h them. This may be a good opportunity for explaining
that when I speak in this narrative of "spirits" I do so to save
constant periphrasis, and am quite consciously "begging the question"
very often, as a matter of verbal convenience.

In those days I don't think we troubled ourselves much about theories,
and when we found that Morton and I alone could move a heavy dining-room
table, or any other piece of heavy furniture quite beyond our normal
powers, practically without exerting any strength at all, we looked upon
it as an amusing experience without caring to inquire whether the energy
involved had been generated on this side the veil or on the other side.
We could certainly not have moved such weights under ordinary
circumstances, even by putting forth all our combined strength, and we
could only do so, for some mysterious reason, when we had been "sitting
at the table" beforehand. Ingenious Theories of Human Electricity raised
to a higher power by making a Human Battery, etc. etc., were not so
common then as now, and we accepted facts without trying to solve their
problems.

The dear, hospitable Archdeacon would put his venerable head inside the
door now and then, shake it at us half in fun, and yet a good deal in
earnest, and I think he was more than doubtful whether our parlour
games were quite lawful!

We were very innocent and very ignorant in those days on the subject of
psychic laws; and probably this was our salvation, for I can remember no
terrible or weird experience, such as one reads of nowadays when tyros
take to experiments.

And yet my knowledge and experiences of later days lead me to endorse
most heartily the well-known dictum of Lawrence Oliphant--namely, that
when he saw people sitting down in a casual, irresponsible way to "_get
messages through a table_," it reminded him of an ignorant child going
into a powder magazine with a lighted match in its hand.

Staying in this same house, I can next recall a flying visit from a
brother of mine, who had just spent three months, on leave from India,
in America, where he had taken introductions, and had been the guest of
various hospitable naval and military men, who had shown him round the
Washington Arsenal, West Point Academy, and so forth. My kind old host
had begged him to take us on his way back to London; and I remember well
his look of utter amazement when Morton and I had lured him to "the
table" one afternoon, and he was told correctly the