Thursday night, at the end of the fifth day, I was fairly certain that I had established communication with three definite and recognizable personalities on the next plane, but I dreaded Mrs. Gaylord’s arrival the following day, lest these fragmentary messages fail either to convince or to comfort her. II The next morning, Friday, March 8th, before giving Frederick an opportunity to communicate with his mother, I read her my letters to Cass, wishing her to know just what had occurred and my attitude toward it. Then we turned to planchette. From this point, the account is taken from the original manuscript. At first we did not realize the importance of writing in our questions, some of which we were unable to remember later. During those first days, also, the messages were sometimes confused by other messages written over them, or by lines and circles done in apparent excitement and joy, and were impossible to decipher afterward. Frederick’s writing, from the first moment with his mother, was quick and firm—at that time the most rapid and consecutive I had ever seen done through planchette, although in comparison with later communications these were slow and fragmentary. “Mother dearest,” he began, immediately, without question or comment from either of us. She told me that this had been his name for her, which I had not known. He went on, writing eagerly, with brief pauses between phrases. “I am here, dearest.... Just believe.... Mother, you do believe, don’t you?... Tell me you do.” After replying to some questions, he began making the small circles first noticed during the preliminary episode when his sisters were in New York. I asked what they meant. “Joy.... Don’t fail to make her believe.” I reminded him that this was his responsibility, and he added, “You and I.” A question of which there is no record drew this reply: “Yes, busy every minute.... Work is so interesting.... I love you just the same.... Go home when I can.... Tell Dad I am with him ... helping all I can ... I am so glad you came.... I was afraid you would not.... Go home in peace, Mother dearest. I am alive and happy and busy and well.” She said it was like him to sum it all up that way. “Of course it is like me. It is ‘me.’” Some personal comment concerning members of the family followed, in the midst of which Annie Manning interrupted with her invariable, “Tell Manning.” Asked if she had any connection with the Gaylord family, she said, “No, good-by,” and Frederick resumed his sentence where it had been broken off. Throughout this and subsequent interviews Mrs. Gaylord and I kept up a running conversation, impossible to reproduce here—my hand still resting on planchette—to which Frederick frequently contributed a remark, precisely as if he had been present in the flesh. Again, he would break a pause by addressing some characteristic statement or appeal to his mother, sometimes, she told me afterward, answering her unspoken thought.