which must have been a good one, for our shrewd
American cousins were employing him to put up these stoves in several
public buildings, including the Smithsonian Institute in Washington.

Mr Thompson combined psychic proclivities with his smokeless invention,
and had become greatly interested in the New York medium, Mrs Stoddart
Gray, who has been already mentioned in connection with my own
investigations, twelve years previous to my present visit. He had
written to tell Mr Stead of his experiences, which included several in
which the Julia of "Julia's Letters" had purported to be present.

Mr Stead had turned this gentleman over to me by giving me an
introduction, accompanied by the request that "I should see the man and
report what I thought about him and his wonderful experiences."

So I asked Mr Thompson to call upon me, and arranged to be present with
him next day (Saturday) at Mrs Stoddart Gray's circle.

I found that he had taken up his abode with the medium and her son
during his short stays in New York, with the openly expressed intention
of finding out if there were any trickery behind the scenes. He had,
however, convinced himself of her _bona fides_, and was deeply
interested in the interviews he was able to obtain by means of these
mediums, with a daughter he had lost some years previously. He was much
pleased to find that I knew Mrs Gray already and could also testify to
some very remarkable phenomena occurring to me at her house.

So I met him there next afternoon, with every expectation of a good
sitting. These hopes, however, were entirely destroyed owing to the
presence of a noisy, vulgar man, whom they called the "Whisky King." He
made the most inane remarks, cracked stupid jokes, antagonised every
respectable person in the room, I should suppose; and as all this took
place without a word of protest from the lady of the house, one can only
conclude that she considered it worth her while to endure his
vulgarities.

Certainly the afternoon was spoilt for the rest of us, and I remarked
upon this to a very pleasant, smart-looking young American lady when the
sitting was over and we had retired to the reception-room to find wraps
and galoshes, etc.

"Oh yes; wasn't he just exasperating?" she said, with ready sympathy.

She looked much too young and smart and good-looking for the ordinary
type of "investigator," and I could not refrain from asking how she had
come into this _galere_.

She explain