The Seybert Committee found two different kinds of writing on Slade's slates. Some messages were short and badly written, and they concluded that these were written by him with one finger while he held the slate under the table (as the custom was) to receive a spirit-message. Other messages were relatively long, well written, and dignified; and they regarded these as prepared in advance. Both points were fully verified. At one sitting they noticed two slates resting suspiciously against the leg of the table. These doubtless had messages written on them, and were to be substituted for the blank slate when this was supposed to be put under the table. Slade would then produce the sound of the spirits writing by scraping with his nail on the edge of the slate. On this occasion, however, Slade saw that they had their eyes on the slates and he dare not use them. But one of the members of the committee, determined to do his work thoroughly, carelessly knocked the two slates over with his foot, and the messages were exposed. The reception of messages from the spirits on slates may linger in rural or suburban districts, but it has lent itself to such trickery, and been exposed so thoroughly, that mediums have generally abandoned it. For whole decades it was the chief way of communicating with the spirits, and weird and wonderful were the artifices by which the medium defeated the growing sense of caution of the sitters. In spite of the exposures of Slade, the English medium Eglinton adopted and improved his methods, and he was one of the bright stars of the Spiritualist world for twenty years. He was detected in fraud as early as 1876. At that time he gave materialization-séances, at which the ghostly form of "Abdullah" appeared. Archdeacon Colley found the beard and draperies of Abdullah in his trunk. But exposure never ruins a medium in the Spiritualist world, and ten years later Eglinton was the most successful and respected medium in England, especially for slate-messages.