e-irritating atmosphere than in Palladino's
squalid quarters, and I do not remember more idyllic, peaceful
surroundings than when I sat between Beulah and her sister through
bright sunny mornings in their mother's home with their cat beside
them and the pet lamb coming into the room from the meadow. There
everything suggested fraud, and when at my second seance her foot was
caught behind the curtain and the whole humbug exposed, it was exactly
what I had expected. But here everything breathed sincerity and
naivete and absence of fraud--yet my mere assurance cannot convince a
skeptic; we must examine the case carefully.

The claims are very simple: Here is a school child of ten years who is
able to read in the mind of any one present anything of which he is
thinking. If you take a card from a pack and look at it, and still
better if several people look at it, and best of all if her mother or
sister looks at it, too, Beulah will say at once which card it is,
although she may stand in the farthest corner of the room. She will
give you the date on any coin which you have in hand; in a book she
will tell you the particular word at which you are looking. Indeed, a
sworn affidavit reports still more surprising feats. Beulah gave
correctly the name of the reporter whom nobody else knew and the name
of the New York paper for which she is writing. At school she reads
words written on the blackboard with her back turned to it. At home
she knows what any visitor is hiding in his pocket.

The serious-minded man who is disgusted with spiritualistic charlatans
and their commercial humbug is naturally inclined here, too, at once
to offer the theory that all is fraud and that a detective would be
the right man to investigate the case. When the newspapers discovered
that I had begun to study the girl, I received from many sides letters
with suggestions to look for certain devices with which stage
performers carry out such tricks, such as marked cards and the
equipment of the magician. But whoever thinks of fraud here
misunderstands the whole situation. The psychical powers of Beulah
Miller were not brought before the public by the child or her family;
there was no desire for notoriety, and in spite of the very modest
circumstances in which this carpenter's family has to live, the facts
became known before any commercial possibility suggested itself.

The mother was startled by Beulah's psychical gifts because she
noticed two years ago