occurred.  Now placing his hand on my head, he said:  “I will endeavor to give you the name.”  Closing his eyes, his body trembled or shuddered with a kind of paroxysm, and apparently with a great effort he pronounced the name “Cora Holt.”  This effort seemed to greatly exhaust him, and coming out of his temporary trance he begged us to excuse him, saying that there were opposing spirits present and he could do no more that night; that he had done all for us that lay within his power.  He now took his leave.

This was all very impressive to me at the time, except the raps.  It was only afterwards that I thought out the explanation, which I will give farther on.  As to the raps, they had the sound as of a pencil tapping loudly on a thin strip of wood, or a ruler, and not the sound of tapping on a table.  I had previously known of the mechanical and electrical rappers, supplied by certain conjuring depots, and worn on the person of the medium, or attached to a table.  My impression was at the time that possibly he had a rapper in the sleeve of the arm extended over the table, and by directing the attention to the table the sound would appear to come from there.  As I was sitting right against the table, I will say that the sound did not appear to me to come from the table, but more nearly from his person.

Referring again to the test given my father, the medium first announced his prices, which he would accept if satisfactory.  This was agreed to and paid.  He then had my father write names on paper in a manner similar to the way I have described, except he did not request my father to write a dead person’s name; instead, he requested him to write, among other names, his mother’s maiden name, his wife’s maiden name, his father’s name, also the names of certain members of his family and of some of his friends, some of whom should be dead.  This my father did.

Among the names written by my father was his mother’s maiden name, viz., “Celestina Redexilana Phelps,” a name certainly out of the ordinary.  He also wrote his wife’s maiden name, his father’s name, his brother’s name, and several other names—­six or eight altogether.

When the medium had the billets taken out of the hat he said, “You have there the name of your mother; the name is something like ‘Celestia (not Celestina) Roxalena (not Redexilana) Phelps,’” thus giving wrong pronunciations to the first two names.  However, when my father opened it, sure enough it was his mother’s maiden name.  My father now took another billet which had written thereon his father’s name.  This the medium gave correctly, stating that this was his father’s name.  The next billet had written thereon the name of my father’s brother; the name was James Asahel Abbott.”  The medium then said:  “Your brother James is here, and he says to tell you that he is happy and that you are making a great mistake not to believe.”