Pneumatography or direct writing.

On the 11th of February last Mr. X…, one of our most illustrious men of letters, found himself at the home of Miss Huet, with six other persons, for some time initiated into the spirit manifestations. Mr. X… and Miss Huet seated themselves face to face, around a small table chosen by Mr. X… himself. The latter drew from his pocket a perfectly white paper, folded in four and marked by him with an almost imperceptible sign, though sufficient to be easily recognized; he placed it upon the table and covered it with a white handkerchief that belonged to him. Miss Huet placed her hands on the corner of the handkerchief; Mr. X… did the same, asking the Spirits for a direct manifestation, with a view to his instruction. He asked for it preferably from Channing, evoked for that purpose. After ten minutes, he himself lifted the handkerchief and withdrew the paper, which bore written on one side the sketch of a sentence traced with difficulty and almost illegible, but in which one could discover the rudiments of these words: God loves you; on the other side was written: God, in the outer corner, and Christ, at the end of the paper. This last word was written in such a way as to leave an impression on the double sheet. A second test was made in exactly equal conditions and, after a quarter of an hour, the paper contained, on the lower face, and in characters strongly traced in black, these English words: God loves you and, lower down, Channing. [see Error of language of a Spirit.] At the end of the paper he had written in French: Faith in God; finally, on the reverse of the same page there existed a cross with a sign resembling a reed, both traced with a red substance.

The test concluded, Mr. X… expressed to Miss Huet the desire to obtain, through her intermediary, considering her condition as a writing medium, some more developed explanations from Channing, the following dialogue establishing itself between him and the Spirit:

Q. Channing, are you present?

Answer. – Here I am; are you content with me?

Q. To whom is what you wrote destined, to all or to me in particular?

Answer. – I wrote this sentence, whose sense is addressed to all men; but, in writing it in English, the experiment is for you, in particular. As for the cross, it is the sign of faith.

Q. Why did you make it in red color?

Answer. – To ask you for faith. I could write nothing, it was too long. I gave you a symbolic sign.

Q. Red is, then, the color that symbolizes faith?

Answer. – Certainly; it is the representation of the baptism of blood.

Observation. – Miss Huet does not know English and the Spirit wished thus to give one more proof that her thought was foreign to the manifestation. He did it spontaneously and willingly, but it is more than probable that had it been asked of him as a proof he would not have lent himself to it. It is known that Spirits do not like to serve as an instrument with a view to experiments. Often the most patent proofs arise when one least expects them; and when the Spirits act on their own initiative, they frequently give more than would have been asked of them, whether because they wish to show their independence, or because, for the production of certain phenomena, the concurrence of circumstances would be necessary which our will is not always sufficient to bring into being. It could never be repeated too much that the Spirits have free will and wish to prove to us that they do not submit to our caprices. That is why they rarely accede to the desire of curiosity. The phenomena, whatever their nature, are never, in a certain manner, at our disposal, and no one could boast of obtaining them at will and at a given moment. Whoever wishes to observe them must resign himself to awaiting them and, often it is, on the part of the Spirits, a trial for the perseverance of the observer and of the end he proposes to himself. The Spirits trouble themselves little to amuse the curious and attach themselves willingly only to serious persons, who prove a will to instruct themselves, doing for that whatever is necessary, without bargaining their effort and their time.

The simultaneous production of signs in characters of different colors is an extremely curious fact; nevertheless, it is no more supernatural than the others. We can give ourselves an account of this fact by reading the theory of direct writing in the Spiritist Review of the month of August 1859. With the explanation the marvelous disappears, resulting in a simple phenomenon that has its reason for being in the general laws of Nature, and in what we might call the physiology of the Spirits.