ich Miss Boyle had been unable to carry
out herself, she had mentioned that her friend Lizzie Maynard was a very
good automatic writer, and this seemed a solution of the difficulty.

So when my little friend had finished her tea, but was still looking
tired from the long walk, I said to her: "I am so sorry to be so stupid
to-day, Miss Maynard. I cannot talk, but I can listen; or do you think
possibly you could get a little writing for me? Miss Boyle told me you
wrote automatically sometimes?"

"I will try, certainly," was the ready response. "I never know, of
course, what may come, and as this is our first meeting, it may be a
little more difficult, but I should like to try."

She found paper and pencil, and sat by my bedside, holding the pencil
very loosely between the second and third fingers, instead of between
the thumb and first two fingers in the usual way.

She continued talking to me during the whole time, and not being well
versed in automatic writing then, I could not believe that any writing
could really be going on in this very casual sort of way.

"Is any writing really coming?" I questioned at last.

"Oh yes; but I can't make out the last long word," she said, turning the
paper round, so that she could see it, for the first time. "Kindly give
me that word again," she remarked casually, and continued her
conversation with me.

Finally the three or four sheets of rather large but not always very
distinct caligraphy were submitted to me, and I saw that "Miscellaneous"
had been the long word at the beginning which Lizzie had asked to have
repeated.

The whole message was intensely interesting to me, for it began: "_I who
on earth was known as George Eliot._"

Now I had more than once seen, but had never spoken to, George Eliot in
earth life, and although admiring her genius, as all who read her books
are bound to do, there seemed no very obvious reason why she should come
to me. Moreover, Lizzie Maynard, a charming but not highly educated girl
(as I discovered later), seemed to know little about the famous author
beyond her name. Another, and infinitely inferior, lady writer had been
discussed with bated breath the day before in Lizzie's presence. Her
books--just then in the zenith of their popularity--had newly penetrated
to the Colonies, and were being talked of there as though Minerva
herself, helmet and all complete, had suddenly arrived in Melbourne. I
had personally been greatly interested by o