W.M.  KEELER.

MEMORANDUM FOR THE SEYBERT COMMISSION.

I called this morning (Saturday, 14th November, 1885), on Mr. W. M. Keeler, and told him, in effect, in the very words as well as I can remember, as follows:  that I had received his letter of the 6th inst., containing his terms, and had consulted the Commission in regard to them; and that our conclusion had been quickly reached.  He must know how very simple a process this ‘composite photography’ is, and that among photographers there is no mystery whatever in it.  For his own process he claimed a Spiritual Agency—­this agency we were willing to accept (in my own case I was anxious to accept it) if, after a thorough investigation, his process could not be explained by well-known physical laws.  The conditions he demanded were such as to render any investigation simply silly.  His exclusive use of the dark room, which could have nothing to do with Spiritual forces, for the Spirits had already done their work in the Camera, utterly precluded us from discovering whether his processes were in anywise different from ordinary photography.  He wished to know in what way this prevented us from detecting fraud if the operations took place in a private house where he was a stranger.  I replied that without for a moment impugning his honesty, he must know that unless we were present with him in the dark room, we could not affirm that our marks had not been duplicated on substituted plates.

Furthermore, that we had regarded his terms as intentionally prohibitory.  The demand for three hundred dollars was so extraordinary that we could regard it in no other light than as a desire to avoid an investigation altogether.  I asked him what his ordinary charge was, and he replied two dollars for each sitting, and that he made from twenty to forty dollars a day, when he settled down to work.

That there might be no misunderstanding, I repeated my reply to his wife:  that we were ready to investigate, if we could be allowed to watch the very points where material agency ceases and spiritual begins, but these very points Mr. Keeler forbade us to examine, and that the failure rested with him.

At one time his vexation (which was manifest) a little ran away with his discretion.  He asked, with somewhat of a sneer, ’How did you expect to investigate it?’ I replied that ’I could not answer for others, but for myself I should have liked to have him say, when we of the Commission met him, The Spirits are present, through my Mediumship, here is my Camera in which the Spirits will manifest themselves on the sensitized plates, take it, and so long as I am present with my influence, do what you please.’  He laughed outright and said ‘That would be a good thing.’

I endeavored throughout the interview to impress him with our utter incredulity in the spiritual nature of his photographs, and yet to give him no loop to hang a charge of discourteous or illiberal treatment on.  I asked him to give me, in my private capacity, a sitting at his earliest convenience, and that I should not be satisfied with less than a cherub on my head, one on each shoulder, and a full-blown angel on my breast.  He laughingly assented.