This was the end of my first _séance_ with Mr. Fletcher, and I think even sceptics will allow that it was sufficiently startling for the first interview with an entire stranger. The following year I wrote again to the _Banner of Light_ concerning Mr. Fletcher, but will only give an extract from my letter. "I told you in my letter of last year that I had held a _séance_ with Mr. Fletcher of so private a nature that it was impossible to make it public. During that interview 'Winona' made several startling prophecies concerning the future, which, it may interest your readers to know, have already been fulfilled. Wishing to procure some further proofs of Mr. Fletcher's power before I wrote this letter to you, I prepared a different sort of test for him last week. From a drawer full of old letters I selected, _with my eyes shut_, four folded sheets of paper, which I slipped into four blank envelopes, ready prepared for them--still without looking--and closed them in the usual manner with the adhesive gum, after which I sealed them with sealing wax. I carried these envelopes to Mr. Fletcher, and requested "Winona" to tell me the characters of the persons by whom their contents had been written. She placed them consecutively to the medium's forehead, and as she returned them to me, one by one, I wrote her comments on each on the side of the cover. On breaking the seals, the character of each writer was found to be most accurately defined, although the letters had all been written years before--(a fact which "Winona" had immediately discovered). She also told me which of my correspondents were dead, and which living. Here, you will observe, there could have been no reaction of my own brain upon that of the sensitive, as I was perfectly ignorant, until I reopened the envelopes, by whom the letters had been sent to me. Two months ago I was invited to join in a speculation, of the advisability of which I felt uncertain. I went therefore to Mr. Fletcher, and asked for an interview with "Winona," intending to consult her in the matter. But before I had time to mention the subject, she broached it to me, and went on to speak of the speculation itself, of the people concerned in it, and the money it was expected to produce; and, finally, she explained to me how it would collapse, with the means that would bring it to an end, putting her decided veto on my having anything to do with it. I followed "Winona's" advice, and have been thankful since that I did so, as everything has turned out just as she predicted." * * * * *