Some weeks afterward, Mr. Kendal obtained a little additional information
about this unknown force from his wife.
In endeavoring to establish communication with Frederick, through a
pencil, one of his sisters had been overwhelmed by insistent, and
frequently unknown, personalities seeking expression, and had had some
rather violent and annoying manifestations of the force they employ.
“You mustn’t do too much of this writing stunt,” Frederick now advised
her, “unless you give up a lot of other things. You can’t burn your
candle of force at both ends. Margaret gave up a lot of outside
activities long ago. You are sensitive, and could do this in time very
freely, but the receptivity is decidedly a strain upon the messenger at
best, and if any amount of writing is to be done, you can’t do other
things, too.” After mentioning that she would probably be beset by “any
number of yearning forces,” he added: “So either say ‘not at home’ to
anybody but Uncle J—— and Bud ...”
I halted the pencil, supposing that he had intended to write either Boy
or Brother, and that there had been a mistake in transmission.
Lois glanced at the sheet, and ejaculated: “Buddie!”
“That’s the name I’ve been waiting for!” her father exclaimed.
The pencil then went on, completing the name as if no interruption had
occurred: “... die, or give up other things, or quit.”
Afterward, when it had been explained that certain members of the family
had called Frederick Buddie, Bud, or Buzz, variations of Lois’s baby
attempts at Brother, he added: “I’ve been trying to get that through, but
the Missourian held me to known names.”
At first, names came to me with little difficulty, but latterly—possibly
beginning with the Annie Manning episode—I have been generally unable to
transmit them. Some one asked Frederick the reason for this.
“Because names are specific,” he said. “She knows my name. She knew I
had a special name, besides. But while an idea expressed in familiar
words can be transmitted, however unfamiliar the idea, the definite and
specific spelling of an unfamiliar name is very difficult to get through,
especially if the messenger is a little nervous about it, or constantly
alert for possible mistakes. We can sometimes get it through, as I did
this, in a rush of other stuff.”
[A few days later, when I was very tired, receiving with difficulty,
and therefore questioning every statement made through the pencil, Mary
K. said: “You are the most mentally ... el ... elas ... el ... elastic
is not the word. Means elastic and masterful ... impregnable messenger
I ever tried to work through.... That is the reason names are almost
impossible to send through you. You try to get them, but the almost
invincible character of your mental resistance to deception makes it
difficult for us to penetrate where a doubt exists in your mind. A name
is specific to the highest degree, and resistance, however unconscious
and unrecognized, prevents its free transmission.”]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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