I have, however, the good fortune to be acquainted with a sensitive who has the unusual power of being able to distinguish; and this is a great advantage, rendering verbatim note-taking much easier, and eliminating any necessity for balancing hits against misses. If nothing comes, he sits silent or talks ordinarily. If he gets anything, it is practically always correct. The amount of his success varies, and he will not sit for people in general. I know many people who have asked him to visit them, offering handsome payment, but he usually declines. He says he cannot do it to order, and would be upset if he failed and caused disappointment. He comes to me, however, because I understand and always tell him that he need not worry if he gets nothing. In fact the meeting is regarded as a social call and not as a séance. We talk for a while about ordinary things, and in half-an-hour or so, if the medium can get his mind placid enough and is in good trim generally, he will begin to see and describe spirits present, often getting their names and all sorts of details. These come for the most part in flashes, and I take down every word he says, in shorthand, without giving any help or indication as to whether he is right or wrong. Sometimes in a whole afternoon he will have only one or two of these gleams, and on one occasion he got nothing. With conditions at their best he will talk almost continuously for an hour, the flashes following each other closely; and sometimes a spirit will remain visible for several minutes, moving about the room. About a dozen of these interviews are described in detail in my book _Psychical Investigations_, and other investigations of the same sensitive by two very able friends of mine in another town are described in _New Evidences in Psychical Research_. Perhaps one or two illustrative incidents may make things clearer. The first time Wilkinson came to see me he said, in the middle of ordinary talk, that he saw with me the form of a woman who looked about fifty-four, and whom he described, saying further that her name was Mary. Taking up a piece of paper and a pencil, he wrote in an abstracted manner the words "Roundfield Place". He looked at it, without reading it aloud, then said: "That will be a house", and proceeded to write something else. I got up to look, and found "Roundfield Place. Yes" (the "Yes" written in answer to his remark "That will be a house") and a signature "Mary". Now it happens that my mother's name was Mary, that the description applied to her, and that she died, in 1886, at Roundfield Place, not the house to which Wilkinson came, whither we removed in 1897. Other similar things were said, about other deceased relatives, all true.