have nearly always been
kept at arm's-length by the fiction that the 'guide' should control
everything, that the seance is a religious rite, that the medium must
not be touched nor exposed to the light, and so on, till the scientist
was reduced to the feeble rank of an on-looker in the dark, so that no
real test was possible. These Italians did not grant any of these
traditions. They were scientists, not devotees at a new shrine."

"However, I am ready to grant that some of the good old rules were
justified. As you have seen in my own experiments, I have proceeded
cautiously, for if you suppose mediumship to be a psycho-dynamic
adjustment of the organisms in the circle--a subtle physical
relationship--there is all the more reason to be careful. I did not find
it necessary to mistreat Mrs. Smiley in order to test her powers. But
_Eusapia has set a new pace for mediums_. She has gone into the lion's
den alone and unarmed--not once, but a hundred times. She entered
Lombroso's study, a room previously unexplored by her, and there placed
herself before a cabinet that she was not permitted to examine--a
cabinet filled with machines for dividing the true from the false. In
Morselli's presence she submitted to tests the like of which not even
Crookes was permitted to apply, and all sacred rules and regulations,
all ideas of religion or questions of morality, vanished when she
entered the cold, clear air of Bottazzi's physiological laboratory."

"This begins to sound like the grapple of a cuttlefish and a mermaid.
Was the woman crushed?"

"No; she more than sustained her great reputation. She conquered the
remorseless scientist and performed the impossible."

I had the strained attention of my audience now. Time was forgotten, and
cries of "Tell us!" "Tell us all!" arose.

"It is an exciting story, an incredible story--"

"So much the better!" exclaimed Miss Brush.

"I am full of enthusiasm for Bottazzi," I resumed. "His was the kind of
investigation I should like to put through myself. It appeals to me as
no spiritualistic performance has ever done. In a sense the facts he has
demonstrated make all material tests inoperative. Matter is all we have
to cling to when it comes to physical tests. A nail driven down through
the sleeve of the medium's dress _seems_ to increase our control of her,
and a metronome or a Morse telegraphic sounder does add value to our
testimony, and yet Zoellner seems nearer right than Miller: mat