said, 'several mechanical effects which I was unable to explain....
But I saw enough to convince myself that they could all be produced by
human feet and hands,' though he also, in June, 'could not conjecture
how they could be produced by any kind of mechanism.' Later, October
9, Sir David again wrote to the newspaper. This time he said that he
might have discovered the fraud, had he 'been permitted to take a peep
beneath the drapery of the table.' But in June he said that he 'was
invited to examine the structure of the table.' He denied that 'a
large table was moved about in a most extraordinary way.' In June he
had asserted that this occurred. He declared that the bell did not
ring. In June he averred that it rang 'when nothing could have touched
it.' In October he suggested that machinery attached to 'the lower
extremities of Mr. Home's body' could produce the effects: in June 'we
could not conjecture how they could be produced by any kind of
mechanism.' On Sir David's death, his daughter and biographer, Mrs.
Gordon, published (1869) his letter of June 1855. Home then scored
rather freely, as the man of science had denied publicly, in October
1855, what he had privately written to his family in June 1855, when
the events were fresh in his memory. This was not the only case in
which 'a scientist of European reputation did not increase his
reputation' for common veracity in his attempts to put down Home.

The adventures of Home in the Courts of Europe, his desertion of the
errors of Wesleyan Methodism for those of the Church of Rome, his
handsome entertainment by diamond-giving emperors, his expulsion from
Rome as a sorcerer, and so forth, cannot be dealt with here for lack
of space. We come to the great Home-Browning problem.

In 1855, Home met Mr. and Mrs. Browning at the house of a Mr. Rymer,
at Ealing, the first of only two meetings.[19] On this occasion, says