sounded, and at last the drumsticks began their tattoo.  At the close of the seance, when the curtains were drawn and the lights turned up, the Medium was found in his chair with his hands still tied, but great was the astonishment of everyone present at the marvelous condition of the Medium’s hands.  How in the world printer’s ink could have gotten smeared over them while under control of ’Deerfoot, the Indian,’ no one, not even the Medium, could fathom.

I believe there is an explanation for these or similar phenomena, but I must leave it to the ingenious and adroit expounders of Spiritualist philosophy.

CALVIN B. KNERR.

* * * * *

MEDIUMISTIC DEVELOPMENT.

At my very first seance, as a member of this Commission, I was told by the Spirit of Elias Hicks, through Mrs. Patterson, that I was gifted by nature with great Mediumistic power.  Another Medium, with whom I had a session shortly afterwards (I cannot remember his name, but he advertised himself as a great ’Australian Medium’), professed himself quite unable to exert any power in the presence of a Medium so much more powerful than himself.  ‘Father Holland,’ the control of Mrs. Williams, in New York, assured me that I merely needed development to have Spiritual manifestations at my own home; and Joseph Caffray was so emphatic in his assertions of my extraordinary Spiritual capabilities, that I began to think that it was my duty to quicken these dormant powers and not to let them ‘fust in me unused,’ and if successful, when I had become fully ‘developed,’ I could offer myself to my fellow Commissioners as a corpus vile on which every experiment could be made, and at a great saving of expense.

Spiritualists constantly reproach investigators of Spiritualism with faint-heartedness and lack of patience; they allege that at the very first rebuff all investigating ardor cools, and that one failure is deemed sufficient to condemn a whole system.

If the case be really thus, the Spiritualists have a show of reason for this objection, and it behooves the Seybert Commission to give no ground for it.

After much deliberation I decided to put myself in the hands of Caffray for ‘development.’  I preferred this Medium, first, because he was the most emphatic of all in his assertion of my almost unrivaled Mediumistic powers, and in his confidence that indications of Spiritual growth would be manifest in three or four weeks, and at the end of six weeks or of two months I might celebrate my Spiritual majority by slatefuls of messages; and, secondly, Mr. Hazard assured me again and again that Caffray was the ‘greatest Medium in the country;’ and did not Mr. Hazard, by way of proof, show me a stoppered vial containing a card, on which, through Caffray’s Mediumship, a message had been written while the closed vial was fast held in his closed hand?

The first step was the purchase of two slates from Caffray, for which I gave him several dollars.  They were common enough to look at, but ah! they had been for months in his Materializing Cabinet and had absorbed Spiritual power to the point of saturation, and fairly exuded it.  I brought them carefully from New York, and folded them in black muslin, and laid them away in a dark drawer.