“Do not think me fanciful, Mr. Vance, but the moment I set eyes on this young woman the conviction struck me, She is the lost Clara for whom we are seeking. The coincidence of age and the fact that I have had the search of her on my mind, may fully explain the impression. _May._ But you know I believe in the phenomena of Spiritualism. _Belief_ is not the right word. _Knowledge_ would be nearer the truth. “There is here in New Orleans a young man named Bender who calls himself a _medium_. He is a worthless fellow, and I have several times caught him cheating. But he nevertheless gives me glimpses of spiritual powers. There are some plain cases in which cheating is impossible. For instance, if without throwing out any previous hint, however remote, I think of twenty different persons in succession, my knowledge of whom is a secret in my own brain, and if I say to a medium, ‘Of what person am I thinking now?’ and if the medium instantly, without hesitation or inquiry, gives me the right reply twenty times in succession, I may reasonably conclude—may I not?—that the power is what it appears to be, and that the medium gets his knowledge through a faculty which, if not preternatural, is very rare, and is denied as possible by science. Well, this test has been fulfilled, not once only, but more than fifty different times.[37] “I got Madame Volney’s consent to bring Bender to the house. After he had showed her his wonderful powers of thought-reading, we put the hand of the white slave in his, and bade him tell us her name. He wrote with great rapidity, _Clara Aylesford Berwick_. We asked her father’s name. In a moment the medium’s limbs twitched and writhed, his eyeballs rolled up so that their natural expression was lost, and he extended his arm as if in pain. Then suddenly dropping the girl’s hand he drew up the sleeve from his right arm, and there, in crimson letters on the white skin were the words _Henry Berwick_.[38]