ction of fraud, on Home's
part, given on first-hand evidence, and written only a few weeks after
the events. One other case I was told by the observer, very many years
after the event, and in this case fraud was not necessarily implied.
It is only fair to remark that Mr. F.W.H. Myers thought these
'phantasmal arms instructive in more than one respect,' as supplying
'a missing link between mere phantasms and ectoplastic phenomena.'[21]

[Footnote 21: _Human Personality_, ii. 546, 547. By 'Ectoplastic' Mr.
Myers appears to have meant small 'materialisations' exterior to the
'medium.']

Now this is the extraordinary feature in the puzzle. There are many
attested accounts of hands seen, in Home's presence, in a good light,
with no attachment; and no fraud is known ever to have been detected
in such instances. The strange fact is that if we have one record of a
detection of Home in a puerile fraud in a faint light, we have none of
a detection in his most notable phenomena in a good light. To take one
example. In _The Nineteenth Century_ for April 1896 Mr. Hamilton Aide
published the following statement, of which he had made the record in
his Diary, 'more than twenty years ago.' Mr. Aide also told me the
story in conversation. He was 'prejudiced' against Home, whom he met
at Nice, 'in the house of a Russian lady of distinction.' 'His _very_
physical manifestations, I was told, had caused his expulsion from
more than one private house.' Of these aberrations one has not heard
elsewhere. Mr. Aide was asked to meet M. Alphonse Karr, 'one of the
hardest-headed, the wittiest, and most sceptical men in France' (a
well-merited description), at a _seance_ with Home. Mr. Aide's
prejudice, M. Karr's hard-headed scepticism, prove them witnesses not
biassed in favour of hocus-pocus.

The two arrived first at the villa, and were shown into a very large,
uncarpeted, and brilliantly lighted salon. The furniture was very
heavy, the tables were 'mostly of marble, _and none of them had any
cloths upon them_.' There were about twenty candles in sconces, all
lit, and a moderator lamp in the centre of 'the ponderous round
rosewood table at which we were to sit.' Mr. Aide 'examined the room
carefully,' and observed that wires could not possibly be attached to
the heavy furniture ranged along the walls, and on the polished floor
wires could not escape notice. The number present, including Home, was
nine when all had arrived. All hands were on the