while I
looked. She had only four sitters, two men and two women--an old
married couple an' a brother an' sister, I took it from their looks an'
the way they acted toward each other. The old couple were rich and
tony. They didn't flash any jewelry, but her shoes and gloves were made
to order and her coat had a Paris mark inside. The brother and sister
must be way up, too; he was dressed quiet but rich, and he had a
Bankers' Association pin in his buttonhole. Yes, they wasn't paupers,
and that's the only fake sign I've seen about Mrs. Markham. But that's
nothin'. Stands to reason the best people go to the best mediums, just
like they go to the best doctors and preachers.

"That sittin', you hear me, was real. I got by the double doors where I
could listen. You just hear me--it was real. You ain't a sensitive.
You've followed knowledge and not influences, and it's going to be hard
for me to git this into you. So I'll tell you first how it would have
looked to you, and then how it looked to me. I'm not sayin' what she
gave wasn't something she got out of test books and memorandums,
because I don't know her people or yet how much she'd had to do with
them. It was the way it come out that impressed me. First place, she
didn't go into trance. That's a fake to impress dopes, nine times out
of ten. If you ever git anything real from me, you'll git it out of
half trance. Then she didn't feel around an' fish, an' neither did she
hit the bull's eye every time. She'd get the truth all tangled up. John
would say a true thing, that only _he_ knew, and she'd think she got it
from James. Her sitters were fine acknowledgers, especially the old
maid, and I could tell. That's how I would 'a' looked to you, and now
let me tell you how it struck me. You don't have to believe it.

"I was sittin' there just takin' it all in, when I began to get
influences. Now laugh; but you won't stop me. It never struck me so
strong in my life as it did right there. And it all come from Mrs.
Markham. It was like a sweet smell radiatin' from that room, and just
makin' me drunk. It was like--maybe you've heard John B. Gough speak.
Remember how he had you while you listened? Remember how you believed
like he did and felt everything was right and you could do anything?
Now that is as near like it as I can tell you and yet that _ain't_ it
by half. You ain't a sensitive. You can't git just what I mean.

"An' then _I_ begun to see. I can't tell you all; I was h