WITH GLADYS OSBORNE LEONARD, as with all mediums, communication was not always smooth sailing. Meaningless information, unidentifiable communicators, and confused statements are by no means unknown in the transcripts of her seances.

An evaluation of Mrs. Leonard's communications, taken as a whole, reveals that, as G. N. M. Tyrrell comments, although they present us with many facts about communicators which Mrs. Leonard could not possibly have known, as well as much appropriate description and characterization, there is still "clearly considerable limitation ... moreover, it seems probable that there is also a good deal of distortion.",

But even the puzzles have their own interest for usthey throw light on the complexities of communication. Among the more curious is this: there are instances in many mediumships where information is given by a person purporting to be deceased but who is later discovered to be alive. An illustration of this occurred when a Canon Douglas held a sitting with a non-professional medium. Canon Douglas reports that his chauffeur, a Frenchman named Reallier, had left his service to join the French Army in 1914, and had occasionally written to him thereafter. At this sitting the medium told Canon Douglas that a deceased communicator named Revallier wished to speak to him. This purported entity gave many convincing details from the past which seemed to indicate that he was the chauffeur Reallier. He then reported a journey to Salonica and other recent events in the chauffeur's life which were later proved to be true, although at the time they were unknown to the Canon. In fact, this entity called Revallier made no mistakes-except the vital one that the chauffeur Reallier was not dead and had not even been seriously ill.

A somewhat similar instance occurred at a Leonard sitting of April 5, 1918 when Dr. L. P. jacks (one of the early presidents of the Society for Psychical Research) sat for the first time, anonymously. The alleged comtnunicator seemed to answer to the description of Dr. Jacks' son, Stopford Jacks, who was then fighting at the front.

Abridged Record of the Sitting
 

FEDA	DR. JACK'S COMMENTS
A young man comes who knows this gentleman. He's about twenty-two, on the tall side, about medium breadth, holds himself straight, got a straight way of looking . . . eyes grey-blue . . . hair short, sticks up a little on top . . . he passed over suddenly. He is not building up in uniform [rather in a suit he used to wear] in earth life, not quite at the end.  (Feda gives a description of a woman whom Dr. jacks presumes to be his own mother. Feda then gives various initials from the young man whom Dr. jacks identified momentarily as his son Stopford, and a description of the conditions at the time of his death.)	I cannot identify him. I thought at first it was my son Captain S. Jacks, at the front, as the description tallies at several points. I was afraid he might have been killed. I now know he was alive at the time of the sitting.
FEDA. He builds up a letter S. It's connected with him . . . There's two young men here, this one and one by the side of him.... One keeps building up the letter M ... and a letter like a circle. Feda thinks it must be O. (She describes certain machinery, and then gives the name Maurice.) (There follows a longer portion containing what Dr. Jacks considered to be a good description of his late friend Professor Royce of Harvard University. An account is given of past experiences which they shared in America, and the main theme of Royce's later philosophy is dwelt upon. This had been mentioned in an article written by Dr. Jacks about Royce.	S, M, O are the initials of three of my sons in the reverse order of their ages. Maurice is the name of my second son, Captain Maurice Jacks. I had been thinking a lot about Maurice on the day of the sitting. I had been wondering if he would turn up. He and I worked on much the same lines, had much in common and were great friends. And I had recently published an article on him in the Atlantic Monthly.
There then follows some vague remarks about an Archdeacon.)	Quite unintelligible. I know no Archdeacon.
DR. JACKS.Would the young man like to come back? FEDA.Yes, he gives his love DR. JACKS. To whom? FEDA. To a lady on the earth plane and to Maurice. He wants to be remembered to E. DR. JACKS. Is E a lady? FFDA. Not sure. The power is weakening. The young man was glad to come. He's all right, he says, getting on splendidly. Goodbye.	E is the initial of my only daughter. This made me think again that it might be my son Stopford sending a message to his sister. I know of no other young man "on the other side" who would want to send a message to E.

Dr. Jacks concludes:

Had the whole sitting been of the character of the first part, should have said it was the common stock-in-trade of a professional medium, throwing out vague generalities (mostly fitted to the circumstances of the time, the war, etc.) on to which excited persons might force a particular meaning according to their hopes and fears. But in the second part the medium seems to have tapped my mind about Royce-especially the article-and that inclines me to think that she was also telepathicallyl tapping me in the first part, my mind being much preoccupied at the time with anxieties about my sons and losses of young friends in the war.

The total impression left on my mind is similar to that left by many common dreams. There is the same muddle and incoherency at first, in which definite personalities seem to appear for a moment and then change into somebody else, the facts getting hopelessly mixed up, the action of one person shading off into that of another. And then towards the end the dream becomes more coherent and interesting, keeping up a definite character for a time, with a sudden return to nonsense (the Archdeacon, etc.) and a momentary reappearance of the people first on the scene.

One of these occurred to Mrs. J. E. Beadon at a sitting of March 16, 1918. The purported communicator was her husband Colonel Beadon. Mrs. Beadon says that Williarn Redhorn (pseudonym) had been the son of her old family doctor and had died twenty-five years before. He was a young doctor himself. She had seen nothing of his family since "we left our old home at R---- twenty-four years ago. I had, however, met his sister in the street a few days previous to the sitting, which caused some memories of old days to pass through my mind vaguely. I did not dwell on them."
 

FEDA SAYS	MRS. BEADON'S COMMENTS
Now do you know who this is who is with Mr. Will? He is helping the one they are worried about. Tall, well built, very nice shaped face, clear-cut features, good nose, rather straight mouth. The chin shows the line of the jaw, not a fleshy chin; rather deep-set eyes. He writes up (Feda draws in the air) W i l l i a m . . d h o r n. Feda can't get two of the letters. He smiles when Feda says "William." He says that wasn't what he was generally called. He says he saw you last at a place where there were a lot of people all bowing to each other, a party.	Good description of William Redhorn.        He was always called "Bill."   I last saw him at a dance. He got pneumonia three days later and died within a week.
He says he is happier here than he was before. He was lonely in his soul, though he was with other people. He has a sensitive face. He builds up H, which stands for some people he knew and you knew very well.	We had some friends called H--- who lived near us both and with whom we were both very intimate.
(Mrs. Beadon asks: Can he tell me anything else which will be a clue?
FEDA. He says "John. " You will understand. He is glad to come ...	He had a brother John who was a very dear friend of mine and who died of consumption some years later.

Mrs. Beadon states that this sort of thing has happened to her at many sittings-that she has had "communications" connected with someone she has met within a few days of the sitting.

As Prof. Dodds also points out, Mrs. Salter has written of similar instances in "Some Incidents Occurring at Sittings with Mrs. Leopard which may Throw Light Upon Their Modus Operanhi. " 5 Under the heading "Impressions Derived from Persons Present at Sittings" Mrs. Salter writes:

Various writers on Mrs. Leonard's phenomena have called attention to the fact that, according to statements made by the communicators, a particular line of communication may be facilitated by the fact that a certain word, or a certain train of thought, had been recently in the mind of some person present at the sitting. I have noticed several incidents in my own sittings which confirm these statements, and I think that this tendency to draw upon the mind of the sitter or or the medium may occasionally lead to confusion or irrelevance, because it may be that Feda herself does not always know the source of her impressions and ideas which have been accidentally gleaned from some living mind, ideas which are "in the air," so to speak, may be wrongly associated with the communicator. I will give from my own sittings two examples of what I mean.

At a sitting on November 8, 1919, when A. W. V. was purporting to control the medium himself, after what I interpreted at the time as a reference to the fact of his having worn woollen cuffs in winter to keep his wrists warm, he went on: "I don't think you'll understand what I am going to say now, but it isn't given to many men to wear two pairs of trousers (said with a laugh). Well, I did once, I think you'll remember. Your mother remembers it well, you knew about it too."

Now, although I cannot of course assert positively that my father never at any time in his life wore two pairs of trousers, I can say that I have no recollection of ever hearing such an incident reported. But what interested me in the allusion was the fact that I had spent -the evening before the sitting at the house of the friend who was taking notes for me, and . . . another friend had related an incident in her own experience when a man had worn several pairs of trousers. I was at once reminded of this story by what A. W. V. said.

Again at a sitting on November 1, 1921, just as Feda was relinquishing her hold upon the medium in order that A. W. V. might assume control, she ejaculated without any comment or explanation the name Sylvester. Subsequently A. W. V. referred to the name himself, thus:

A. W. V. Do you remember Feda saying "Sylvester?"

H. V. S.: Yes.

A. W. V. She got that from me. I suddenly thought of Sylvester. It is the name of someone I knew, someone not on the earth, over here with me. I wonder if you know you've reminded me of this yourself, you've made it easy for me to say the name. Often I can say a name if you've thought about it lately.

Now, in this case as in the preceding one, I cannot assert that my father never knew a man called Sylvester. (Mrs. Sidgwick and Dr. C. D. Broad have both suggested to me that my father is likely to have had some acquaintance with the well-known mathematician, Professor J. J. Sylvester, who died in 1897.) But I am not myself aware of his having any close personal association with that name. On the other hand I can perfectly well understand the assertion that I have made it easy for him to get the name by having it lately in my thoughts. My husband and I had recently sold our London house to ... Mrs. Sylvester Horne, and I had received a letter concerning this sale only a short time before the sitting.

Mrs. White's comment when reading the transcript of the sitting was that Feda was quite wrong, and that Nea had been wrong in her impression. The fact was, she said, that "He had been ill for a year, a very serious illness which was hopeless; but he was never told that there would be no recovery, and the end, to him, was sudden."

Professor Dodds points this out as a case in which Miss Walker's erroneous belief as to the circumstances of the death of the presumed communicator is picked up and transmitted by Feda. Others might suggest the possibility that Feda's remark reflected instead the erroneous belief of the communicator.

An incidence of apparently paranormal perception, whatever its explanation, occurred when Mrs. Leonard held a sitting on December 17, 1928 for Dr. L. R. G. Crandon, husband of "Margery," the highly controversial Boston inedium. Dr. Crandon took along Mrs. Muriel Hankey to make a full stenographic record of everything that was said. He was particularly interested to see if Feda would accept Walter Stinson, Margery's deceased brother who was said to be her control.

"If Feda is the spirit she says she is," Dr. Crandon writes, "it is impossible to think of her as being thus deceived by a spirit who is not what he claims to be." In evaluating the material received, he adds that aside from the fact that Feda did recognize Walter as a spirit communicator and relay messages purporting to come from him, he did not at first feel that the sitting was productive of anything evidential. However, when he returned to America and showed his notes to his wife, she recognized that they referred to several incidents which had occurred to her at home while her husband was in Europe. He had known nothing about them.
 

FEDA	DR. CRANDON'S COMMENTS
(What is that you have got in your hand, Walter? Is it a key?)  To the sitter: He pulled out his hand, and in his hand I saw a key, and I feel that he has been doing something on Saturday about a key-something rather clever with a key. He says, "No, no." He says, "That is not right." Feda hasn't got it quite right. "I didn't do something clever about a key; something was done by the people of the earth that I didn't think was clever at all with a key, not done by me. Well," he says, "I hear a lot of talk; the key's here; the key's there, the key, the key, the key. And I felt they had something about the key -that was perturbing them somewhat.........	While I was in Europe Margery had a very curious expericnce with her ring of keys. They had become lost and she had no remote idea where they wcre or how she had misplaced them. Of a Saturday night, in response to a nameless urge for which she had no explanation, she went to the top shelf of a little-used closet and there found them. She indicates that her excitement at this result was considerable and that Walter's exclamatory remarks . . . are fairly descriptive of her conduct.
Later on in the sitting Feda said: They had a sitting Saturday night . . . Yes . . . but there was some alteration about the time of it. Ah, it didn't come off just at the time, there was some alteration in arrangements for it.	Entirely unknown to me this sitting definitely scheduled for the fifteenth had to be postponed.

Perhaps when we learn how to explain the things that go wrong at a mediumistic seance, they may shed some light on the modus operandi of the things that go right.