The Spirit made the cabinet crack--three times for "Yes" and twice
for "No." Now and then it would reply both "Yes!" and "No!" to the
same question, which Whibley attributed to over-scrupulousness.
When nobody asked it anything it would talk to itself, repeating
"Yes!" "No!" "No!" "Yes!" over and over again in an aimless,
lonesome sort of a way that made you feel sorry for it.
After a while Whibley bought a table, and encouraged it to launch
out into more active conversation. To please Whibley, I assisted
at some of the earlier seances, but during my presence it
invariably maintained a reticence bordering on positive dulness. I
gathered from Whibley that it disliked me, thinking that I was
unsympathetic. The complaint was unjust; I was not unsympathetic,
at least not at the commencement. I came to hear it talk, and I
wanted to hear it talk; I would have listened to it by the hour.
What tired me was its slowness in starting, and its foolishness
when it had started, in using long words that it did not know how
to spell. I remember on one occasion, Whibley, Jobstock (Whibley's
partner), and myself, sitting for two hours, trying to understand
what the thing meant by "H-e-s-t-u-r-n-e-m-y-s-f-e-a-r.
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