When Kellar arrived for the demonstration he insisted that the Commission furnish its own slates, so a boy was sent out who brought back about a dozen of various kinds. Then all sat down around the table with hands resting, palm down, on its top. The Commission opened the sitting by writing questions on the slates. Kellar held them under the table with the thumb on top and when he withdrew them in a few moments they had answers to the questions written in a clear round hand. The questions gradually became longer and longer, but the replies kept pace with them, sometimes covering a whole side of the slate. Although the slates were all different and could not possibly be mistaken for one another, the Commission began to put identifying marks on them. Once no pencil was put on the top of the slate but the reply came just the same. This fact was commented upon and Kellar replied: “Oh, my Spirits can write _without_ pencils,” a statement which puzzled the members of the Commission all the more. Finally the magician asked them to write a question on a slate and cover it with another, placing the pencil between the two. Even this did not bother the “Spirits,” for when the slates were returned, both sides were found covered with writing. The following extract from the Preliminary Report of the Seybert Commission, originally published in 1887, describes this performance of Harry Kellar before members of the Commission and shows the impression which it made on them. “An eminent professional juggler performed, in the presence of three of our Commission, some independent slate-writing far more remarkable than any of which we have witnessed with mediums. In broad daylight, a slate perfectly clean on both sides, was, with a small fragment of slate pencil, held under a leaf of a small, ordinary table, around which we were seated; the fingers of the juggler’s hand pressed the slate tight against the underside of the leaf, while the thumb completed the pressure and remained in full view clasping the leaf of the table. Our eyes never for the fraction of a second lost sight of that thumb; it never moved; and yet in a few minutes the slate was produced, covered with writing. Messages were there, and still are there, for we preserved the slate, written in French, Spanish, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese, Gujorati, and ending with ‘_ich bin ein Geist, und lieb, mein Lagerbier_.’ For one of our number the juggler subsequently repeated the trick and revealed its every detail.”