“Oh, that’s nothing,” he murmured aloud, with a deprecating little laugh; “a mere matter of choosing between fifty-two alternatives—which, after all, is easy. With Mrs Palmer’s consent,” and he turned in a gracefully deferential attitude to Rue, “I can show you something a great deal more remarkable. Here are pencils and papers. Each lady or gentleman will please take a sheet as I hand them round. Write anything you like, in English, French, German or Spanish, on the piece of paper. Then fold it up, so, and put it into one of these envelopes gummed down and fastened. After that, as this experiment requires very great concentration of thought”—he knitted his brows, and assumed an expression of the intensest internal effort—“with Mrs Palmer’s kind leave, we will turn out the electric light, which confuses and distracts one by revealing to the eye so many surrounding visible objects. And then, without breaking the envelopes in which you have enclosed the pieces of paper, I will read out to you, in the dark, what each of you has written.” He spoke deliberately, with slow western American distinctness, though with a pleasing accent. That accent, superimposed on his native negro dialect, had cost him no small effort. The guests, half-incredulous, took the sheets of paper he distributed to them one by one, and wrote down a sentence or two, according to taste, after a little interval of whispered consultation. Then, by the Seer’s direction, they folded the slips in two and placed them in their envelopes, each bearing outside the name of the person who wrote it. Florian collected the papers, all carefully gummed down, and handed them to the Seer, who stood ready to receive them at his place on the platform. Without one moment’s delay, the lights were turned out. It was the instantaneousness, indeed, and the utter absence of the usual hocus-pocus, that distinguished Mr Joaquin Holmes’s unique performance from the ordinary style of spiritualist conjuring. In a second, the Seer’s voice rang out clear from his place: “First envelope, Mrs Palmer, containing inscription in French—very prettily written: ‘La vie est brève: Un peu d’amour, Un peu de rêve, Et puis—bonjour. La vie est vaine: Un peu d’espoir, Un peu de haine, Et puis—bonsoir.’