HPB-SB-1-14: Difference between revisions

the platform, at the right of the cabinet, where the experiment with Honto was tried. We had had some music from Mayflower and the spirit-band of unusual sweetness, and the little girl – whom I never can mention without a feeling of affection, so childlike and loveable is her nature – had made a ludicrous failure with her rhyming improvisations upon “Music,” “Pictures,” and “War and Peace,” when Dix said that if we would all remain quiet for a few minutes and the violinist would play something, he would try to organise an extra strong “battery.” His directions were followed, and for awhile no sound was heard except the dolorous rasp of the instrument. Little Mayflower passed along the front row and laid her guitar on each one’s lap, and presently we had an Indian dance such as I described in a previous letter. Then I knew, from a rattling and banging of my platform-scale, that something new was about to happen. It was moved along the whole length of the platform with such a noise that I thought to myself I would have a pretty bill of damages to pay the next morning, but the thought was hardly formed before George Dix, with a laugh, said: “Don’t worry, Mr. Olcott; I won’t hurt your scale;” and he fell to whistling and tugging at the dead weight like a jolly stevedore working among a cargo of cotton. The scale reached the steps, and then went bumping down to the floor of the room, and was rolled to a point near the medium’s chair, where it stopped. We heard some one step upon the platform and the beam kick against the pad, as though a heavy weight were on it. George said, “I guess I’ll see how much I weigh;” and then, after running the poise along the notches and changing one counterpoise weight for another, reported 163 pounds. I asked him how high he was, and he replied 5 feet 8 inches. We then heard Mayflower’s voice saying, “Now weigh me, George,” and his answer, “All right; get on;” and another and lighter person was heard to mount the platform, and the noise of weighing, with another change of counterpoise weights, was followed by a call for a light. This being struck, Mr. Poole, of New Jersey, and Mr. Wilkins, of Vermont, who had acted as a committee on our behalf to tie Horatio, stepped to the scale with the candle, and announced the beam as marking forty pounds. But the medium, speaking in the voice of a spirit known as “French Mary,” said, “No; it is thirty-eight pounds;” which, upon a second and closer look, with the candle held nearer, they found to be so. Now, if any one chooses to say that the medium knew the weight because he had handled it himself, it will be necessary for him to account for—

We had not long to wait, for after the lapse of a few minutes the shawl was lifted and out jumped Honto, as lively as a squirrel. She was dressed in a light suit throughout, with a scarf about her waist and her hair hanging loose down her back. She stepped to the dining-room door, lifted the latch and threw it open; then began capering about in her usual way as if she were in fine spirits. Shawl after shawl she twitched from old Mrs. Cleveland’s and Mr. Pritchard’s feet and shoulders; astonishing them as much each time as Hermann does the victim he entraps into “assisting” him in his magical entertainments. Then she stepped to the right of the cabinet door, and stood just opposite me, looking intently upon the floor, by the mop-board. There was nothing to be seen at first but the bare planks, but, presto! as I suddenly watched I saw a heap of some­thing black, as it might be a piece of a woman’s dress or a quantity of black netting. She stretched out her hand, and daintily picked it up with thumb and fore­finger, and it was—one of her shawls! Thus, within {{Style S-HPB SB. Continued on|}}