Fakery

"Cmaicmaiadmafhtjsajbrnfha."

Milton Wright, Associate Editor of the Scientific American, was reading aloud:

"Eureka," "Mizpah," "Mother Machree," "Jim, old boy, I am here."

A little group, assembled in the offices of his magazine in the Woolworth Building, Manhattan, stirred uneasily. Each phrase read by Editor Wright came from one of 284 epistles which were being expertly opened by Publisher Orson D. Munn.

"Watermelon," "Welencei Boldosag," "Amen," "A peacock feather."

Everybody in the room realized the significance of those words, for they knew the story of an agreement which a certain Dr. J. Allen Gilbert of Portland, Ore., had made with his wife just before she died eight years ago. Both had been interested in spiritualism. While the woman lay ill they made a pact that if she died she would try to communicate with him through a medium. To defeat fakery, they fixed upon a countersign, wrote it down, sealed it in an envelope. It consisted of the date of Dr. Gilbert's birth, of his wife's, of their daughter's.

Mrs. Gilbert died. The Doctor offered a reward of $500 to any medium who could give him a message from her--certified of course by the countersign. First 139 mediums tried for the money, but to none of them had the dead Mrs. Gilbert communicated the password. More letters began to come in. Dr. Gilbert asked the co-operation of Editor Wright. The strange abracadabras that the editor read aloud in the hushed room in the Woolworth Building were the attempts of 284 mediums to prove that they had talked to a dead woman.

"Pure White Valentine," "Moonlight Star," "James, James, I Am So Far Away," "Gosh Darn, Old Cooty, she's easy."

Listeners well knew what such phrases meant. They meant that 284 mediums were fakes.