he conveys the message it may wish to send to its friends; and when I knew how very few precautions the Americans take to prevent such outrages as have occurred in England, and how many more materializations take place in an evening there than here, I saw the necessity of a conductor to protect the medium, and to regulate the order of the _séance_. Mrs. Williams' conductor opened the proceedings with a very neat little speech. He said, "I see several strange faces here this evening, and I am very pleased to see them, and I hope they may derive both pleasure and profit from our meeting. We have only one rule for the conduct of our _séances_, that you shall behave like ladies and gentlemen. You may not credit all you see, but remember this is our religion, and the religion of many present, and as you would behave yourselves reverently and decorously, if you were in a church of another persuasion to your own, so I beg of you to behave yourselves here. And if any spirits should come for you whom you do not immediately recognize, don't wound them by denying their identity. They may have been longing for this moment to meet you again, and doing their very utmost to assume once more the likeness they wore on earth; yet some fail. Don't make their failure harder to bear by roughly repudiating all knowledge of them. The strangers who are present to-night may mistake the reason of this little table being placed in front of the cabinet, and think it is intended to keep them from too close an inspection of the spirits. No such thing! On the contrary, all will be invited in turn to come up and recognize their friends. But we make it a rule at these _séances_ that no materialized spirit, who is strong enough to come beyond that table, shall be permitted to return to the cabinet. They must dematerialize in sight of the sitters, that no possible suspicion may rest upon the medium. These pencils and papers are placed here in case any spirit who is unable to speak may be impressed to write instead. And now we will begin the evening with a song." The accompanist then played "Footsteps of Angels," the audience sung it with a will, and the curtains having been drawn round Mrs. Williams, the shade was drawn across the gaslight, and the _séance_ began.