This was a source of amusement to her, and, at the time we made our entry into the investigation, the hand wrote legibly and neatly in reply to mental, i.e. unspoken, questions, she having no control of the muscles so long as the “influence,” which was the name she applied to whatever it might be, chose to use it.  She knew what was written only when the writing was finished and she read it, as we did; and the writing was, as we found by experiment, quite as regular and well formed when her eyes were bandaged as when she was looking at her work.  As a further test of the involuntary character of this we not only tried her with her eyes bandaged, but by my brother talking with her from one side of the table, while she was writing in reply to my mental questions on the other; she talked with him on one subject at the same moment in which she wrote to me on another.

In what was given under these circumstances she wrote for us the replies in conversations with what purported to be the spirits of three deceased relatives, the wife of my brother, my brother Alfred, and cousin Harvey, who had for several years been my most intimate and beloved friend; and the handwriting of the three series of communication was a better imitation of their writing than I, knowing it, could have produced.  That of my sister-in-law I was not so familiar with, though my brother recognized it as that of his wife, but that of our brother was a perfect reproduction down to the smallest accidents, and that which was given as the responses of my cousin equally so, and executed with a rapidity of which I was incapable—­a large scrawling hand, that of our brother being of a character entirely opposed, slowly and laboriously formed, with occasional omissions of the last line of a final n, quite common in his writing.  The girl had never known either of these relatives.  One of the questions I asked when conversing with Harvey was, “Will you tell me how you died?” to which the only reply was a fixed stare on the part of Miss A., though every other question was answered, by pantomime, affirmative or negative signs, or writing, and always in writing when it was insisted on.  Miss A.’s pantomimic powers in this state exceeded anything I have ever seen in professional pantomime, and she employed them largely.

At the conclusion of the questions and replies with Harvey, I asked if he had seen old Turner, the landscape painter, since his death, which had taken place not very long before.  The reply was “Yes,” and I then asked what he was doing, the reply being a pantomime of painting.  I then asked if Harvey could bring Turner there, to which the reply was, “I do not know; I will go and see,” upon which Miss A. said, “This influence is going away—­it is gone;” and after a short pause added, “There is another influence coming, in that direction,” pointing over her left shoulder.  “I don’t like it,” and she shuddered slightly, but presently sat up in her chair with a