“During this demonstration and indeed throughout the entire seance, Slade sat sidewise to the table, his left hand resting generally on its top and his right hand free. Several short messages were next produced on a small slate held by Slade, under the table, and out of sight, a short piece of slate pencil always being placed on the upper surface of the slate. Two points were made very emphatic by Slade. First, that the piece of pencil was always found just at the end of the last word of the message, and second, that the messages were found on the upper side of the slate, which according to Slade was held close against the under surface of the table top. However, as we could not see the slate when placed under the table, since we were reaching as far as we could to get our hands on the center of its top, and the slate was only shown to us when being brought from under its surface, it would have been an easy thing to lower the slate after placing it under the table and writing with a single finger of Slade’s right hand, then bringing the slate to the under surface of the table, bring it slowly into sight. “Once when the small slate was laid on top of the table the sound of writing was distinctly heard. During this time Slade had both hands on the upper surface of the table and in full sight. This was quite startling at the time, but later I discovered how to produce this sound of writing myself and without the aid of Spirits. “Once, while we were having our attention directed to a slate held by Slade, the unoccupied chair on the side opposite to Slade and almost at the side of Capt. Carter, suddenly rose so that its seat struck the under side of the table, and then fell back with quite a thud. “Another telling effect was carried out, when Slade gave me one of the small slates telling me to hold it under the table. I did so and felt it suddenly snatched from my hand (I was holding it with one hand, my other hand was on the top of the table) and carried with a scraping noise to the very end of the table and there it rose above the surface enough to disclose about a third or possibly a half its length. Then it was carried swiftly back and put in my hand. “This concluded the first seance; when Slade, after a moment, said he thought that was all he could get at the time.