A New Monetization Strategy

A group of us are puzzling over a piece Emma wrote in The Two Worlds for 1891, concerning a group or class Emma put together, probably in January of 1880 in San Francisco, to study practical occultism -- that is, to attempt practical magic.

The suggestion that such a class had been formed, and that Arthur van der Naillen was a member, seemed odd, evocative...different, and pregnant with meaning, inasmuch as Emma insinuates that the class failed to achieve any measurable results.

I've just found an advert in the Sydney Morning Herald for December 10, 1878 that suggests maybe Emma was trying out a new monetization strategy:

She wouldn't be the innovator here - I recall J.J. Morse doing the same in Boston (but I could be mistaken) several years before this.

Nice to know where they were living at the time, though...