“Are you hampered by my doubt to-day?” I asked. “No. That is not doubt of us, but of yourself. It is a safeguard.” At this point we went to dinner. Later in the evening, when we had returned to the pencil, Cass said: “You were facetious last night, Frederick, so perhaps I may ask if you have dined?” “I’ve had a feast of reason, thank you,” was the instant retort. Asked whether the different races were represented where he was, he replied: “We have groups. People naturally divide themselves. But not actual race distinction.” When Cass explained that he had wondered whether peoples of widely differing religious beliefs, Christians, Confucians, Mohammedans, and so on, would be together there, Frederick continued: “Certainly. Each group does its work more or less in its own way, but all to the same purpose.” Here again is a clear reference to conditions and forces of which we had then no knowledge and concerning which, apparently, he had at that time no authority to speak in detail. Mrs. Gaylord was sitting in silence, at a little distance from the table. After a pause, Frederick began again, as if in answer to some unspoken thought: “Mother dearest, you will get what you are asking from me when we are all more accustomed. Margaret is afraid to let me handle her.” I said that the Kendal episode the night before had disturbed me, and that I had been careful all day not to yield to any impulse in the pencil unless it were very definite, to which he returned: “That’s all right. You be as careful as you like, as long as you don’t deny us.” Cass asked whether he could put us in touch with a friend on his plane, one David Bruce. “Mary Kendal can. That is part of her work. Mother dearest, you won’t backslide?” Mrs. Gaylord turned astonished eyes on me, asking: “Is ‘backslide’ a part of your ordinary vocabulary?” When I assured her that it was not, she laughed, saying that it was “a Gaylord word.” “I’m not sure that I won’t backslide when I get home again, away from these daily messages,” she said. “Then you come to us—Margaret and me. We’ll fix you!” He drew a circle around this, as if to emphasize it. When she wondered whether she might not find a messenger nearer home to give her occasional help, he added: “You can get help, but you can’t trust everybody.” The pencil was moving slowly, with many false starts and delays. I asked whether he would prefer planchette, and he said he would, so his mother went to her room to get it, while Mary Kendal talked to us about Manse. As soon as planchette was placed on the table, however, Frederick took possession again, moving it briskly back and forth, in a space of about six inches, as if warming it up. Mrs. Gaylord was then sitting opposite me, and Cass to the right, some distance away.