SPIRIT" WRITING. 



513 



and " N"©/' took to printing in large capitals, and finally fell into an 

 easy script almost identical with B 's normal hand. The com- 

 munications always professed to emanate from spirits, and, on the 



Fia. 2. 



whole, fulfilled in phraseology, style of script, etc., B 's notions 



as to what the alleged spirit ought to say and write. One " spirit," 



for example, was R , to whom writing had been ascribed by 



another automatist whom B had seen, and his writing, as ex- 

 ecuted by B 's hand (Fig. 1), was clearly a rough imitation of 



the original (Fig. 2). Fig. 3 represents the script of another 

 mythical spirit. Yet another alleged communicator was the late 



Stainton Moses; Fig. 4 is his signature as written by B 's 



hand ; Fig. 5 is a facsimile of his actual signature, which B 



had seen. I think there is here also an attempt at imitation, al- 

 though a very bad one. Another "communicator" began as 

 shown in Fig. 6 ; he then announced that he was born in 1629, 

 and died in 1685. Now, B knows a little about seventeenth- 

 century script, and he instantly saw that this did not resemble it. 

 Scarcely had he noticed the discrepancy when his hand began writ- 



Fia. 3. 



ing the script figured as No. 7, which is not unlike that then in 



use. B thought at the time that he could not write this 



hand voluntarily without taking pains, but upon attempting it he 



VOL. XLIX. — 42 



