At the first two seances an ordinary wooden table was used belonging to the hotel where Dr. Slade lodged.  At the third seance a similar but larger table was used, somewhat the worse for wear, and the joints of its leaves were far from fitting close.  Every crack, however, and every chink had been carefully filled up with paper to prevent, so the Medium said, ‘the electricity from flowing through.’

The method of producing the long message which opened the seance has been described above.  Whenever we received other long messages, written with some care and more or less filling the side of the slate, the agency employed was adroit substitution, generally effected when the Medium supposed that the attention of his sitters was engrossed with an answer just received to a question addressed to the Spirits.  Prepared slates resting against the leg of the table behind him were substituted for those which but a moment before he had ostentatiously washed on both sides and laid on the table in front of him.  The handwriting of these long messages bore an unmistakable similarity to the Medium’s own.

When a question is written on the slate by a sitter, equal dexterity to that used in substituting the prepared slate, or even greater, is demanded of the Medium, in reading the question and in writing the answer.

The question is written by the sitter out of sight of the Medium, to whom the slate, face downward, is handed over and a piece of pencil placed on it.

The task now before the Medium is first to secure the fragment of pencil and to hold it while the slate is surreptitiously turned over and the question read, then the slate is turned back again and the answer written.

Every step in the process we have distinctly seen.  In order to seize the fragment of pencil without awakening suspicion, while holding the slate under the table, the slate is constantly brought out to see whether or not the Spirits have written an answer.  By this manoeuvre a double end is attained:  First, it creates an atmosphere of expectation, and the sitters grow accustomed to a good deal of motion in the Medium’s arm that holds the slate; and secondly, by these repeated motions the pencil (which, having been cut out from a slate pencil enclosed in wood, is square, and does not roll about awkwardly), is moved by the successive jerks toward the hand which holds the slate, and is gradually brought up to within grasping distance.  The forefinger is then passed over the frame of the slate, and it and the thumb seize and hold the pencil, and under cover of some violent convulsive spasms the slate is turned over and the question read.  At this point it is that the Medium shows his nerve:  it is the critical instant, the only one when his eyes are not fastened on his visitors.  On one occasion, when the question was written somewhat illegibly in a back hand, with a very light stroke, and close to the upper edge of the slate, the Medium had to look at it three several times before he could make it out.