table, but M.
Alphonse Karr insisted on being allowed to break the circle, go under
the table, or make any other sort of search whenever he pleased. 'This
Home made no objection to.' Raps 'went _round_ under the table,
fluttering hither and thither in a way difficult to account for by the
dislocation of the medium's toe' (or knee), 'the common explanation.'
(I may remark that this kind of rapping is now so rare that I think
Mr. Frederick Myers, with all his experience, never heard it.) Mr.
Aide was observant enough to notice that a lady had casually dropped
her bracelet, though she vowed that it 'was snatched from her by a
spirit.' 'It was certainly removed from her lap, and danced about
under the table....'

Then suddenly 'a heavy armchair, placed against the wall at the
further end of the _salotto_, ran violently out into the middle of
the room towards us.' Other chairs rushed about 'with still greater
velocity.' The heavy table then tilted up, and the moderator lamp,
with some pencils, slid to the lower edge of the table, but did not
fall off. Mr. Aide looked under the table: Home's legs were inactive.
Home said that he thought the table would 'ascend,' and Alphonse Karr
dived under it, and walked about on all fours, examining everybody's
feet--the others were standing up. The table rose 'three or four
feet,' at highest, and remained in air 'from two to three minutes.' It
rose so high that 'all could see Karr, and see also that no one's legs
moved.' M. Karr was not a little annoyed; but, as 'Sandow could not
have lifted the table evenly,' even if allowed to put his hands
beneath it, and as Home, at one side, had his hands above it, clearly
Home did not lift it.

All alike beheld this phenomenon, and Mr. Aide asks 'was I
hypnotised?' Were all hypnotised? People have tried to hypnotise Mr.
Aide, never with success, and certainly no form of hypnotism known to
science was here concerned. No process of that sort had been gone
through, and, except when Home said that he thought the table would
ascend, there had been no 'verbal suggestion;' nobody was told what to
look out for. In hypnotic experiment it is found that A. (if told to
see anything not present) will succeed, B. will fail, C. will see
something, and so on, though these subjects have been duly
hypnotised, which Mr. Aide and the rest had not. That an unhypnotised
company (or a company wholly unaware that any hypnotic process had
been performed on them) should