Her fame reached the ears of a brilliant young scientist, Professor W. Crookes, and he invited her to materialize at his house. She soon laid aside all dread of the scientific man. In three niggardly little letters, which he never republished, Crookes described in 1874 the wonderful things done at his house. While Florrie lay in an improvised cabinet, or behind a curtain, the beautiful and romantic and quite different maiden, Katie King, walked about his room. She played with Crookes's children, and told them stories about her earthly life in India long ago. She talked affably to his guests, and took his arm as she walked. There was not the least doubt about her solidity. The wicked sceptic who suggests that Katie King was a muslin doll or a streak of light has certainly not read Crookes's letters. He felt her pulse, he sounded her heart and lungs, he cut off a tress of her lovely auburn hair, he took her in his arms, and he--well, he breaks off here and simply asks us what any man would do in the circumstances? We assume that he found that she had lips and warm breath like any other maiden. Florence Cook's opinion of scientific men would to-day be priceless. I will say, on behalf of Sir W. Crookes, that he never obtruded this sacred experience on the public. He "accidentally" destroyed all the negatives and photographs he had taken of Katie King. He forbade friends, to whom he had given copies, ever to publish them. The three short letters he wrote to the _Spiritualist_ (February 6, April 3, and June 5, 1874--I have, of course, read them) are now rare. He wrote them out of chivalry, because a rival Spiritualist, Volckmann (who married Mrs. Guppy), got admission to the Hackney sanctuary (by a present of jewellery) and exposed Florence (December 9, 1873). He saw at once that she was impersonating the spirit, and he seized it. Other Spiritualists present, supporters of Florrie, tore him off, and turned out the lamp; and five minutes later Florence was found, bound and peacefully entranced, in her cabinet. In the hubbub that followed Professor Crookes gave his modest testimonial to Florrie's virtue. Spiritualists generally accepted her version, and she continued to make ghosts until 1880, when Sir George Sitwell and Baron von Buch exposed her in precisely the same way.