I sometimes get messages which perhaps may be called clairvoyant, telling me, for instance, where lost objects are, or warning me of some danger at hand. Thus about September 20th, 1888 [this incident was written down October 21st, 1889], my sister M. and I had just finished dressing for dinner in the dressing-rooms leading from a large bedroom. The maid had left the room. M. had left her dressing-room, and was standing in the bedroom, when suddenly she called to me: "Get a bit of paper; there are some raps." I came in and took an envelope and pencil, and at once the words came, by raps: "Look to the candle or the house will be on fire." We saw that it was not the candle in the bedroom, so we went into M.'s dressing-room, and found that her candle was so close to a cardboard pocket depending from the looking-glass that it would have been on fire in a moment. It was already smoking. No servant would have come in for some time. [Mrs. A. confirms as follows: "I heard of the incident in my daughter's next letter."]

Again, I was descending a dark corkscrew staircase at Longford, in August or September 1889 [account written October 1889], when I heard a tapping on the stair. It was persistent, and drew my attention. I looked about with a candle, and at last saw a gold pencil-case of Lady Radnor's, with which I was accustomed to write automatically, lying on a dark little landing of the stair. I did not know that the pencil had been lost.

10. But the most puzzling cases are those where the message professes to be from some departed person, and tells some true things, but perhaps mixes up some mistakes with them. . . . But sometimes I do think that the message really comes from the person who professes to communicate.

Another frequent writer is a strange person to have come to us, as I knew nothing about him, and should not have thought that we had anything in common. That is Lord Chancellor Hardwicke. He - or whatever it is that takes that name - has become a sort of family friend. He has a distinct character of his own, which is not quite what I should have expected in a Lord Chancellor, for he is full of jokes and very bluff and outspoken. He has given a number of facts about himself, names of friends, and laws about marriage that he had made.

One reason which makes me think that the messages come from outside myself is the feeling which I have sometimes of rivalry or even conflict between them. When I am writing there will occasionally be sudden changes, as if some new personality had been able to get hold of the pencil. . . .

Again, if I see figures and then have writing which professes to come from those figures, it seems to me natural to suppose that it does so come.

I will now give some examples of motor messages, by writing and raps, given through Miss A. Here, as in the case of Miss A.'s crystal-visions (see vol. i. 625 C), I am obliged to confine myself mainly to cases corroborated by the few friends who have felt in the messages more than a merely personal interest. It must, of course, be remembered, in justice to other friends (who have often carried off messages without even showing them to the writer), that much of what has been thus written has dealt with very private matters.

The first message which I shall quote is evidentially interesting, on account of the mere chance by which its truth was verified. It should be premised that Miss A. has never been to Blankney, and is not acquainted with the Chaplin family.

I. Lady Radnor writes under date January 15th, 1893:-

The following case has always struck me as particularly curious.

About eight years ago, when Miss A.'s powers had only quite recently shown themselves, her automatic writing told me that I had two guides, "Estelle" and "Silvo" - spirits who accompanied me and took an interest in my welfare. I did not think of this at first as a thing which could be either proved or disproved. But one day, when a question was mooted as to whether "spirit guides" had ever lived on earth, I asked whether mine had done so, and was told that Estelle had. I asked for her earth-name; and as we were then getting answers by raps (through Miss A.'s power) it was rapped out "Loved voices called me Anne." I asked for the surname. C - H - A was rapped out. As my maiden name was Chaplin I at once jumped to the conclusion that that was the name meant. But the raps said decidedly No, and rapped out Chambers. I had no associations with this name. I asked if connected with my family? "Yes." Any portrait? "Yes." At Blankney? (my brother's place). "Yes".

Now I had spent much of my childhood at Blankney, and I had been particularly fond of one picture there, representing a lady whose name I did not know. It used to hang in the morning room, and then on the staircase, and represented a lady in a red velvet gown with a basket of cherries in her hand. As a child I used to sit and talk to this picture, and make a friend of the lady with the cherries.

So when I heard that the picture of my "guide" was at Blankney, I hoped it might be this lady, and asked, "Is it the lady with the cherries?" "Yes," was eagerly rapped out. I at once wrote to my old nurse who was still at Blankney, and who knew a good deal about the pictures, and asked her to get the picture examined for any name which might be on it. She got the picture taken down and carefully examined, but there was no clue. She told me, however, that she thought she had heard a Mrs. S. - a connection of the family, who knew the pictures better than any one - say that the lady with the cherries was a Miss Taylor. This disheartened me; but I wrote to a friend at the College of Heralds to ask whether the name Chambers occurred anywhere in the Chaplin pedigree. He wrote back that there was no such name in the pedigree.

The same day that I got his letter I happened to meet Mrs. S. (whom I had not seen for many years) in a shop in London. I knew that she had once made a catalogue (which I had never seen) of the Blankney pictures; so I felt that here was my last chance. I asked her if she knew who the lady with the cherries was. "Oh, that is Lady Exeter," she said, "whose daughter, Lady Betty Chaplin, married an ancestor of yours." "Do you know what Lady Exeter's maiden name was?" "It was Mellish." I now lost all hope, but I just asked: "Has the name Chambers any association for you?" "How stupid I am!" she exclaimed, " Lady Exeter was a Miss Chambers, of Mellish!" My friend at the Heralds' College then looked in the Exeter pedigree, and, sure enough, the lady with the cherries was Hannah Chambers. H. M. Radnor.

I was cognisant of all this, and attest the accuracy of the account.

Radnor.

In a later letter Lady Radnor adds:-

Personally I had always believed "the lady with the cherries" to be some one (name unknown) who had married a Chaplin ancestor. There was no Chaplin pedigree, and it was I who suggested to my brother that he should ask "York Herald" (Mr. Gatty) to draw one up; and I therefore applied to Mr. Gatty as being the only person who would know the names of the families connected by marriage with the Chaplins. I knew that the great-grandmother was "Lady Betty," nee Cecil: but as in those days pedigrees and family history did not interest me, I had never - and up to the present time never have - seen the Chaplin pedigree. In any case the name Chambers would not appear in it.

II. The next case is typical of many similar trifling incidents.

January 15th, 1893.

I have several times had reason to think that some intelligence writing through Miss A. was aware of trifling circumstances happening to myself. A good instance occurred the other day. I came back from hunting and joined in a seance, where my so-called "guide" was communicating. I asked, "Well, have you been with me in my run to-day? "

"Yes," was the answer, "but you should have gone up the hill instead of down." "Was Nancy right, then?" "Yes." Now, in point of fact we had changed foxes that day by going down a hill instead of up, one hound alone, Nancy, running up hill on what was doubtless the original scent.

Radnor.

January 16th, 1893.