Well, Mrs. Wriedt went to Norway, and confronted her new inquirers with all the solidity and confidence of the well-built American matron. Somehow, the vocabulary of the Norwegian dead, who came along, was very limited. They could say only "Yes" or "No" in Norwegian. Otherwise the first séance was very good. To make up for their culpable ignorance of their native tongue the Norwegian ghosts scattered flowers about the dark room, gave ghostly music, and did other marvellous things. But there were two ladies and a professor--Frau Nielsen and Frau Anker and Professor Birkeland--who did not like this "Yes" and "No" business. It was scriptural, but not ladylike. So the professor held Mrs. Wriedt's hands very firmly at the second séance, and for twenty minutes the spirits were dumb. They always resent such things, as every Spiritualist knows. The trumpets lay on the floor, neglected and silent. At length Professor Birkeland heard some very faint explosive sounds which his ears located in the trumpets or horns (in shape something like the old coach-horn). He looked steadily and saw them move slightly, a phosphorescent light in them making the movements clear. A good Spiritualist would have seen that this was the beginning of manifestations, and he would have paid close attention to the trumpets and relaxed his hard control of Mrs. Wriedt. The professor was, however, of the type which mediums call "brutal." He jumped up, switched on the electric light, and, before the Spiritualists could interfere, had snatched the two trumpets from the floor and bolted to the nearest analytic chemist. So the curtain fell on one more glorious act in the Spiritualist drama. Mrs. Wriedt had put in the trumpet particles of metallic potassium which, meeting the moisture she had also thoughtfully provided, explained the "psychic movements." Close examination disclosed that on other occasions she had used Lycopodium seeds to produce the same effect. Professor Birkeland did not discover how the voices were produced, but they offer no difficulty. The trumpets were, he found, telescopic. Each consisted of three parts, and could stretch to nearly three feet. When some guileless lady, who is controlling the medium, allows a hand to stray in the usual way, the trumpet is seized, and it will give a "direct voice" over the heads of the sitters or close to any one of them. When the trumpet remains on the ground during the ghostly message, the medium has a rubber speaking-tube fitted to it. When no trumpet is provided at all, it makes no difference. The medium has thoughtfully brought one of these telescopic aluminium tubes in his trousers. It folds up to less than a foot. In some of the earlier cases, possibly still in some cases, the medium's little daughter, who sits demure and mildly interested on the couch before the light is switched off, mounts the furniture in the dark, and obligingly impersonates the ghost.