"Observe that Bottazzi was not perverse. He met the psychic half-way by
forming the usual chain about the table, placing Eusapia before the
curtains of the little cabinet, which was a recess in the wall.
Bottazzi himself and his assistants had constructed this cabinet and
placed everything in position before Eusapia entered the room at all,
and throughout the sitting she was controlled by at least two of the
investigators so that she could not so much as put a hand inside the
curtains. She was very uneasy, as though finding the conditions hard.
Nevertheless, _even at this first sitting, everything movable in the
cabinet was thrown about_. The table was violently shaken and the
metronome set going. Bottazzi ends his first report by saying: 'The
seance yielded very small results, but this is always the case at first
seances. Nevertheless, how many "_knowing_ people and _savans_" have
formed a judgment on phenomena after seances such as this one?'"
"That's a slant at you, Miller," remarked Harris.
"Yes," I agreed, "it's a slant at all commissions and committees who
think they can jump in and settle this spiritistic controversy in the
course of half an hour. Bottazzi, like Lombroso and Richet, was aware
that he had entered upon a long road. He knew that a tired or worried
medium was helpless. He called the same circle together for the 20th,
willing to try patiently for developments. All came but Lombardi, whose
place was taken by M. Jona, an engineer. The second sitting was a
wonder. Warned by his first experience, Bottazzi nailed or screwed every
movable thing fast to the walls of the cabinet. He was resolute to
force 'John,' the supposed 'guide,' to touch the electric button and
press the ball of India-rubber that connected with a mercury manometer.
He intended to teach the spirit hand to register its actions on a
revolving cylinder of smoked tin. He wanted graven records, so that no
wiseacre like Harris, here, could say: 'Oh, the thing never moved. You
were all hypnotized!' In effect, he said: 'They tell us that a cold wind
blows from the cabinet. I will put a self-registering thermometer in the
cabinet and see. They say tables weighing forty pounds have been lifted.
All I ask is that the bulb of a self-registering manometer be pressed.
They say a Morse telegraphic key has been sounded by spirit hands. Very
well; I will arrange a connection so that every pressure of the key will
be registered on a sheet of smoked paper, so that the fact of the sound
of the key shall be recorded by an infallible instrument.'"
"Did he get the records?" asked Harris.
"Wait and see!" commanded Cameron.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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