m's hand, "My head was not clear, and is
not yet, when I speak to you."

On December 7,[45] 1893, M. Paul Bourget, of the _Academie Francaise_,
and his wife, had a sitting with Mrs Piper. M. Paul Bourget much wished
to communicate with an artist who had committed suicide at Venice by
throwing herself out of a gondola. There exists no written report of
this sitting, and consequently we do not know exactly what it was worth.
But on December 11[46] M. Bourget had another sitting, and this time Dr
Hodgson accompanied him and took notes. The artist seemed to make
desperate efforts to communicate and to write herself, but she could
only produce two or three French words, amongst which apparently was the
exclamation, "Mon Dieu!" Nevertheless her Christian name was given and
the place where she had killed herself, Venice, and the syllable _Bou_,
the beginning of Bourget, was often repeated. Why were the results so
poor? M. and Mme. Bourget knew this person well, and their minds were
full of reminiscences on which the medium had only to draw.

However, some people might reason as follows. Objects having been used
by the persons with whom it is desired to communicate are nearly always
given to Mrs Piper. If the medium obtains her information not only from
the minds of the living, but likewise from the "influence," that is,
from the vibrations which our thoughts and feelings may have left
recorded on these objects, the imperfections of the earlier
communications of persons whose minds have been disturbed might be
explained by the theory that the "influence" left by an insane person
would be neither so clear nor so easy to read as that left by a sane
one. But then why should the communicators grow clear with time? Why
should they become lucid at the time when they ought to be still more
confused, if the telepathic hypothesis is the correct one?

But this interpretation falls to the ground entirely when we take into
account the numerous communicators who are unknown, or almost unknown,
to the sitters, of whom absolutely nobody is thinking, and who come in
the middle of a sitting to send a message to their surviving relatives.
Mrs Piper cannot have produced these communications by means of the
"influence" left on objects, unless we suppose that the presence of
these objects is not necessary and that any "influence" may strike the
medium from any point of the compass at the moment when she least
expects it. That would perhaps be str