om a reading of the reports of
Bottazzi's up-to-date experiments, and I am compelled to grant that he
has not only sustained Crookes at every point, but has gone beyond him
in his ingenuity of test and thoroughness of control. He adds the touch
of certainty that we all needed to complete our own experience. He has
given me courage to say what I believe Mrs. Smiley did for us."

"Won't you tell us all about it?" pleaded Mrs. Cameron. "Please do."

"It is too long and complicated. You must read it for yourself. It is
too incredible to be told."

"Never mind, Garland; we'll take it as part of your fiction. Go ahead."

As I looked about me, I could detect in the faces of some of my friends
an expression of apprehension. The coffee had grown cold. Our ice-cream
had melted with neglect. Every eye was fixed upon me. It was plain that
Harris and Miller considered me "on the high-road to spiritualism."
Quite willing to gratify their wish to be startled, I proceeded:

"You will find the latest word on all these matters in a small but
valuable review, published simultaneously in London and in Paris,
called _The Annals of Psychic Science_. It is edited by Cesar de Vesme
in France, and by Laura I. Finch in England, and is a mine of reliable
psychic science. Its directors are Dr. Dariex and Professor Charles
Richet. Its 'committee' is made up of Sir William Crookes, Camille
Flammarion, Professor Lombroso, Marcel Mangin, Dr. Joseph Maxwell,
Professor Enrico Morselli, of Genoa; Dr. Julien Ochorowicz, head of the
General Psychologic Institute of Paris; Professor Porro, the astronomer;
Colonel Albert de Rochas, author of _The Externalization of Motivity_,
and others of like character."

"We don't want the review, we want your account," said Harris. "Don't
spare us. Give us detail--lots of it."

"Thank you; you shall have it hot-shot, but I'll have to generalize the
story for you. The most decisive of all the tests have been made during
the last eighteen months, and the final and most convincing of all
within the year, under the direction of Lombroso, Morselli, and
Bottazzi. It is safe to say that with these experiments (and the reports
which accompany them) a new era has dawned in biology. The facts of
mediumship are in process of being scientifically observed by a score of
the best-qualified men in Europe, and at last we are about to study
mediumship apart from any question of religious tenets."

Fowler took issue with me here: