20 Psychic Force and Modern Spiritualism. 
weight them too heavily to allow them to float long. The appearance of 
the Quarterly reviewer’s attack on me, however, appears to have encouraged my 
calumniator, and, emboldened by my prolonged silence, a letter was sent to the 
Echo newspaper signed ‘“ B.,”* in which the writer put in a definite shape 
some of these ugly rumours, giving as his authority a certain ‘‘ Mr. J.” Not 
caring to carry on a paper war with an anonymous slanderer, I demanded 
that the mask should be dropped, when Mr. John Spiller, F.C.S., came briskly 
to the front, and in the Echo of November 6th accepted the responsibility of 
“B.’s ” calumnies, adducing in corroboration of them a long letter he sent to 
me six months before—a letter having no relation whatever to the falsehoods 
related by ‘“ B.” 
A reply to definite accusations, made by a man possessing a certain 
reputation in the chemical world, is imperatively necessary, and regard for 
my own reputation makes me decide that my vindication shall be neither 
halting in language-nor doubtful in meaning. And first let me show how 
little Mr. Spiller knows of the subject on which he speaks so positively. 
He came to my house unexpectedly one evening in April last, when Mr. Home 
and some friends had been dining with me. On that occasion nothing worth 
recording took place: in faét, it was not until some weeks later that my ac- 
cordion was purchased, and my experimental apparatus devised. Mr. Spiller, 
however, appeared so struck with the little he did see that he begged me to 
invite him on similar occasions as often as I could. Mr. Serjeant Cox having 
given me a general permission to bring to his house any gentleman 
who took an interest in the subje&, in accordance with this _per- 
mission I invited Mr. Spiller to accompany me on April 25th to a strictly 
private party, when Mr. Home was expected. Had I thought him 
capable of committing so gross a breach of the laws of hospitality and good 
breeding as to publish a garbled and untruthful account of what took place in 
the privacy of a gentleman’s dining-room, I should certainly have considered 
him not included in that general permission. However, we assembled, and 
before sitting down it was agreed by the gentlemen present that any objection 
on the score of suspected trick should be taken at the time, so that it might 
be subje@ed to instant proof or disproof. To this condition Mr. Spiller fully 
agreed. 
The meeting at Mr. Serjeant Cox’s was not one of my series of “test séances,” 
as Mr. Spiller tries to make out, but was purely private, and quite unconnected 
with the experiments described in the Quarterly ¥ournal of Science. It was 
a preliminary trial, to enable me to judge what class of phenomena could be 
easiest verified, and what sort of test apparatus I should devise. Mr. Spiller 
was never present at any test experiments, and saw Mr. Home only on the 
two occasions I have mentioned. 
During the meeting at Mr. Serjeant Cox's many striking phenomena 
took place, and Mr. Spiller, being a stranger, was specially invited by Mr. Home 
to examine everything to his heart’s content, and move about or get under the 
table whenever he liked. In accordance with my usual habit of taking notes, 
I was writing the whole time when I was not scrutinising the occurrences, 
and it was, therefore, easy not only to take down a description of 
* Echo, Oct, 31, 1873. 
