In the summer of 1912 our Spiritualists were elated by the discovery of a new medium of the most powerful type. Mrs. Ebba Wriedt came from that perennial breeding-ground of great mediums, the United States, where she had long been known. In 1912 she illumined London. Through her W. T. Stead was able once more to address Spiritualists _viva voce_. One recognized the familiar voice unmistakably. Scepticism was ludicrous. Did not a Serbian diplomatist talk to the spirit in Serb, which Mrs. Wriedt did not know, and answer for the genuineness of the phenomena? _Light_ had wonderful columns on Mrs. Wriedt's marvels. She was, the editor of a psychic journal said, "the pride and the most convincing argument of the whole Spiritualist and Theosophical world." In admiring her powers, even the mutual hostility of Spiritualist and Theosophist was laid aside, it seems. Norwegian Spiritualists were eager to avail themselves of this rare gift, and they asked if Norwegian spirits could speak through the great medium. After consulting the spirits--a cynic would say, after practising a word or two of Norwegian--Mrs. Wriedt replied in the affirmative, and boldly crossed the sea. There is, of course, no intrinsic reason, on the Spiritualist theory, why spirits should be confined to the language of the medium. In "direct voice" they do not even have to use her vocal organs. A trumpet lies on the ground or the table, and the spirits lift it up and megaphone (very softly) through it. It is quite inexplicable to those of us who are mere inquirers why the spirits must always talk English in England, American in America, and so on. Even when they try, as in the case of the Thomas brothers, to talk their native American to us in England, the result is half bad American and half Welsh-English. It would be much more impressive to our hesitating generation if a half-dozen foreigners were brought to the sitting, and each had a real conversation--not a word or two--with a ghost of his own nationality. Somehow the spirits insist on speaking the language, and even the dialect, of the medium. We shall consider in the next chapter a few supposed variations from this unfortunate rule of spirit-intercourse.