RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS
of the slate. The room was not darkened in any way and all the proceedings took place in broad daylight. He then asked each of us tor a question which we should like the spirits to answer. Myers and Hood asked questions concerning spiritualism, I preferred a question to which I knew the answer, so I asked what county Manchester was in. We then sat for, I should think, a quarter of an hour without anything happening. Then he seemed to be seized with convulsions and it was all I could do to hold him up and prevent him from falling off the chair. He recovered in a short time, brought the slate from under the table, and on it was written in a sprawling hand with large ill-formed letters : Manchester. My view is that Eglinton thought there must be some catch in my very simple question, and that he knew that some English towns were counties in themselves and supposed, because I had asked the question, that Manchester was one of: them. With regard to the way in which the writing was done ; it is possible to write on a slate either in the usual way by keeping the slate fixed and moving the pencil, or, though with much greater difficulty, by keeping the pencil fixed and moving the slate. Thus, if he had managed to jam the piece of slate pencil in a crevice or depression on the lower part of the table, he might have been able to write without any considerable movement of the arm supporting the slate.
A much more exciting and interesting experience was one with Eusapia Palladino, an Italian peasant woman who had been discovered by Professor Richet, a celebrated French physiologist, and who had shown very remarkable powers of producing abnormal physical effects in a series of seances she had with Professor Richet and Sir Oliver Lodge in an island in the Mediterranean under conditions
148