Clarkson in _L'Etrangère_. After which we returned to the back drawing-room, and without darkening the windows or adopting any precautions, we took our seats upon the _causeuse_ facing each other, whilst Mr. Fletcher laid his left hand lightly upon mine. In the course of a minute I observed several convulsive shivers pass through his frame, his eyes closed, and his head sunk back upon the cushions, apparently in sleep. I sat perfectly still and silent with my hand in his. Presently he reopened his eyes quite naturally, and sitting upright, began to speak to me in a very soft, thin, feminine voice. He (or rather his guide "Winona") began by saying that she would not waste my time on facts that she might have gathered from the world, but would confine herself to speaking of my inner life. Thereupon, with the most astonishing astuteness, she told me of my thoughts and feelings, reading them off like a book. She repeated to me words and actions that had been said and done in privacy hundred of miles away. She detailed the characters of my acquaintance, showing who were true and who were false, giving me their names and places of residence. She told me the motives I had had for certain actions, and what was more strange, revealed truths concerning myself which I had not recognized until they were presented to me through the medium of a perfect stranger. Every question I put to her was accurately answered, and I was repeatedly invited to draw further revelations from her. The fact being that I was struck almost dumb by what I had heard, and rendered incapable of doing anything but marvel at the wonderful gift that enabled a man, not only to read each thought that passed through my brain, but to see, as in a mirror, scenes that were being enacted miles away with the actors concerned in them and the motives that animated them. "Winona" read the future for me as well as the past, and the first distinct prophecy she uttered has already most unexpectedly come to pass. When I announced that I was satisfied, the clairvoyant laid his head back again upon the cushions, the same convulsive shudders passed through his frame, and in another minute he was smiling in my face, and hoping I had a good _séance_." This is part of the letter I wrote concerning Mr. Fletcher to the _Banner of Light_. But a description of words, however strongly put, can never carry the same weight as the words themselves. So anxious am I to make this statement as trustworthy as possible, however, that I will now go further, and give the exact words as "Winona" spoke them to me on that occasion, and as I took them down from her lips. _Some_ parts I _must_ omit, not for my own sake, but because of the treachery they justly ascribed to persons still living in this world. But enough will, I trust, remain to prove how intimately the spirit must have penetrated to my inner life. This is, then, the greater part of what "Winona" said to me on the 27th of June, 1879: