_From a letter dated Monday evening, March 4th_:
I have just had another amazing try at planchette. This time it was Mary Kendal, writing one word at a time. “Let ... Manse[4] ... know ... I ... am ... here....” She gave me several intimate messages for him, and when I finally said I would write and ask him to come, so she could tell him herself, she wrote, “Yes ... yes ... yes,” very quickly.
What do you make of this? Isn’t it the queerest thing you ever heard of? In the midst of her talk, another hand took hold, very brisk and energetic.
Then he was gone, and Mary came again, writing “Miss A——, messenger,” many times. Later, Frederick interrupted to write one word, “family.”[5] Then another hand began writing “Annie Manning,” over and over, and, “tell Manning.” I said that I knew no Manning. How find him? Answer, “Question.” I did not know what that meant.... There was a lot more, but I am too tired to write it to-night.
B—— Gaylord telephoned to-night. She is either coming to New York Thursday or going to Atlantic City, if I am there.... This is the most amazing thing that ever happened to me! To-night it was as if several were trying to talk at once. I am almost afraid to have B. G. come, yet it was for her sake that I began this. It seems too indefinite and unsatisfactory. But at least she can be sure I am not faking it. Something outside of me does it.
That same evening I wrote to Mansfield Kendal, though what his attitude toward this situation would be I could not even guess. We had known him well for several years, but our numerous discussions had never touched questions of religious faith and a future life. A man of extensive reading and of wide interests, supplemented by long residence abroad, he has been engaged for years in the executive conduct of large engineering and agricultural enterprises. I knew him to be intellectually open-minded. But I also knew him to be a devoted adherent of the orthodox Church, giving much time and thought to its support, and I was afraid that an assumption on my part of ability to communicate with the departed might offend some deep and reverent sense in him. Therefore, while I wrote him fully of my surprising experience, giving him Mary’s messages, I promised at the same time never to force the subject in conversation, should he prefer not to discuss it. Subsequently, impelled by Mary’s continued insistence, I wrote several other letters to him, which, like the first, were sent to his club in New York City, as I knew him to be traveling in the Middle West and thought they would reach him more quickly in this way than if sent to his business headquarters in the South.