She remained for several minutes in this position, resting, of necessity, her whole weight upon me, which was about equal to that of a small kitten or a lady's muff, in the days when small muffs were in fashion. There was an _appreciable_ weight, but I have never nursed any baby that was not far heavier. The veil this time was materialised in the usual way, my friend going up to watch the process. My spirit friend appeared again, and more strongly this time. At a public _seance_, where so many are eager to communicate with their friends, it is impossible to monopolise more than a few minutes of the public time, and consequently any communications are as hurried and unsatisfactory as a conversation with an intimate friend in the public reading-room of a hotel would be. * * * * * I pass over another most excellent and evidential incident as a concession to family prejudice. It has already appeared in my book on America entitled "A Year in the Great Republic," and may be found there. * * * * * At a third materialising _seance_ at the same house an excitable Italian friend of mine, who had never seen anything of the kind before, came with much the same prejudices as I had felt at the Boston _seance_, and disturbed the conditions very much by his attitude of determined antagonism; whilst his comparative ignorance of English, and my feeble Italian, made explanations, under the circumstances, rather hopeless. The whole circle was put out of harmony, and a dead weight lay upon us all. The materialisations continued, it is true; but personally it was a great relief to me when my excitable friend left, declaring that everything he had seen was "_physiquement impossible mon ange_." He departed so abruptly as to bring down much abuse upon his absent head for having "broken the battery" and almost "killed the medium" by his sudden disappearance from the circle. This awful threat had so much power over the rest of the party that we sat out to the bitter end, leaving the medium at last still in her trance, with husband and son hovering over her in an anxiety which, if acted, showed first-class dramatic power. Meanwhile I had made the acquaintance of a very beautiful and charming woman in New York, to whom I had brought a letter of introduction. She has had a tragic and remarkable history; is a woman of great mental powers, in addition to very remarkable beauty; and is of the highest rank, being an Austrian princess, I believe, in her own right, and having spent her youth in foreign courts. Apart from these facts, which had been told me by a mutual friend before we met, I knew nothing whatever of her family history, nor whether she had brothers or sisters, alive or dead.