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Notices of Books. [July? 
the table was turned up and examined, and found to be an 
ordinary dining table with no machinery or apparatus of any 
kind connected with it. Similar movements without contact 
have been witnessed elsewhere and recorded by Serjeant Cox and 
by Mr. Crookes, as well as by many other persons ; yet the man 
who comes before the public as the “ historian ” of this subjedt 
tells his audience and his readers that “ he is not aware that 
anyone affirms that he has demonstrated the absence of muscular 
pressure ”! How are we to reconcile this statement with Dr. 
Carpenter’s references to each of the books, papers, or letters 
containing the fadts above quoted or referred to ? But we have 
evidence of a yet more conclusive character (from Dr. Carpenter’s 
own point of view), because it is that of a medical man who has 
made a special study of abnormal mental phenomena. Dr. 
Lockhart Robertson, for many years an editor of the “Journal of 
Mental Science ” and Superintendent of the Hayward’s Heath 
Asylum, declares that his own heavy oak dining table was lifted 
up and moved about the room, and this not by any of the four 
persons present. Writing was also produced on blank paper 
which the medium “ had not the slightest chance of touching ” 
(“ Dialedtical Report,” p. 248). Dr. Carpenter is always crying 
out for “ sceptical experts,” but when they come — in the persons 
of Robert Houdin and Dr. Lockhart Robertson, he takes very 
good care that, so far as he is concerned, the public shall not 
know of their existence. What, therefore, is the use of his 
asking me (in a note at p. 108) whether my table ever went up 
within its crinoline in the presence of a “ sceptical expert ”? 
The very fadt that I secretly applied tests (see “ Miracles and 
Modern Spiritualism,” p. 134) shows that I was myself sceptical 
at this time, and several of my friends who witnessed the ex- 
periments were far more sceptical, but they were all satisfied of 
the completeness of the test. The reason why some sceptical 
men of science never witness these successful experiments is 
simply because they will not persevere. Neither Dr. Carpenter 
nor Professor Tyndall would come more than once to my house 
to see the medium through whom these phenomena occurred, or 
I feel sure they might, after two or three sittings, have 
witnessed similar phenomena themselves. This has rendered 
all that Dr. Carpenter has seen at odd times during so 
many years of little avail. He has had one, or at most 
two, sittings with a medium, and has taken the results, 
usually weak or negative, as proving imposture, and then 
has gone no more. Quite recently this has happened with 
Dr. Slade and Mrs. Kane ; and yet this mode of enquiry is set 
up as against that of men who hold scores of sittings for months 
together with the same medium, and after guarding against 
every possibility of deception or delusion obtain results which 
seem to Dr. Carpenter incredible. Mr. Crookes had along series 
of sittings with Miss Kate Fox (now Mrs. Jencken) in his own 
