At a very early stage of the sittings, the Commission noticed two kinds of communications. Those in answer to questions were slovenly written, often illegible, while those which came as voluntary contributions from the Spirits, were more carefully written, even to punctuation. It was very evident that this writing on the slates had been prepared previous to the sitting, while that written under the restraint of observation was the crude scrawl, abrupt in composition, and often almost or quite illegible. It was evident that where the nicely written communications were used an exchange of slates had been effected, whereas the other writing was the result of such skill as could be brought to bear without detection under the unfavorable conditions. It was also noticed that all of the long messages most suspiciously resembled the handwriting of the medium. Every test to which Slade submitted proved to be transparent to the Commission and some of his efforts to mystify it were referred to as: “Several little tricks which he imputed to Spiritual agency, but which were almost puerile in the simplicity of their legerdemain, and which have been repeated with perfect success by one of our number.” After all the slate-writing mediums who came in answer to an advertisement broadcasted by the Seybert Commission had been examined by it, the acting Chairman of the Commission, Mr. Horace Howard Furness, invited the late Harry Kellar to exhibit his slate-writing skill before it, not with any claim to supernatural phenomena but as a magician openly admitting his purpose to baffle by purely natural means. Mr. Kellar submitted to a series of tests far more complicated and difficult of execution than any produced by Slade or any other medium; nevertheless the Commission was unable to detect his methods and admitted itself completely baffled. Mr. Kellar told me that when Mr. Furness, and Coleman Sellers, another member of the Commission who was himself an amateur entertainer, applied to him for an exhibition of his skill as a slate-writer they expected him to do the stock tricks of Slade. But someone tipped Kellar off that Sellers had told the members of the Commission what Kellar was to do and his probable method of doing it and for them to watch out for his _modus operandi_. So, not to be “caught napping,” Kellar, like the skillful mystifier that he was, determined to out-do Slade and beat Sellers. As he told me about it he laughed heartily, saying: “If you could have seen Mr. Sellers’ face at the time of the unfolding of the mystery, it would have done your heart good.”