it remembered,
entirely by mental inquiries.

The evident fatigue of the child put an end to the seance. Neither
the mother nor Fanny knew at that time anything of my relatives, our
acquaintance being then of recent date, but our intimacy with the
family in after years enables me to say that any attempt at deception
is out of the question. Fanny died not long after of consumption, as
did the mother and two other children, one of whom, an elder sister,
had been influenced in the same manner as Miss A., who will be
mentioned later, but had never consented to take part in the
manifestations, which she regarded with great repugnance. While
sitting with us _en petit comite_, she used sometimes to be seized
with a convulsive and involuntary effort of her hand to write, but she
always refused to submit to the influence. Fanny in her normal state
showed no indications of mediumistic powers, nor did the mother.

During the investigation, we heard of a remarkable case in the circle
of our own acquaintance which had been kept from public knowledge as
far as possible by the aversion to publicity of the father of the
subject, my brother's chief foreman. She was a girl of fourteen, of a
timid and nervous organization, who had suffered great annoyance by
the persistence of the rappings about her wherever she might be;
at first in her bedroom, but finally to her great dismay in the
class-rooms of the primary public school of New York, in which she
held the position of assistant teacher and where she conducted the
recitations. The rappings caused such fright amongst the school
children that she was menaced with dismissal if they did not cease.
She implored the agency which was responsible for the sounds to leave
her alone at school and do what seemed best to it at home, and the
rappings did actually cease at school. As her father was a man
well-to-do in circumstances and annoyed by the occurrence, he
silenced the gossip about the matter as well as he could, and gave an
inflexible denial to the request for a seance which came from friends
who by chance heard of it. My brother Paul, who was a fellow-foreman
in the iron works, got permission, however, for a seance at which he
and I only were to be present with the girl. The phenomena were so
strange that I got permission for a repetition at which only my
brother Jacob and myself were present, and we preserved the notes of
what passed.

Miss A., as I shall call her, told us in detail th