Certain sulphides may be used instead of phosphorus, and in modern times electricity is an excellent means of producing lights at a distance. Chemicals of the pyrotechnic sort are also useful. One must remember that behind the thousands of mediums, whose fertile brains are constantly elaborating new methods of evading control, are manufacturers and scientific experts who supply them with chemicals and apparatus. One often hears Spiritualists laugh at this suggestion as a wild theory of their opponents. Any impartial person will acknowledge that it is more probable than improbable. But positive proof has been given over and over again. Quite recently Mr. Sidney Hamilton described in _Pearson's Weekly_ (February 28, 1920) an "illustrated printed catalogue of forty pages" which he had with great difficulty secured. It was the secret catalogue of a firm which supplies apparatus to mediums. The outfit includes "a self-playing guitar," a telescopic aluminium trumpet (for direct voice), magic tables, luminous objects, and even "a fully materialized female form (with face that convinces) ... floats about the room and disappears ... Price £10." For eight shillings this firm supplies the secret how to turn one's vest inside out, without changing coat, while one is bound, and the knots sealed, in the cabinet. For two pounds ten you get an apparatus which will levitate a table so effectively that "two or three persons cannot hold the table down." In short, there is, and has been for decades, a trade supply of apparatus and instructions for producing the whole range of "physical phenomena," and any person who pays serious attention to such things is not very particular whether he is deceived or not. I may close the chapter with a case of spirit sculpture, which is recorded by Truesdell in his _Bottom Facts of Spiritualism_. By this trick, he says, Mrs. Mary Hardy converted one of those professors whose names adorn the Spiritualist list. A pail of warm water, with several inches of paraffin floating on its surface, was weighed and put under the table. After a time a hand moulded most accurately in wax was found on the floor beside the pail, and it was found that the weight of the contents of the pail had decreased by precisely the weight of the hand. A convincing test, surely! But the professor had forgotten to allow for the evaporation of the warm water. The hand had been made in advance, by moulding the soft paraffin on the medium's hand, and hidden under Mrs. Hardy's skirt. It was transferred by her toes to the floor under the table. CHAPTER VI THE SUBTLE ART OF CLAIRVOYANCE