On 28 September my wife and I together had a table sitting with Mrs. Leonard, which may be reported nearly in full together with my preliminary note written immediately afterwards. This is done not because it is a particularly good specimen, but because these early sittings have an importance of their own, and because it may be instructive to others to see the general manner of a table sitting. It was, I think, the first joint-sitting of any kind which we had had since the old Piper days. NOTE BY O. J. L. ON TABLE TILTINGS A table sitting is not good for conversation, but it is useful for getting definite brief answers--such as names and incidents, since it seems to be less interfered with by the mental activity of an intervening medium, and to be rather more direct. But it has difficulties of its own. The tilting of the table need not be regarded as a 'physical phenomenon' in the technical or supernormal sense, yet it does not _appear_ to be done by the muscles of those present. The effort required to tilt the table is slight, and evidentially it must, no doubt, be assumed that so far as mechanical force is concerned, it is exerted by muscular action. But my impression is that the tilting is an incipient physical phenomenon, and that though the energy, of course, comes from the people present, it does not appear to be applied in quite a normal way (XIV, Pt. III). As regards evidence, however, the issue must be limited to intelligent direction of the energy. All that can safely be claimed is that the energy is intelligently directed, and the self-stoppage of the table at the right letter conveys by touch a sort of withholding feeling--a kind of sensation as of inhibition--to those whose hands lie flat on the top of the table. The light was always quite sufficient to see all the hands, and it works quite well in full daylight. The usual method is for the alphabet to be called over, and for the table to tilt or thump at each letter, till it stops at the right one. The table tilts three times to indicate "yes," and once to indicate "no"; but as one tilt also represents the letter A of the alphabet, an error of interpretation is occasionally made by the sitters. So also C might perhaps be mistaken for "yes," or _vice versa_; but that mistake is not so likely. Unconscious guidance can hardly be excluded, _i.e._ cannot be excluded with any certainty when the answer is of a kind expected. But first, our desire was rather in the direction of avoiding such control; and second, the stoppages were sometimes at unexpected places; and third, a long succession of letters soon becomes meaningless, except to the recorder who is writing them down silently, as they are called out to him _seriatim_, in another part of the room. It will also be observed that at a table sitting it is natural for the sitters to do most of the talking, and that their object is to get definite and not verbose replies.