Some time before I had the pleasure of meeting Miss Showers, I heard, through friends living in the west of England, of the mysterious and marvellous powers possessed by a young lady of their acquaintance, who was followed by voices in the air, which held conversations with her, and the owners of which were said to have made themselves visible. I listened with curiosity, the more so, as my informants utterly disbelieved in Spiritualism, and thought the phenomena were due to trickery. At the same time I conceived a great desire to see the girl of sixteen, who, for no gain or apparent object of her own, was so clever as to mystify everyone around her; and when she and her mother came to London, I was amongst the first to beg for an introduction, and I shall never forget the experiences I had with her. She was the first _private_ medium through whom my personal friends returned to converse with me; and no one but a Spiritualist can appreciate the blessing of spiritual communications through a source that is above the breath of suspicion. I have already written at length about Miss Showers in "The story of John Powles." She was a child, compared to myself, whose life had hardly commenced when mine was virtually over, and neither she, nor any member of her family, had ever had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with even the names of my former friends. Yet (as I have related) John Powles made Miss Showers his especial mouthpiece, and my daughter "Florence" (then a little child) also appeared through her, though at long intervals, and rather timidly. Her own controls, however, or cabinet spirits (as they call them in America)--_i.e._, such spirits as are always about the medium, and help the strangers to appear--"Peter," "Florence," "Lenore," and "Sally," were very familiar with me, and afforded me such facilities of testing their medium as do not often fall to the lot of inquirers. Indeed, at one time, they always requested that I should be present at their _séances_, so that I considered myself to be highly favored. And I may mention here that Miss Showers and I were so much _en rapport_ that her manifestations were always much stronger in my presence. We could not sit next each other at an ordinary tea or supper table, when we had no thought of, or desire to hold a _séance_, without manifestations occurring in the full light. A hand, that did not belong to either of us, would make itself apparent under the table-cloth between us--a hand with power to grasp ours--or our feet would be squeezed or kicked beneath the table, or fingers would suddenly appear, and whisk the food off our plates. Some of their jests were inconvenient. I have had the whole contents of a tumbler, which I was raising to my lips, emptied over my dress. It was generally known that our powers were sympathetic, and at last "Peter" gave me leave, or, rather, ordered me to sit in the cabinet with "Rosie," whilst the manifestations went on outside.