I called this morning (Saturday, 14th November, 1885), on Mr. W. M.
Keeler, and told him, in effect, in the very words as well as I can
remember, as follows: that I had received his letter of the 6th inst.,
containing his terms, and had consulted the Commission in regard to
them; and that our conclusion had been quickly reached. He must know how
very simple a process this 'composite photography' is, and that among
photographers there is no mystery whatever in it. For his own process he
claimed a Spiritual Agency--this agency we were willing to accept (in
my own case I was anxious to accept it) if, after a thorough
investigation, his process could not be explained by well-known physical
laws. The conditions he demanded were such as to render any
investigation simply silly. His exclusive use of the dark room, which
could have nothing to do with Spiritual forces, for the Spirits had
already done their work in the Camera, utterly precluded us from
discovering whether his processes were in anywise different from
ordinary photography. He wished to know in what way this prevented us
from detecting fraud if the operations took place in a private house
where he was a stranger. I replied that without for a moment impugning
his honesty, he must know that unless we were present with him in the
dark room, we could not affirm that our marks had not been duplicated on
substituted plates.
Furthermore, that we had regarded his terms as intentionally
prohibitory. The demand for three hundred dollars was so extraordinary
that we could regard it in no other light than as a desire to avoid an
investigation altogether. I asked him what his ordinary charge was, and
he replied two dollars for each sitting, and that he made from twenty to
forty dollars a day, when he settled down to work.
That there might be no misunderstanding, I repeated my reply to his
wife: that we were ready to investigate, if we could be allowed to watch
the very points where material agency ceases and spiritual begins, but
these very points Mr. Keeler forbade us to examine, and that the failure
rested with him.
At one time his vexation (which was manifest) a little ran away with his
discretion. He asked, with somewhat of a sneer, 'How did you expect to
investigate it?' I replied that 'I could not answer for others, but for
myself I should have liked to have him say, when we of the Commission
met him, The Spirits are present, through my Mediumship, here is my
Camera in which the Spirits will manifest themselves on the sensitized
plates, take it, and so long as I am present with my influence, do what
you please.' He laughed outright and said 'That would be a good thing.'
I endeavored throughout the interview to impress him with our utter
incredulity in the spiritual nature of his photographs, and yet to give
him no loop to hang a charge of discourteous or illiberal treatment on.
I asked him to give me, in my private capacity, a sitting at his
earliest convenience, and that I should not be satisfied with less than
a cherub on my head, one on each shoulder, and a full-blown angel on my
breast. He laughingly assented.