Where he obtained his early education does not appear but the records are full of indications of considerable intellectuality. He claimed to have studied medicine and obtained a degree in New York but he never practiced. In his later years he set up a studio in Italy[34] and gave his attention to sculpture between seances and “sold busts at prices quite out of proportion to their artistic merits.” He studied elocution too and is said to have given many successful readings.[35] He also had the credit of being quite a musician and playing several instruments, which partially explains his accordion trick. With it all he was considerable of a linguist, toward the last being able to speak most of the modern tongues. He was the author of two pretentious books[36] whose chief purpose seems to have been to establish the impression that while all other mediums cheated at times _Home was strictly honest_ on all occasions, and in proof it was said that he was never exposed and never received a fee for his sittings. Nevertheless one charge of fraud was proven against him in court.[37] It may or may not be true that he was never completely exposed but many of his manifestations were discovered to be fraudulent and every one of them can be duplicated by modern conjurors under the same conditions. The principal reason why he was never _completely_ exposed was that he gave no public sittings, always appearing as the guest of the family where he was living and as one writer expressed it, “one would no more think of criticising his host’s guest than he would his host’s wine.” On one occasion Robert Browning, the poet, attended one of Home’s seances. He had become somewhat alarmed by his wife’s interest in Spiritualism, and when a face was materialized and said to be that of a son who had died in infancy, Browning seized the supposed materialized head and discovered it to be _the bare foot of Mr. Home_. Incidentally, Browning had never lost an infant son. The living son, R. Barrett Browning, in a letter to the London _Times_, December 5, 1902, referring to this occurrence said, “Home was detected in a vulgar fraud.” In the same letter he tells of the modification of his mother’s belief after having been deceived by a “_trusted friend_” and his closing words were: “The pain of the disillusion was great, but her eyes were opened and she saw clearly.”