it is a test. These little things sometimes interrupt me greatly and
when I go to explain it to you, you can't understand it. But sometimes
when I am talking to you, I am suddenly interrupted by somebody who
don't realise what they are doing, and then I give you what they say as
near as I can, you understand that, and it is very difficult sometimes
for me to discern it and place it in the right place."

Mrs Howard asked her Aunt Ellen if she had known anyone named
Farnsworth, without telling her more. Phinuit was right: a gardener
named Farnsworth had worked for her uncle and then for her grandfather
thirty-five or forty years before. Mrs Howard had never heard of him.

Incidents like those I have just related are evidently difficult to
explain on the telepathic theory.

But a more complete refutation of the telepathic hypothesis would be to
get a certain number of fulfilled predictions. The medium could not read
events which have not yet occurred, either in the minds of the living or
in the "influence" left on objects. Phinuit has often tried his hand at
predictions; I will quote one.

At M. Bourget's second sitting,[50] in 1893, a Mrs Pitman appeared, who
had lived a long time in France and spoke French well, and who offered
to help the artist with whom M. Bourget wished to talk in her efforts to
communicate.

In 1888, Mrs Pitman, who was a member of the American Society for
Psychical Research, had had two sittings with Mrs Piper. Among other
things, Phinuit said to her, "You are going to be very sick; you will go
to Paris; you will be very sick: you will have great weakness in the
stomach and head. A sandy complexioned gentleman will attend you while
you are ill beyond the sea." In consequence of this, Mrs Pitman asked
Phinuit what the end of the illness would be. Phinuit made evasive
replies. Mrs Pitman asked Dr Hodgson's intervention; he insisted in his
turn, and Phinuit got out of it by saying, "After she gets over the
sickness she will be all right."

Mrs Pitman replied that there was nothing the matter with her stomach;
she contradicted Phinuit on every point, and he appeared much annoyed.
But Mrs Pitman soon fell ill. She was attended by a Dr Herbert, who was
very fair; he diagnosed inflammation of the stomach. Then Mrs Pitman
began to believe in Phinuit's prediction; but interpreting his last
words wrongly, she believed she should recover. Dr Charcott attended her
at Paris for a nervous illness. She suff