She was always attired in white drapery, but it varied in quality.
Sometimes it looked like long cloth; at others like mull muslin or
jaconet; oftenest it was a species of thick cotton net. The sitters were
much given to asking "Katie" for a piece of her dress to keep as a
souvenir of their visit; and when they received it, would seal it up
carefully in an envelope and convey it home; and were much surprised on
examining their treasure to find it had totally disappeared.
"Katie" used to say that nothing material about her could be made to
last without taking away some of the medium's vitality, and weakening
her in consequence. One evening, when she was cutting off pieces of her
dress rather lavishly, I remarked that it would require a great deal of
mending. She answered, "I'll show you how we mend dresses in the Spirit
World." She then doubled up the front breadth of her garment a dozen
times, and cut two or three round holes in it. I am sure when she let it
fall again there must have been thirty or forty holes, and "Katie" said,
"Isn't that a nice cullender?"
She then commenced, whilst we stood close to her, to shake her skirt
gently about, and in a minute it was as perfect as before, without a
hole to be seen. When we expressed our astonishment, she told me to take
the scissors and cut off her hair. She had a profusion of ringlets
falling to her waist that night. I obeyed religiously, hacking the hair
wherever I could, whilst she kept on saying, "Cut more! cut more! not
for yourself, you know, because you can't take it away."
So I cut off curl after curl, and as fast as they fell to the ground,
_the hair grew again upon her head_. When I had finished, "Katie" asked
me to examine her hair, to see if I could detect any place where I had
used the scissors, and I did so without any effect. Neither was the
severed hair to be found. It had vanished out of sight. "Katie" was
photographed many times, by limelight, by Mr. Alfred Crookes, but her
portraits are all too much like her medium to be of any value in
establishing her claim to a separate identity. She had always stated she
should not appear on this earth after the month of May, 1874; and
accordingly, on the 21st, she assembled her friends to say "Good-bye" to
them, and I was one of the number. "Katie" had asked Miss Cook to
provide her with a large basket of flowers and ribbons, and she sat on
the floor and made up a bouquet for each of her friends to keep in
remembrance of her.
Mine, which consists of lilies of the valley and pink geranium, looks
almost as fresh to-day, nearly seventeen years after, as it did when she
gave it to me. It was accompanied by the following words, which "Katie"
wrote on a sheet of paper in my presence:--
"From Annie Owen de Morgan (_alias_ 'Katie') to her friend Florence
Marryat Ross-Church. With love. _Pensez à moi._
"_May 21st, 1874._"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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