ARE TRANCE PERSONALITIES real, autonomous individuals, or are they merely phases of the medium's own personality?

In 1934, W. Whately Carington applied quantitative testing to this problem. Carington was a pathfinder-a mathematician, a philosopher, and a systematic, thorough Psychical researcher. He was also, as Gardner Murphy has said,, "a man of warmth, generosity, intensity, excitement, and enthusiasm." Not for him were the routine ways of investigation; procedures had to be new or they held no interest for him. And when he made errors, as all pioneer researchers do, he was as quick to learn from them as he was to admit them.

Thus, although he achieved what he considered significant results in his early investigations, he later changed his testing procedures and published several later papers amending his findings.

Carington's first report noted that studies of the psychological status of trance personalities had been largely restricted to "witness box" methods. "We have listened," he said, "to the accounts ... these personalities have given of themselves, we have applied a certain amount of crossexamination, and we have sought to verify the items of information which they used to support their claims of identity. We have treated them almost exactly as we would treat someone claiming to be the missing heir to a dukedom. But we have not applied processes of measurement and calculation in order to make our inquiry an exact science. "

So Carington set out to solve three principal problems: "First, to devise a quantitative method of experimenting on trance personalities. Secondly, to use this method to find out whether it could provide evidence for or against the autonomy of spirit communicators. Thirdly, to find out as much as possible about the psychology of the trance state.' 3 Assuming that every personality is unique, he sought a method to distinguish between the medium in her normal state, her control, and the other entities called communicators, who were alleged to be surviving personalities.

To this end he utilized the Word Association Test devised by C. G. Jung which Jung based on the theory that though emotional experiences may have been buried in the subconscious and completely forgotten, nevertheless stimulus words bearing upon them will evoke stronger reactions than will indifferent words. Carington felt that here he had a means of distinguishing personalities through a substantially direct examination of their psychological content.

Carington says: "The experience of no two people is the same, and it is this experience which gives connotational significance to the words so that a standard list will be differently accented, so to speak, for each individual and comparison of the accentuations should enable us to distinguish one individual from another."

The procedure is simple: The experimenter takes a list of quite ordinary words, such as are met with every day, and calls them out, one by one, to the sub'ect, who is to respond as quickly as possible with the first word suggested by the stimulus word. The manner of response may throw considerable light on the psychological make up of the person under test. For instance, the first word suggested may be too embarrassing to utter, so that it must be replaced by something innocuous; purely intellectual difficulties may arise or the subject may hesitate between one reply and another. In any case the time elapsing between the stimulus word and the reply-the reaction time-is sometimes unduly prolonged, indicating that the word has some special significance for the subject.

The Reaction Time Test was timed with a stop watch, reading fifths of seconds, which started as the stimulus word was called out and stopped as the reply was given. Carington explained: "We are interested only in the differential incidence, as regards personalities, of prolongation of reaction time among the various words of the list."

The test was used in conjunction with others concerning the psychogalvanic reflex (measuring psychological disturbances), and with Reproduction Tests, wherein the sub'ect, having once undergone the Reaction Time Test, has to recall his previous responses. Although none of these proved to be as successful as Carington had hoped, his idea of instrumental and psychological testing in the study of mediumship was novel, and it opened the way to the development of other instrumental methods, such as the present-day use of electroencephalography for this purpose.

The course of the experiment with Mrs. Leonard was as follows: A list of seventy-five words prepared by Carington was used at each of six sittings. At each sitting the Reverend Charles Drayton Thomas first read the list to Mrs. Leonard before she went into trance and wrote down her responses to each successive word. When the list was ended Thomas immediately went through it again, making a note whenever Mrs. Leonard's reply was identical with one previously given. These subsequent readings of the list were termed the Reproduction Test. Having completed this, he waited until Mrs. Leonard was in trance and then repeated the procedure with Feda and the communictltors John and Etta, as each in turn took personal control.

Carington evaluated the reaction times and analyzed the results. He felt, he said, that he had "been confronted with a strange medley of personalities, resembling each other in some respects, differing in others, in varying degrees and according to circumstances-for all the world as if they were really four different consciousnesses, each interpenetrating the other to some extent." He concluded, however, that the association times of the control, Feda, showed an inverse, "mirror" relationship to those of the medium in her non-trance state. Therefore, he considered Feda to be a secondary personality, probably formed around a nucleus of repressed material.

Carington was thus willing to state categorically that he had established Feda's status as a secondary personality; but he felt with equal emphasis that John and Etta did not show "countersimilarity"-that they had demonstrated a definite degree of autonomy, and that they were, in some respects at least, what they purported to be. But, he added:

I want to make it perfectly clear that nothing whatever in the facts I have presented entitles anyone to claim-as some enthusiasts are sure to do, however plainly I warn them-that this work "proves human survival" or even "demonstrates the existence of discarnate entities" . . . It is perfectly true that the facts are easier to explain if we make certain tremendous assumptions of a spiritistic nature; but this does not constitute proof.

As a line of further inquiry he suggested tests to see whether significantly similar reactions from the same ostensible communicator could be obtained through two different mediums. "And when, if ever," he says, "we obtain from a supposed communicator, through a medium, reactions significantly similar to those he gave before his death, we may reasonably begin to talk about proving survival. "

Whately Carington published a revised and extended quantitative study in July, 19351 which he considered an improvement in analytic methods. In this paper he quotes from Eddington's The Nature of the Physical World:

"Scientific discovery is like the fitting together of the pieces of a great jigsaw puzzle. . . . One day we ask the scientist how he is getting on; he replies, 'Finely. I have very nearly finished this piece of blue sky.' Another day you ask how the sky is progressing and are told, 'I have added a lot more, but it was sea, not sky; there's a boat floating on the top of it

"Perhaps next time it will have turned out to be a parasol upside down. . . . The scientist has his guesses as to how the finished picture will work out; he depends largely on these in his search for other pieces to fit; but his guesses are modified from time to time by unexpected developments as the fitting proceeds...."

Unfortunately, Carington's parasol had turned out to be not only upside down but full of holes. For he had discovered that shortly after his first quantitative study was published, Oliver Gatty and Theodore Besterman had attempted a Word Association Test with their own inventions. Mr. Gatty was timed on his reactions as lists of words were read-while he was imagining himself in different life situations. His reaction time differed significantly for each personality he pretended to be.

Now, Carington had based his published conclusions on the assumption that if two personalities possess a common subconscious they could not, apart from deliberate cheating, produce significantly different sets of reaction times or disturbances in reproduction. He had believed that, where such differences were observed, they would constitute strong evidence of the autonomy of the personalities concerned. To Carington, the Besterman-Gatty results "effectively knock the bottom out of my original view that such differences cannot be produced by a single individual and therefore indicate that the personalities concerned are autonomous and independent."

However, he was able to report in this paper that Drayton Thomas had taken his suggestion and gone with his list of words to another medium, Mrs. Sharplin. John and Etta had purported to speak through her, and their reaction times were significantly similar to those recorded in the Leonard tests. Carington says:

At these Sharplin sittings, John and Etta purported to take control and were tested on three occasions each with the first fifty words of my first list. Mrs. Sharplin herself was similarly tested on two occasions only. The experiment is accordingly on a small scale and not to be regarded as more than exploratory. Nonetheless, the results are very remarkable.

If the procedure be admitted valid, I see no escape (or, strictly, only one in 714) from the conclusion that non-chance, non-Leonard, non-Sharplin factors are at work behind the scene, and from this it is but a trifling step to supposing that these factors are what they claim to be-namely "John" in the one case and "Etta" in the other-or just possibly a kind of joint personality combining the two. The only alternative would be to suppose that Mrs. Sharplin has contrived to impersonate the Leonard communicators, not as regards words and behavior (where the resemblance, I understand, was definitely poor) but in hesitations on particular words and failures to reproduce particular replies. Personally, I should regard this as far more fantastic than the straight paranormal interpretation, and I have little doubt that most others would do so too.

On the other hand, while I publish these results as a matter of the utmost general interest, I do so with very great reserve. I must confess to some surprise at obtaining so well-marked an indication so easily, and although I can detect no flaw in the argument at present, I should not be too surprised if one were to be discovered, or if the more extended experiments now planned were to fail to confirm the result.

So I venture to insist that nothing I have said here is to be used in evidence against me later, pending confirmation or the reverse. At the same time, if there is no hidden pitfall in the work, it would appear to constitute the strongest objective evidence in favor of the autonomy of communicators that has yet been obtained.

As regards the main point at issue . . . whether there is or is not adequate evidence for the operation of some extraneous influence (presumably-though not, perhaps, inevitably-something in,, the nature of what John and Etta claim to be), I can only adopt this position:

If nothing more important than a few million pounds or the fate of a couple of nations were involved, I should feel disposed to declare flatly that the operation of some such extraneous influence had been established and to leave it at that. But since the admission of such a conclusion, arrived at for the first time in history by the use of exact quantitative methods, would open up prospects beside which the achievements of the relativity theory would be of no more than parochial interest, I prefer to make precaution doubly cautious and not to commit myself (if ever) till I have reworked the entire calculation, with the additional refinements indicated and the additional material now being collected.

If we then obtain the same results . . . we may reasonably conclude that there is "something there," and apply ourselves to the more delicate task of deciding what it is.

Am I not right in supposing:

(a) that Mrs. Leonard, in trance, is perfectly capable of reading her sitter's mind (especially one so familiar as C.D.T.'s) almost like a book? Certainly, she thus read my mother's-a complete stranger's.

(b) that all the words and ideas actually given in response by Mrs. Leonard's communicators, "John" and "Etta," were familiar to Mr. C. Drayton Thomas himself-no matter whether they happened to be supraliminal or subliminal at the time of the tests?

(c) that the replies of "John" and "Etta" (in so far as they were specific, and did not show confusion with ideas in the medium's own mind, or that of her control, "Feda") might be supposed to be fairly well segregated in C.D.T.'s own mind as memories relating to his father and his sister respectively?

Add to this the facts that the operator himself called out the stimulus words, and cannot but have entertained appropriate answers (whether supraliminally or subliminally is not the point), and it will be apparent for all to see that mind-reading and/or active telepathy from person to person were practically inevitable.

Broadly speaking, Carington agreed with Maby's conclusion that the information and character of the response words were definitely paranormal, whatever their source; but he left it to Hereward Carrington to answer Maby's theory that telepathy could account for the "rightness" of the response words. If the medium were reading Drayton Thomas' mind, Hereward Carrington wondered, how was it possible for her to select from it only the appropriate words which were associated with the memory of the person purporting to be communicating at the time? He wrote:

We may be willing to grant any amount of play-acting ability on the part of the subconscious mind of the medium. But that does not alter our main problem, viz., Why are the responses invariably typical of the right person? Or, as the Reverend Drayton Thomas put it: ". . . all that we have found seems to favor the supposition that with change of control there comes into operation a differently composed mind and memory." (Italics mine.)

The association words we received seemed quite characteristic and typical of the personalities involved in life, as subsequently verified by friends and relatives known to them when living. All this is very different from the Gatty material, interesting as this is from the psychological point of view.

In short ... it would thus seem that the reaction words are, in a sense, a far better indicator of the actual state of affairs than are the galvanic reflexes [or reaction times] which were treated statistically.

This conclusion seems to have been amply borne out by Mr. Thomas's results, in which some highly characteristic reactions were also obtained, judged by the words alone.

We find in the tests as published by Drayton Thomas that John's response words, for instance, were almost invariably those which one would expect to hear from the dignified nineteenth century Methodist minister named John Drayton Thomas. For the word -"beer" he replied "Bad. Stupid." For the word "cook" his answer was "Coppy," the nickname for Copp, a cook in his family for some thirty years.

Many of Etta's response words applied to the individual named Etta and no one else. Her reaction to the word "name," for instance, was "Joy," the name of Etta's only daughter. Her reply to "love" was "children" and "Stuart," Etta's younger son.

Feda's response words might have been those of a Hindu girl of long ago. They caused considerable discussion, as was to be expected. Subsequent issues of the journal of the Society for Psychical Research carried numerous letters referring to the tests, and particularly to Feda's reactions.

Bishop F. J. Western of Tinnevelly, South India, wrote questioning the Oriental flavor of Feda's association words. He had lived in Delhi as a missionary for twenty-four years and knew Hindustani; he said that some of her words were quite inappropriate for an Indian living near Simla a hundred and thirty years ago. To the word "make" she had responded "curry" and "sari" but Indians, he said, thought of curry more as a relish than as a meal. Their response would more likely have been "rice." He said Indian women did not make their own saris; they bought the material and 'ust wrapped it around themselves.

M. J. Balfour replied to this, stating that he had been engaged in medical work in India for many years, that the Indian woman speaks of curry as the meal, taking the rice for granted, and that perhaps in Feda's day women wove the material for saris at home.

Professor E. R. Dodds had his wife ask him the series of association words; as he responded he played the role of an American, and a Republican at that. In response to the word "make" he replied "whoopee." In response to the word "paint" he replied "town red." He assures us that "The results obtained with Feda are not distinguishable in quality from faked results."

Drayton Thomas did not question Professor Dodds' idea of what constituted Americanisms, but he did point out that Dodds' reaction time was undoubtedly lengthened when he faked answers, and that it would have been considerably longer had he faced the obstacles a communicator must overcome. "Let him go through the list of stimulus words again," he suggested, "whispering his replies to another person who shall then voice them for him." Hereward Carrington seconded this. He felt that Thomas' point had been unduly slighted by those who took the counterfeit tests.

In "The Word Association Test with Mrs. Osborne Leonard," Drayton Thomas lists most of Feda's reaction words, as well as many of john's and Etta's. He tells first of his procedure in giving the tests:

After taking the reactions to the seventy-five words I immediately went through the list a second time with the same personality, asking that replies should be as quick as possible. A reproduction of the previously given reaction word indicates perhaps a retentive memory, but more probably a definite mental association. Especially is it likely to be the latter when the identical word is reproduced at a sitting or sittings several weeks after the first. For example, Etta gave "sunbonnet" as her reaction to the word "hat," and repeated it at every sitting and at every Reproduction Test, while no other personality even mentioned the word....

The effect of Feda's reactions, given with her usual animation, was heightened by asides and explanations. Unfortunately pressure of time compelled me to discourage these. They certainly added to the picturesqueness of the reactions, the Oriental atmosphere of which will be noticed in the following examples:

(Words in capitals are those which were repeated in the Reproduction Test.)

FEDA

Go: Slave.

Friend: AMAR. Arfiar. NABOB. MISSION.

Village: Black. Multitude. PLAGUE. POOR. Plague. POOR.

Sick: Slave. LEPER. LEPER.

Angry: Prince.

Head: TURBAN. TURBAN.

Cook: Curry. CURRY. CURRY. BOY.

Pay: RUPPEE. Gaekwar.

Dress: Sandals. SARI. MUSLIN. Gauze.

Hat: SILLY. SARI. Drapery.

Wild: Elephants. Dervish. JUNGLE. LION.

Month: Monsoon. MONSOON.

Walk: SEDAN. SEDAN.

Lamp: PALACE. Gold.

Bread: BLACK. BLACK. BLACK. MAIZE. BLACK.

Tree: Mango. MIMOSA. MANGO. MANGO.

Pity: Leper.

Street: BAZAAR. BAZAARS. BAZAAR. Village. BAZAARS.

Justice: MISSIONARY. Nabob.

Paint: NAILS. TOES. TOES. TOENAILS.

Carry: MULE. MULE. Water. Mule.

Rich: NABOB. NABOB. NABOB. PRINCE. Beggars.

JUMP: PURDAH.

Doctor: WIZARD. WIZARD. WIZARD. WIZARD.

Box: Incense. CEDAR. JEWELS. JEWELS.

White: Turban.

Sad: Widow. Eunuch.

Dog: Pariah. PARIAH.

Travel: CANOPY. Procession. Sedan.

Beat: SLAVES. DRUM. DRUM. DRUM.

Old: PRIEST. Priest. Priest.

Hunger: Dog. VILLAGE.

Here are more of Feda's reaction words with her asides explaining them:

Drive-Purdah: "When you are in purdah you wants to go for a drive and you can't."

Bet-Anna: "I don't like bets, and you don't want to use more than one anna, that's quite enough for a bet."

Sleep-Heavy: "Pipes, you know, when you smoke pipes."

Land: "I have not got a word for that. It doesn't interest Feda. Gladys is always thinking of it. You see, I doesn't like land, much land isn't interesting."

Mrs. Leonard had lately bought land at Tankerton and was building there.

Door-Curtain: "Nicer than a door."

Bring-Salver: Not understanding this owing to unusual pronunciation,
I asked Feda to repeat. She gave the same word. I then asked what it meant. She replied thus, "We brings it; beaten copper or brass or silver. Beaten silver is nicest. We had beaten brass most. When a slave brings you a letter he brings it on a salver."

Wicked-Gaekwar: Not being sure I heard aright, I asked its meaning.

Feda said, "A man. He was a naughty man."

Yellow-Roof: "Near where I lived there was one with a bright gold roof. "

Noise-Drums: "You would never forget them if you had heard them as Feda has."

Proud-Warrior: "He is proud, yes he is very proud."

Pray-Mat: "That is what you always have to pray on, a nice little mat.

Bath-jade: "Princes has them."

Hill-Himalaya: "The only hill I ever knew."

Town-Simla: "Yes, I was born there, when I was young I heard a lot about it. I don't know the town but a place near there."

Call-Eunuch: (Claps hands) "You clap and they have got to come."

Kiss-Noses: (Why do you say that, Feda?) "Because I have heard of somebody that does it. Black people does it, we do not do it, we aren't colored people, we are only brown."

Pool-Drown: "That's better than drowning people in the wells!"

Veil-Yashmak: "It is what you puts in front of your face."

Sing-Samisen: "It is what you sings to. When you sings you plays a samisen, and you go tinka, tinka, tink-like that."

Dead-Pyre: "We should not be put on it now. It was stupid. Some of the widows that was put on the pyre was nicer than the man who died. But they didn't want to go-some of them didn't."

Book-Tablet: "They used to make books of tablets. We used to have some kind of stuff like ivory."

Bury-Serf: "You buries them and not bother about them much."

Wicked-Hyderabad: "He was a very nasty man. Poisoned."
JOHN

My father, John Drayton Thomas, was a Methodist minister for forty years before he retired from active work, but he continued to take services up to the day before his death in 1903.

A glance at the list of reaction words shows a number which relate to the work of the ministry, among them the following:

Bible. Scripture. Testament. Ministry. Missionary. Mission. Chapel. Vestry. Aisle. Choir. Sermon. Preach. Visits. Class. Preaching.

Truth. Evil. Hymn. Psalm. Communion. Collection.

Build: CHAPEL. MISSION. Mission.

Young: CLASS. MINISTER. ASSISTANT. MISSIONARY.

Speak: Sermon. CAREFULLY. AUDIBLY. CARRY.

To the last he added that he always felt the importance of making the voice carry.

Black: SUIT. SUIT. COAT. COAT.

My father dressed in black throughout the whole of his ministerial life, and was very particular about it.

Wine: Supper. Bread. Communion.

Book: Bible. Bible. SCRIPTURES. MOFFAT.

My father admired the outstanding missionaries, and especially Moffat. He once gave me a book on Moffat's work.

Sing: Hymn. Psalm. MISSION. Choir.

Window: Chapel. VIESTRY.

Read: Testament. TESTAMENT.

Travel: Circuit. Circuit.

Go: Circuit. Circuit. Circuit.

Each Methodist minister is sent to work in a locality which is termed his Circuit. At the expiration of a few years he must go to a different Circuit. Ministers who thus move about are termed "traveling preachers," and the term "to travel" is used in that sense. A minister is said to have "traveled" such-and-such a number of years, i.e., the period during which he has been in the ministry.

The following are strongly reminiscent of my father's character, teaching and practices:

Bet: Silly. NEVER.

Say: TRUTH. SERMON. Preach. Truth.

Love: OBEY. Teaching. HONOR. NEIGHBOR.

Life: BRIGHT. BUSY. Habits. ROUTINE.

Silly: Foolish.

He then added, "foolish" was more my word than "silly." This I remember was so.

Beer: Bad. Stupid.

My father was a strongly convinced total abstainer.

The following Biblical associations are too well known to require elucidation:

Lamp: Wise.

Bread: Stone.

Rich: NEEDLE. Needle. Camel.

Tree: Bay.

We now come to reactions suggestive of particular memories.

Town: BATH. NEWPORT. TAUNTON. BATH.

My father was educated at Bath. He married from Newport and I was born at Taunton.

Street: Newport. ROW.

Our residence in my early childhood was at Yarmouth, where our house was close to some of the famous Rows. These are narrow alleys connecting wider streets.

Village: Island.

Only once in his forty years' ministry did my father reside in a village, and that was in the Isle of Wight. At all other times he was in towns or cities.

Girl:HETTIE. ETTA. ETTA.

My sister's name was Henrietta; she was always called either Hettie or Etta.

Brother: ALFRED. John. Alfred.

Alfred was my father's favorite brother. John was an elder brother who died in infancy and, as my father was the next male child, he was also called John.

Brown: CIRCUIT.

The Rev. B. Browne worked with my father in the same circuit, and there was an unusually close intimacy between them.

Finger: NUMB.

He added, "You remember?" On repetition the medium's fingers gave a snap as the word was spoken. This is peculiarly interesting. My father's fingers, when he washed in cold weather, would often turn whitish and feel numb. My mother used to remark upon the change of color. The question, "You remember?" together with the snapping of fingers during during repetition of the word "numb," was eloquent of a personal recollection.

ETTA

My sister Etta was an ideal mother and housewife. Her chief recreation was painting. For long years she suffered ill health and pain, and her passing followed upon a severe operation which was suddenly found to be necessary.

Among her reactions we find the following:

Get well. Strong. Ill. Illness. Anxiety. Ambulance. Operation.

Instruments. Nurses. Dressing. Nursing. Anaesthetics. Sick. Surgeon.

Pain. Hospital. Medicine. Suffering.

Interest in sketching and painting is indicated in other reactions:

Painting. Sketching. Paints. Ochre. Lines. Sky. Picture. Drawing. Canvas. Distance.

Household associations are common to many women, but they are strongest in the mind of a good mother and house manager, such as was my sister. In the reactions of Etta we find many such:

Accounts. Meals. Child. Dinner. Work. Beds. Order. Garden. Lawn. Tidy. Home. Darn. School. Fireside. jam. Meal. Eggs. Carpet. Pudding. Sheets. Linen. Table. Apron. Breakfast. Economy. Firewood.

Chimney. Babies. Mother. Family. Christening, Grate. Rug. Slippers.

Houses. Sash. Flannel. Daughter. Bathroom. Tub.

The following suggest my sister's personal memories and characteristics:

Nasty: PAIN. MEDICINE. Pain. Medicine. MEDICINE. MEDICINE.

Doctor: Sudden. OPERATION. HURRY.

Bed: Nursing. Anaesthetic.

Knife: OPERATION. Table. OPERATION.

Proud: MOTHER. FAMILY.

Name: Joy. CHRISTENING. (joy is the name of Etta's only daughter.)

Love: CHILDREN. Stuart. Family. (Stuart is Etta's younger son.)

Kiss: CHILD. Stuart. CHILDREN. CHILDREN.

Girl: Joy. Daughter.

Pain: OPERATION. (Etta's operation was preceded by a period of intense pain.)

Child: Joy. Joy.

Dead: ARISEN. Operation. Arise.

Foot: ARCH.

She added, "I was thinking of something that happened long ago. It was an important matter and I am glad we put it right at the time." This looks like a recollection of what was a great trouble to her during the childhood of her younger boy; he developed flat-feet and was pronounced incurable by several doctors. Finally a bonesetter put him right and there was no recurrence of the weakness.

Hill: ROCHESTER.

Etta lived at Star Hill, Rochester, for three years. It was on a steep rise.

MRS. LEONARD

We have three sets of Mrs. Leonard's reactions-a total of 1,100 stimulus words. The reactions may be described as commonplace and non-identifying. I have known Mrs. Leonard for seventeen years and am familiar with her interests and history. Yet a survey of her reactions rarely shows anything distinctive of either. They might be given by anybody or by everybody; there is nothing to indicate Mrs. Leonard-or almost nothing. The following are the only exceptions I can find:

Lamp: SHADE. GLASS. SHADE. CLASS. SHADE. SHADE.

Build: HALL. Hall. HALL. HALL.

During the period in which these experiments were proceeding Mrs. Leonard was building a hall suitable for meetings. She was having the hall fitted for electric lighting and discussed with me the best kind of glass shade to select.

Land: Lease. PRICE. PRICE.

Previous to building the hall she had built her present house. Naturally the question of lease or freehold and of price had been prominent in her mind on both occasions.

Ball: PLAY. Play.

For some years Mrs. Leonard took exercise in a game which consisted in keeping a ball on the bounce as long as possible.

Book: TEST. TEST. TEST.

As Mrs. Leonard will have been aware, her sittings have produced a remarkable number of highly interesting book tests.

Beat: TIME. TIME. TIME. TIME.

This might possibly be a memory of the period during which Mrs. Leonard was training for the concert platform before an attack of diphtheria impaired her singing voice.

Doctor: HECTOR.

Hector is the Christian name of Mrs. Leonard's doctor.

Home: Haven.

Mrs. Leonard's present house is named The Haven.

Wild: Alcohol.

Wicked: CRUEL. Trap.

These reactions might relate to Mrs. Leonard's interest in total abstinence, and in the prevention of cruelty to animals.

The above list includes everything indicative of Mrs. Leonard's identity. Had she been a communicator, instead of the visible medium, I should have had grave doubts about the performance, and should certainly have refused to accept it as emanating from the Mrs. Leonard I had known! And this notwithstanding the advantage she had in giving 450 more reactions than either of the others.