Caffray told me that with a beginner the Spirits found it somewhat easier to write with French chalk than with slate pencil.  So I bought a box of a dozen pieces, such as tailors use.

The instructions which I received from Caffray were to keep these slates carefully in the dark, and every evening at about the same hour to sit in total darkness, with my hands resting on them for about a half or three-quarters of an hour; to maintain a calm, equable, passive state of mind, even to think of any indifferent subject rather than to concentrate my thoughts too intently on the slate-writing.  There could be no question of the result.  A Medium of my unusual and excessive power would find, at the end of three weeks, faint zig-zag scratches within the closed slates, and these scratches would gradually assume shape, until at last messages would be legible, probably at the end of six weeks, or of three months at the very farthest.

In addition to this, I must wear, night and day, a piece of magnetized paper, about six inches square, a fresh piece every night and morning; its magnetism was exhausted in about twelve hours.  When I mentioned to Mr. Hazard the proposed use of this magnetized paper, he assured me that it was a capital idea—­that he had himself used it for a headache, and when he put it on the top of his head ‘it turned all his hair backward.’  I confess to dismay when I heard this; Caffray had told me that I must wear this paper on the top of my head under my hat!  But did it not behoove the Acting Chairman of the Seybert Commission to yield himself a willing victim to the cause of Psychical Research?  Was to be, or not to be, a Medium so evenly balanced that the turning of a hair, or of a whole head of hair was to repel me?  Perish the thought!  That paper should be worn on the top of my head, under my hat, and that hat should be worn all day long.  I would eat my breakfast with that hat on, eat my dinner with that hat on, and sleep with that hat on, and that magnetized paper should remain on the top of my head, let it turn my hair to all the points of the compass, if it would!

When I received the slates from Caffray he had no paper that was sufficiently magnetized just then; he had some sheets that were about half done, and promised to send them to me as soon as the process was complete.

In the meantime I began with the slates, sitting with them in total darkness from about a quarter past eight to nine o’clock every evening, with my hands resting on them lightly.

In three or four days the paper arrived.  I explained to my family that hereafter they must not infer, from the wearing of my hat indoors and at meals, either that my wits had slipped, or that I had become converted to Judaism, but that my conduct was to be viewed by the light of the pure flame of research.  In my secret soul I resolved that I would go at once, that very morning, to New York and plead with Caffray for some slight easing of my ordeal.  The ‘Spectre of the Threshold’ appeared to wear a silk hat, and I was afraid I never, never should pass him.