Harding spent one long winter night in reading the report of a select committee of the Society for Psychical Recreation which placed on record no less than half a dozen absolutely authenticated cases of material objects being moved through space by some mysterious agency other than physical. The report, as it took shape in Harding's dreams that night, was as follows:

In the first experiment the medium was an ordinary American citizen. The precautions against the slightest bodily movement on his part were perfect. Mr. Joseph G. Cannon planted both of his feet on the medium's left foot and seized his left hand in both his own. Senator Aldrich did the same on the other side. The Honourable Sereno E. Payne grasped the medium by the throat, the Honourable John Dalzell straddled on his chest, Senator Burrows of Michigan strapped his ankles to the chair, and Senator Scott of West Virginia thrust a gag into his mouth. As a further precaution, before the sÉance began, a representative of the Sugar Trust went through the medium's pockets. The medium struggled and groaned and made other signs of distress, but at all times remained under absolute control. Yet it is a fact that, in spite of all restraints imposed upon him, this ordinary American citizen did succeed in raising a family of two sons and a daughter and even in sending the eldest child to college. At various times one even caught sight of a loaf of bread or a pair of shoes sailing through the air, and once, for a moment, the Committee distinctly smelt roast turkey with cranberry sauce. At the end of the sÉance the medium was in a pitiful state of exhaustion, but declared that he was quite ready to go on.

In the second experiment the Committee made use of the Mayor of one of our large cities and of the boss of the party to which the Mayor belonged. The boss acted as medium, being securely strapped into a chair about three feet away from another chair, on which the Mayor was sitting, blindfolded. Again the standard precautions against fraud were gone through, but this time the medium's efforts met with almost immediate response. At the merest droop of the boss's right eyelid, the Mayor leaped up from his chair and turned completely around. The boss smiled faintly, whereupon the Mayor balanced himself for 3 minutes and 42 seconds on his right foot and for 2 minutes and 35 seconds on his left foot, and then began to run about the room on all-fours in an amusing imitation of a spaniel fetching and carrying for his master. The boss inserted the point of his tongue into his cheek and withdrew it again, repeating the process several times in rapid succession. In response, the Mayor's face went into a series of spasmodic smiles and frowns that aroused general laughter. At the conclusion of the performance, the boss gently clicked his tongue against his palate, and the Mayor promptly stood on his head in the middle of the floor.

A somewhat similar experiment was concerned with a magazine editor and a life-size mannikin made up to resemble a muckraker. The editor and the lay figure sat facing in opposite directions at a distance of about ten feet. The editor, who acted as medium, was holding the telephone receiver with one hand and signing checks with the other, so that there could be no question of manual manipulation on his part. Neither could his feet come into play, because they were in full view on his desk. The telepathy hypothesis was eliminated because, in the first place, the mannikin had no mind, of course, and in the second place, the editor changed his own mind so fast that no external mind could possibly keep up with it. The results were gratifying. The editor took a slip of paper and wrote a few words upon it. Immediately the stuffed figure began to shout, "Murder! Fire! Thieves! Help! Murder! Fire! Thieves! Help! Murder!" at intervals of two seconds. The editor wrote something on another slip of paper, and the mechanical figure went through a most complex series of movements. First it seized a pair of paint brushes and began to paint all the white objects in the room black and all the black objects white. Then it went through the motions of playing, for a few minutes, upon a typewriter. Then it seized a pair of shears and set to work clipping solid pages from books and magazines. Then it copied a long column of figures from an almanac and added them up wrong. Then it drew a memory sketch of an English statesman, and put the wrong name under it. The editor assured the Committee that he could continue the process for hours at will.

An excellent sÉance was one in which the medium was a man very near the top in American finance. The rest of the group forming the circle around the table were plain American citizens of the type described in the first experiment. The medium was securely roped in his chair with anti-Trust laws, anti-rebating laws, insurance laws, banking laws, franchise laws, etc. Yet no sooner were the lights turned down than the phenomena began. 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. A painstaking examination by the Committee showed that he had concealed about him neither talent, nor imagination, nor knowledge of human nature, nor insight into life, nor an intimate acquaintance with the elements of English grammar. Nevertheless, before the eyes of the amazed observers, novel after novel went humming through the air in a direction away from the writer, while a steady stream of bank-books, automobiles, and country houses flowed in the opposite direction.