John Smith, on the right of the medium, suddenly felt a
sharp blow on the neck. As he turned around instinctively a ghostly
hand snatched away his pocket-book and the sound of mocking laughter
could be plainly heard from the dark cabinet. Another weird hand pulled
Thomas Jones's insurance policy out of his breastpocket, dangled it in
the air just out of his reach, and then flung it back at him. Later when
Jones looked at his policy he found that its face value had been cut
down one-half. James Robinson all at once began to feel his shoe pinch,
and could not discover the reason until he, too, caught sight of a
ghostly hand hovering in the vicinity of his pocket. Soon the room was
filled with a veritable chaos of flying objects. Railroads, steamship
lines, national banks, trust companies, insurance companies, went
hurtling through the air, but all the time our financier sat motionless
in his chair. It was suggested that the force which set such ponderous
objects into motion was the mysterious element known as "executive
ability."
In the final experiment the subject was a popular novelist, who gave a
most interesting exhibition of how a nation-wide reputation can be
raised and supported without the slightest apparent reason.
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