Phinuit was succeeded by one "Pelham," and
finally by "Imperator" and "Rector."