I and Katie accepted an invitation to go to Boston to lend our contribution to this investigation, with disinterested self-sacrifice for the sake of the cause, and in support of Dr. Gardner, one of the best of men and Spiritualists, who thus stood forward as its representative and champion. I may mention that this was anterior, not subsequent to the Phosphorus affair related in the preceding chapter. There were present Miss Kendrick, George A. Redman, J. V. Mansfield, the Davenport brothers, Katie and myself--mediums. The committee of Spiritualists were Mr. Allan Putnam, Dr. Gardner, Major G. Washington Rains. At the first meeting Dr. Gardner expressed his dissatisfaction with the idea of a penalty of $500, or of any money, to be paid by the _Courier_, and this seemed to meet unanimous approval; so that no ground remained for the position afterward taken by the professors, that they had to make an award, as stakeholders and judges, of $500 on the presentation of certain specific phenomena laid in Prof. Felton's original (unsigned) article in the _Courier_, while the document above quoted, of June 9, 1857, between the _Courier_ and Dr. Gardner, is conclusive to the effect that it was to be a general scientific investigation. It will be seen below how the professors afterward quibbled over this point, and avoided making a report of any results, but only an "award" that the $500 was not claimable, because the specific phenomena originally put forward by Prof. Felton had not been exhibited; while at the same time promising a future report, which report they _never came up to the scratch of making_. It was generally understood that a draft of a report had been proposed by a portion of them, but suppressed because deemed more "damaging to Christianity" than one favorable to Spiritualism. So that Harvard has ever since remained under the odium and ridicule of never having made a report, of which, in what they called an "award," it had recognized that the duty was incumbent on the professors, and which they had expressly promised to make. It was in vain that for months and years the Spiritualist papers of Boston clamored for the promised report, and jeered at those who evidently found it impossible to make one which should not be more or less favorable to Spiritualism. This meeting, to my mind, was very unsatisfactory. I was astonished and disappointed at the course which the professors pursued. Astonished at their seeming ignorance of all laws of order and harmony, and disappointed to find that they had met, determined to establish some appearance of carrying their point, right or wrong.