Of course, not sparrows, he says! Yes, he does. (Feda, sotto voce.—Did he hop, Yaymond?) No, he says you couldn't call it a hop.

Yes. Going away, going away, he says. He used to come to the door. (Feda, sotto voce.—Do you know what he means? Anyone can come to the door!) He used to see him every day, he says, every day. (Sotto voce.—What did he do, Yaymond?)

He says, nothing. (I can't make out what he says.) He's thinking. It's Feda's fault, he says.

He says he fell down. He's sure of that. He hurt himself. He builds up a letter T, and he shows a gate, a small gate—looks like a foot-path; not one in the middle of a town. Pain in hands and arms.

No. No, he says, no. He gives Feda a feeling of tumbling, again he gives a feeling as though—(Feda thinks Yaymond's joking)—he laughed. He was well known among us, he says; and yet, he says, not a friend of the family. Scarcely a day passed without his name being mentioned. He's joking, Feda feels sure. He's making fun of Feda.

He says, put him on a pedestal. No, that they put him on a pedestal. He was considered very wonderful. And he 'specs that he wouldn't have appreciated it, if he had known; but he didn't know, he says. Not sure if he ever will, he says. It sounds nonsense, what he says. Feda has got an impression that he's mixing him up with the bird, because he said something about 'bird' in the middle of it—just while he said something about Mr. Jackson, and then he pulled himself up, and changed it again. Just before he said 'pedestal' he said 'fine bird,' and then he stopped. In trying to answer the one, he got both mixed up, Mr. Jackson and the bird.

He won't say he got this mixed up! But he did! Because he said 'fine bird,' and then he started off about Mr. Jackson.

On a pedestal, he said.

No, he doesn't say nothing.

[Contemporary Note by O. J. L.—The episode of Mr. Jackson and the bird is a good one. 'Mr. Jackson' is the comic name of our peacock. Within the last week he has died, partly, I fear, by the severe weather. But his legs have been rheumatic and troublesome for some time; and in trying to walk he of late has tumbled down on them. He was found dead in a yard on a cold morning with his neck broken. One of the last people I saw before leaving home for this sitting was a man whom Lady Lodge had sent to take the bird's body and have it stuffed. She showed him a wooden pedestal on which she thought it might be placed, and tail feathers were being sent with it. Hence, the reference to the pedestal, if not telepathic from me, shows a curious knowledge of what was going on. And the jocular withholding from Feda of the real meaning of Mr. Jackson, and the appropriate remarks made concerning him which puzzled Feda, were quite in Raymond's vein of humour.

Perhaps it was unfortunate that I had mentioned a bird first, but I tried afterwards, by my manner and remarks, completely to dissociate the name Jackson from what I had asked before about the bird; and Raymond played up to it.

It may be that he acquires some of these contemporary items of family information through sittings which are held in Mariemont, where of course all family gossip is told him freely, no outsider or medium being present. But the death of Mr. Jackson, and the idea of having him stuffed and put on a pedestal, were very recent, and I was surprised that he had knowledge of them. I emphasise the episode as exceptionally good.]

He's trying to show Feda the side of a house; not a wall, it has got glass. He's taking Feda round to it; it has got glass stuff. Yes, and when you look in, it's like flowers inside and green stuff. He used to go there a lot—be there, he says. Red-coloured pots.

He's shaking his head now. That's where mother got the flowers from. Tell her, she will know.

[There is more than one greenhouse that might be referred to. M. F. A. L. got the yellow jasmine, which she thinks is the flower referred to, from the neighbourhood of one of them. And it is one on which the peacock used commonly to roost; though whether the reference to it followed on, or had any connexion with, the peacock is uncertain, and seems to be denied.]

Yes, he's not so clear now, Soliver. He has enjoyed himself. Sometimes he enjoys himself so much, he forgets to do the good things he prepared. I could stay for hours and hours, he says. But he's just as keen as you are in getting tests through. I think I have got some. When I go away, I pat myself on the back and think, That's something for them to say, "Old Raymond does remember something." What does aggravate him sometimes is that when he can't get things through, people think it's because he has forgotten. It isn't a case of forgetting. He doesn't forget anything.

Father, do you remember what I told mother about the place I had been to, and whom I had been allowed to see? What did they think of it?

[See M. F. A. L. sitting with Mrs. Leonard, 4 February 1916, Chap. XX.]

Ah, that's what I was afraid of. That's the awful part of it.

Before he gave that to his mother, he hesitated, and thought he wouldn't. And then he said, Never mind what they think now, I must let mother and father know. Some day they will know, and so, what does it matter?

He knew that they might think it was something out of a book, not me; but perhaps they didn't know that side of me so well.

O. J. L.—No. But among the things that came back, there was a Bible with marked passages in it, and so I saw that you had thought seriously about these things. [page 11.]

Yes, he says. Yet there's something strange about it somehow. We are afraid of showing that side; we keep it to ourselves, and even hide it.

I hadn't looked for it, I hadn't hoped for it, but it was granted.

O. J. L.—Do you think you could take some opportunity of speaking about it through some other medium, not Feda? Because at present the boys think that Feda invented it.

Yes, that's what they do think. He says he will try very hard.

No, I have not seen Him, except as I told you; he says, father, He doesn't come and mingle freely, here and there and everywhere. I mean, not in that sense; but we are always conscious, and we feel him. We are conscious of his presence. But you know that people think that when they go over, they will be with him hand in hand, but of course they're wrong.

He doesn't think he will say very much more about that now, not until he's able to say it through some one else. It may be that they will say it wrong, that it won't be right; it may get twisted. Feda does that sometimes. (Feda, sotto voce.—No, Feda doesn't!) Yes she does, and that's why I say, go carefully.

[This was intended to refer to a sitting which Mr. Hill was holding with Peters about that date, and, as it turned out, on the same day.]

He doesn't say much. No, he doesn't say nothing about it. He hasn't got much power, and he's afraid that he might go wrong.

Good-bye, father, now. My love to you, my love to mother. I am nearer to you than ever before, and I'm not so silly about [not] showing it. Love to all of them. Lionel is a dear old chap. My love to all.

Don't forget to tell mother about the roses I brought her. There's nothing to understand about them; I just wanted her to know that I brought her some flowers.

Good night, father. I am always thinking of you. God bless you all.

Give Feda's love to SrAlec.

Yes, Feda feels it, and it lifts Feda up, and helps her.