I can’t recall how we happened to start experimenting with it, but during one winter, night after night, neighbours and friends gathered at our house to watch the thing write. It was rather uncanny to see it travel, fast for some, slower for others, not at all for certain ones. After a time we detected crude attempts at words, but there were many trials before any satisfactory results were obtained. I wish I could recall just how my part in it began, and how much of my conduct was conscious deception, how much self-deception. My impression now is that at first, especially, I was to a great extent self-deceived, although that I was by no means wholly so, I am well aware. At any rate, it gradually came about that the planchette would write the best for me and a certain boy in the neighbourhood, but, he being absent, almost as well if I was one of the operators. We were closely watched to see that there was no guidance of the thing--that no perceptible movements of our hands or arms were made. Sometimes they even blindfolded us, for there were always incredulous ones in the company. These would take a turn at it, and would admit that I did not move it; they were sure I did not. _But I did move it_, whether consciously, with my muscles, or not, I’m not quite sure myself. I know I determined what the answers were to be, and willed that the thing should so answer; and, although there seemed to be little opportunity for actually directing the movements without my partner detecting it, I think I did do it, artfully and successfully; and, little hypocrite that I was! pretended to be surprised at the answers; or at a loss to make them out. Some of the others usually deciphered the scrawlings, I helping out, occasionally, on a pinch; and then we would all shout at the unexpectedness and aptness of the replies. My parents never suspected me. As I think back on those times I see how deep within my nature must have been the tendency to deception: of all the crowd of young persons and adults that gathered around that mysterious little instrument, I believe I was the only one at all conscious of deceit being at work; and further, I believe I would have been the last one to be suspected. My parents and the other adults were intelligent persons, not prone to vulgar credulity; they did not pretend to understand the writing, yet knew there was no spiritualistic explanation--Mother would have burned the thing had any one said that seriously, though we used to jest about the “spooks” making it go. It was with living persons and issues that our questions dealt, and we found it a fascinating amusement.