I allude to the action taken
against him by Mrs. Lyon, who, after adopting him as her son and
settling a large sum of money upon him, endeavoured to regain,
and did regain, this money by her unsupported assertion that he
had persuaded her illicitly to make him the allowance. The facts
of his life are, in my judgment, ample proof of the truth of the
Spiritualist position, if no other proof at all had been
available. It is to be remarked in the career of this entirely
honest and unvenal medium that he had periods in his life when
his powers deserted him completely, that he could foresee these
lapses, and that, being honest and unvenal, he simply abstained
from all attempts until the power returned. It is this
intermittent character of the gift which is, in my opinion,
responsible for cases when a medium who has passed the most rigid
tests upon certain occasions is afterwards detected in
simulating, very clumsily, the results which he had once
successfully accomplished. The real power having failed, he has
not the moral courage to admit it, nor the self-denial to forego
his fee which he endeavours to earn by a travesty of what was
once genuine. Such an explanation would cover some facts which
otherwise are hard to reconcile. We must also admit that some
mediums are extremely irresponsible and feather-headed people. A
friend of mine, who sat with Eusapia Palladino, assured me that
he saw her cheat in the most childish and bare-faced fashion, and
yet immediately afterwards incidents occurred which were
absolutely beyond any, normal powers to produce.
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