This result should have awed me, but it did not. I felt a deep interest, of course, but no bewilderment. My mind was perfectly clear and my senses alert to every sound, every ray of light.
At this moment the psychic again began to twist and turn as if in pain, and at last the little voice of "Maudie" anxiously asked: "Is Mr. Garland going to take a train at seven o'clock?"
This query convinced me that deep in thesubconscious mind of the psychic lay the knowledge that I had thought of catching this train, and that a sense of my plan was disturbing her and interfering with our experiment. To remove the uneasiness, I replied: "No, I am going to stay; for I think 'Mr. Mitchell' has something very special in store for me. Tell her not to think of it any more. I am in no hurry. I have no appointment elsewhere."
To this "Maudie" replied: "Mr. Mitchell says, 'Thank you'; he will do the best he can for you. He says go down-stairs now and get your supper. Leave mama just where she is. He will take care of her."
As we had been sitting for nearly three hours in a dark close room we welcomed this suggestion from our thoughtful guide, although it tended to make the sitting less conclusive. As I followed my hostess down the stairs I shared her remorseful pity of poor Mrs. Smiley, bound and helpless in her inquisitorial seat. "Mitchell" did not ask that she be fed, only that she be covered with a shawl to keep her warm.
"If she is doing this for her own entertainment," I said, "she has singular tastes. If she is doing it to advance the cause of spiritualism, she is a noble creature—though a mistaken devotee, in the eyes of Miller."
Our hostess's uneasiness concerning the psychic made the meal a hurried one. None of us felt very much like eating, and I could see that Fowler was disposed to cut corners. "Well, Garland, whatdo you intend to do with the facts obtained this afternoon? You have plenty of authority behind which to shelter yourself. Why not admit the truth? So far as I am concerned, I am willing to swear that Mrs. Smiley had no actual hand in the movement of the cone."
To this I replied: "From one point of view, these phenomena are slight; but considered in the light of the manifestation of a totally new force, they are tremendous in their implication, and I must be absolutely sure of them before I assert their truth. The most impressive fact of all is that every phenomenon we obtain coheres with those obtained by Maxwell, Crookes, and Flammarion. It will not do to admit the spirit hypothesis, or grant the objectivity of phantasms, merely because we have proved the movements of a particle of matter from A to B without a known push or a pull, for such admission is far-reaching. If Maxwell is right, these phenomena—even the most complicated of them—are metapsychical, but perfectly normal. For example, he says: 'A movement without contact was forthcoming this afternoon. I placed a table upside down on a linen sheet. M. Meurice and I then put our hands on the sheet, some distance away from the table. The table turned completely over. The movement was performed slowly and gently. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, and the sunlight was streaming in through an open window.' Nowhere was a perfectly clear case of telekinesis, with no one present but Dr. Maxwell and his friend; but the turning over of the table does not imply the action of spirit hands."
"I don't see why not," responded Mrs. Fowler, "if Dr. Maxwell had mediumistic power."
"It was Meurice who had the power; but it was a physical power, which went out from his organism like heat. He was often ill after his experiments, and felt nausea and a disturbing weakness in the solar plexus, as though his bodily powers had been seriously drawn upon. I have felt this myself—or so it seemed; perhaps I imagined it."
Fowler struck in: "But what will you do with materializations such as Dr. Richet studied at the Villa Carmen in Algiers? What will you do with the photographs of the spectre of the helmeted soldier which he obtained under what he declares were test conditions?"
"But were they? That's the point."
"I am willing to trust a man of Richet's wide knowledge and known skill in experimentation. When he says he saw, touched, and heard the apparition of a man, I am ready to believe that he had taken quite as many precautions as his newspaper critics would have done. He saw a helmeted soldier leave the séance cabinet and walk about. He clasped his hand, he affirmed, and found it warm and jointed (perfectly real), and he secured thebreath of this phantom in a tube of baryta so unmistakably that the liquid was chemically changed in accordance with his test. There are thousands of other well-authenticated cases of materialization. I have seen scores of them myself. I am only quoting Richet because I know you believe in his methods."
"I do, indeed; but he may have been deceived, all the same. The failure of all his experiments in Algiers lay in the fact that he was never able to nail his psychic down, as we have done. He was the on-looker, after all—not the experimenter he should have been and wished to be. Really his photographs of the spirit 'B. B.' have not the weight as evidence of the physical manifestation, as the phenomena which we have this evening secured."
Fowler rose. "I have his report in my library. Let me get it."
He returned in a few minutes with a small blue book in his hand, from which he began to read with gusto: "'I saw, as it were, a white luminous ball floating over the floor; then rising straight upward, very rapidly, as though issuing from a trap-door, appeared B. B., born, so to speak, out of the flooring outside the curtain, which had not stirred. He tries, as it seems to me, to come among us, but he has a limping, hesitating gait. At one moment he reels as if about to fall, limping on one leg; then he goes toward the opening of the curtains of the cabinet.Then, without (as I believe) opening the curtains, he sinks down, disappears into the floor.'"
"What are you reading from?" I asked.
"I am reading from the report which Richet made to the Annals of Psychical Science. He goes on to say: 'It appears to me that this experiment is decisive, for the formation of a luminous spot on the ground, which then changes into a living and walking being, cannot seemingly be produced by any trick. On the day after this experiment I minutely examined the flagstones [which made up the floor of the séance room], and also the coach-house and stable immediately under that part of the kiosque.' There was no trap-door, and the cobwebs on the roof of the stable were undisturbed. The photographs of the apparition were taken on five different plates simultaneously, and the figure is the same on each."
"Yes; but those experiments were afterward made of no value by the confession of a coachman, who admitted his complicity in the fraud."
"No; that story is not true. The experiments stand, and Richet still defends both himself and the circle against the charge of fraud."
"But read on," I insisted. "Does he not say that, in spite of all his proof, he will not even hazard an affirmation of the phenomena?"
"Yes, he does say that," admitted Fowler; "but he also says: 'I have thought it my duty to mention these facts in the same way as Sir William Crookesthought it his duty in more difficult times to report the history of "Katie King." I do not believe I have been deceived. I am convinced that I have been present at realities, not deceptions. Certainly I cannot say in what materialization consists.I am only ready to maintain that there is something profoundly mysterious in it, which will change from top to bottom our ideas on nature and on life.'"
"He apparently was profoundly affected by what he saw," I assented, "and I am perfectly willing to grant that the character of his friends in the circle add value to what he saw. But, after all, the fact of materialization is so tremendous in its implications that even to admit its possibility is to admit more than any man of our day, who has been trained in scientific ways, is willing to be answerable for. However, the most extraordinary story I have ever read is that of Archdeacon Colley, Rector of Stockton, Warwickshire, who declared in a public lecture—and many times since, over his signature—that he saw the miraculous issue of phantoms born directly from the side of a psychic. He declares he saw a winsome little girl emerge—a laughing, golden-haired creature, as alive as any one. I confess that this is too much for me, and yet if a Spanish soldier can be born from a spot of light, anything at all that anybody may imagine can happen.—But let us return to our own psychics."
We found Mrs. Smiley sitting precisely as we lefther, and, picking up our thread, Fowler and I located the table and the cone and reassumed our positions. The table, which was quite out of reach of Mrs. Smiley's hands, now stood with its end toward the three of us, sitting in a crescent shape opposite the psychic—a position which produced, so the guides said, one pole of a battery.
Hardly were we seated in our places when the psychic suddenly awoke and spoke in her natural voice, and I for one felt that the sitting was over. I was perfectly certain that nothing could happen out of the ordinary unless the medium were in either one or the other of her states of trance.
I was now both amazed and delighted to find that the cone could be drummed upon and voices delivered through it while Mrs. Smiley, mentally normal, took part in the conversation. My theories were upset. I was completely mystified, though I said nothing of this to Fowler.
Once or twice Mrs. Fowler declared she heard the sound of lips, and at last a voice came to her speaking the name of her father. His voice answered some of her questions correctly, but could not utter the pet name which her father used to call her. This breakdown of the individuality of the phantom voices is very characteristic. This ended the sitting. The voices had not been as strong as we had hoped for, but as we threw on the light we found a number of messages written upon the sheets of paperwhich Fowler had put in the middle of the table. These messages were lying with the writing wrong side up, so far as the psychic was concerned. Altogether we felt that the results were both significant and encouraging, and we agreed to meet three days later in the same room and under the same conditions.
"What I want to do now is to hold your arms while the horn is in the air, or while the writing is going on," I said to Mrs. Smiley.
And to this she replied: "You may make any test you please. I feel that in this house my powers will return."
"That is a real gain," I said, to encourage her.
The next sitting was an almost exact duplication of the last so far as the binding (and nailing) of the psychic was concerned, except that we sewedtwobands of tape to her sleeves andfourtacks were used at each wrist. Her feet were tied separately in the middle of a long tape, and the ends brought together, carried back beneath her chair, and tacked to the floor. As before, we placed the large end of the cone on the floor, out of her reach, leaving the smaller end on the table, which we left just out of her utmost reach. On the table we placed some sheets of paper specially marked and dated, and took our seats as usual.
No one was present at this sitting but Mr. and Mrs. Fowler and myself. Even the faithful Brierly had been unable to share in this, the twenty-ninth experiment. I was delighted to have the circle narrow down, for Fowler was a good investigator and a man of vast experience in psychic matters. Outside interference was absolutely excluded. "Whatever happens to-night, Fowler," I said, "you and I or the spirits must be responsible for it."
We began, as usual, by putting Mrs. Smiley into hypnotic sleep. In a few moments the familiar shuddering action took place. Her palms grew moist. She said she found it difficult to submit to our touch. She asked us to put our fingers above hers, and soon after, in the midst of our singing, her voice ceased, her hands grew heavy as lead, and lay perfectly limp and dead in their bonds.
Again following the guidance of the raps, Fowler and I moved back and sat opposite her, with Mrs. Fowler between us. "Maudie" then spoke from the psychic's lips, asking us to move the table farther away. This I did, leaving it at least twelve inches from the utmost tips of her fingers. "Maudie" then asked us to take up the larger half of the cone and unite it with the smaller part, and lay the entire cone flat across the table.
We did so, marking its position by means of chalk. It was nearly three feet from the utmost extension of the psychic's hands, and yet, almost immediately, tapping came upon the cone keeping time to our singing. Later, sounds were produced like the beating of a kettle-drum. A hammering was then carried on as if within the cone, and "Maudie" spoke, telling us to go down and get supper, as before.
I regretted this necessity very much, for up to this moment all had been clear sailing; the tapping on the cone was inexplicable on the basis of anynormal action of the psychic; but to leave her alone, even while so well accounted for, weakened the test.
I said as much to Fowler as we sat at the dinner-table. He admitted his own disappointment. "However," he added, philosophically, "we have to take these things as they offer. We can't construct them."
We discussed the implications of the sittings we had already held. "It isn't one thing only," he reminded me; "it is because of the larger fact that one phenomenon supports another that one comes to believe. Thus far to-night we haveprovedthat Mrs. Smiley is not concerned with the drumming on the cone, haven't we?"
"Yes; but I want to hold her hands while the drumming takes place. I want to hear her voice at the same time with 'Mitchell's.'"
"We'll get it," he responded, confidently. And a little later we returned to the room where our psychic was sitting, still in deep trance.
After some moments of waiting, "Maudie" said: "Mr. Mitchell says take the table away and put the cone in its place."
We moved the table a short distance to the left, and I put the cone in the centre of the rug where the table had stood, and marked the position of the cone. The psychic then passed through a period of suffering, of effort, but nothing took place. Again "Maudie" spoke, asking us to restore the tableand cone to their former positions. "Evidently the experiment designed by 'Mitchell' has failed," I said, "but these failures instruct us."
A convulsive restlessness again seized upon the psychic, and "Maudie" asked us to sing. I hummed softly, in order to hear anything that might take place. A minute clicking sound at once developed, as though some one were lightly beating the cone with a key. These clicks answered our questions. It was "Wilbur" once more. I asked him if he were going to be able to speak to us, and he tapped "Yes." Soon after this the cone was swung into the air and "Wilbur's" throaty whisper was heard. I asked him if the psychic could not be awake and speak while he was present, and he answered: "Yes; we have planned that."
Even as he spoke Mrs. Smiley passed into what seemed like a struggle for breath and awoke!
"Are you with us, Mrs. Smiley?" asked Fowler.
"Yes. What time is it?"
"About half-past eight. How do you feel?"
"Very numb and cold," she answered, plaintively.
"I don't wonder at that," I remarked. "You've been sitting there for five hours."
"Is anybody present?" she asked, anxiously.
I knew what she meant, and answered: "Yes, 'Wilbur' is here—or was a few moments ago. Are you still with us, 'Wilbur'?"
A rapping on the cone made vigorous answer, and a few seconds later the cone took flight and "Wilbur's" voice resumed general conversation with us. It was noticeable to me all through this sitting, as at others, that neither "Wilbur" nor "Mitchell" nor "Maud" ever addressed the psychic;they spoke of her, but never to her.
I requested further tests. "'Wilbur,' I want the privilege of going to the psychic's side. I don't like this long-distance experiment. I want to get closer to these facts—if they are facts."
"You shall have the privilege," was the reassuring answer.
"Shall I go now?"
There was no reply through the horn, but a tapping on the table gave a doubtful "Yes," and I crept slowly forward and took a seat at Mrs. Smiley's right hand. "I am very close to the ultimate mystery, Mrs. Smiley," I said, as I placed my hand upon her wrist. "Proceed, 'Wilbur.' Let me hear your voice now."
With tense expectation, I put my ear close to the psychic's lips and listened breathlessly. The horn soared into the air and was drummed there, as if to show that it was out of the reach of the psychic, but no voice came from it! This was a disappointment to me, as well as to Fowler, and I banteringly said: "You know this failure is suspicious, Wilbur.' It seems to indicate that Mrs. Smiley is onlya wonderful ventriloquist, after all. Can't you prove that she is independent of your voice? Can't you do something decisive at this moment?"
No reply came to this; but while my hand was firmly pressed upon her wrist (both sleeves being nailed to the chair), the loose leaves of the paper in the centre of the table were whisked away to the left. I could follow their flight, and we all heard their deposition on a couch in a corner of the room.
"Fowler," I said, "are you controlling your wife's hands?"
"Yes; we had nothing to do with that noise."
This was another tense moment, for the movement of those papers was very ghostly indeed. We had demonstrated clearly that their movement was supernormal.
"May I come forward?" asked Fowler.
Tap—"No," was the decided answer.
I then asked: "'Wilbur,' do you want me to change with Fowler and control Mrs. Fowler's hands?"
An emphatic "Yes" was rapped in reply.
"They seem as anxious for a conclusive test as we are," remarked Fowler. "Did you mean you didn't want Mrs. Fowler unaccounted for?"
A perfect fusillade of raps followed: "Yes, yes, yes."
Fowler then came forward to Mrs. Smiley's left,while I returned to the table. Taking both of Mrs. Fowler's hands in mine, and setting the toes of my shoes upon hers, I awaited developments. At this moment, while Fowler was pressing the psychic's imprisoned wrists, the cone banged about most furiously, describing wide circles entirely out of Mrs. Smiley's reach. This action was another perfectly convincing test of the psychic's supernormal powers. As the same movement had taken place witheachof us in control of the psychic, each was absolved from any complicity in the matter; but I did not forget my further test. "Mrs. Smiley," I said, "I want Mr. Fowler to return to his seat, and I want to place my hand over your lips—or to muffle you in some way.I mustprove that you have nothing to do with the production of those voices. Will you permit this test?"
"Certainly," she answered, with patient sweetness. "You may gag me in any way you please. I am perfectly sure you can secure the proof you want." Upon this hint I acted. Taking a large kerchief from my pocket, I tied it tightly around her mouth, knotting it at the back, and then, in growing excitement, challenged the ghostly voice: "Now, 'Wilbur,' let's hear from you."
A moment later the voice came from the cone, but apparently very much muffled and blurred. "You are not articulating well," I rather sarcastically observed.
Instantly the voice came out clearly, more sharply than ever before. "I was fooling you!" jeered "Wilbur."
We all applauded. "There, that's better," I said. "Your voice improved wonderfully."
"Wilbur" chuckled with glee. "I've taken a lozenge," he whimsically retorted, expressing a very human delight in our mystification.
Fowler then said: "Now let's consider this a moment, Garland. Suppose Mrs. Smiley has been able to loosen the gag. How does she handle the cone? We will suppose she is a marvellous ventriloquist. How does she write on the pads on the table, and how does she whisk them away? You see, it isn't the matter of one thing, but of all that has happened."
"Yes, I admit that everything points to an exercise of supernormal force. It really looks, so far as anything in the dark can look, like spirits, but I prefer to think Mrs. Smiley has the power to project her will in some way."
"I don't see how we are going to escape the spirit hypothesis," replied Fowler.
"'Mitchell,'" I said, addressing the phantom, "I want to examine that gag, and I want to hold both hands of the psychic. Will you permit that?"
There was no reply to this, and Fowler offered an explanation: "We had that test at a previous sitting."
I explained to the invisible ones: "'Wilbur,' it is absolutely essential that you should prove to me that your voice is not dependent upon the vocal chords of the psychic. You see the importance of this, do you not, Mrs. Smiley?"
"Indeed, I do," she earnestly answered, her voice sounding very faint and muffled through the kerchief. "I am anxious for the test."
"Very well, then. Now I want you to sing a song, and while you are singing I am going to insist on 'Wilbur's' speaking. Will you do that, 'Wilbur'?" The cone was drummed upon as if in vigorous promise of success.
Mrs. Smiley sang, or rather hummed; but there was no response on the part of the ghostly voices, and a moment later she called, faintly: "The kerchief is slipping down, Mr. Garland."
I rose and went to her side. As I untied the kerchief, she said, plaintively: "I am sorry we didn't get the voices. I am sure we can if we try again. Please try again." And a vigorous drumming on the cone seemed to second her plea.
However, it was getting very late, and I said: "I think we will postpone further experiment to-night. What are your sensations now?"
"I am almost paralyzed, and still deaf, too, but that often happens. My feet are as if they did not exist."
"But your mind is perfectly normal?"
"Yes, it seems to be."
Soon after this I returned to my seat; the cone was lifted high into the air silently, broken apart, and then, with the small end jangling inside the larger one, was carried over the table and back to the floor. It fell with a bang that seemed final and decisive. "That is 'good-bye,'" said Mrs. Smiley.
Upon lighting the gas we found our victim as before, sitting absolutely as we had left her. The table edge was twenty-four inches from her finger-tips. The place where the cone lay, which we had marked with chalk when it was first drummed upon, was thirty-six inches from one hand and forty inches from the other. But the most inexplicable of all—the tangible, permanent record—was the seven sheets of paper which were lying upon a couch six feet from Mrs. Smiley's left hand.They were all written upon legibly, and pinned together with a black pin, which had been thrust through the writing."Wilbur" had scrawled his name, Mrs. Fowler's father's name was signed to a message, and there were other signatures unknown to any of us. The pencil was on the carpet, forty inches from Mrs. Smiley's hand. The leaves of paper, at the moment when they were grasped and lifted, were more than forty inches from her finger-tips. How this was done I do not know: but of this I am absolutely sure: the psychic did not remove them from the table by means of her ordinary, material limbs. Barring the failureto disassociate her voice from that of "Wilbur," she had met every demand upon her. Her powers were truly magical. I cannot say Isawthe cone move, but I have proven that the psychic did not surreptitiously touch it or fraudulently write upon the papers during this sitting. I cannot swear that Fowler was controlling his wife's hands while the cone was floating (and while I held the psychic's imprisoned hands), but Ibelievehe was. In short, barring the one sense of sight—an all-important one, I admit—these happenings were convincing and fitted in with phenomena which I had secured with other psychics.
Nevertheless, I was not satisfied. I wanted Brierly, or some other fifth person, in the room, in order thatbothof the psychic's hands could be controlled at the same time that Mrs. Fowler's were secured. So long as a single hand was left free, the doubter would be warranted in questioning our results.
The next two or three sittings were partial failures—so much so that I made no record of them. Possibly, conditions were not strict enough. At any rate, the final and most conclusive sitting came three days later. It was held in Fowler's house. We followed the conditions of the previous sitting very closely—the same room, the same table, the same fastenings as before.
There was present a friend of Fowler's, a youngman who was possessed of some psychic power. We will call him Frank. Fowler and I took entire charge of the psychic, and her bonds were even more carefully nailed than before. We began the séance, as before, by putting her to sleep.
Not long after "Maudie" spoke, saying: "Mr. Mitchell wishes the thread fastened to mama's hands in the way Mr. Garland desires."
I fastened a strong thread to each wrist as I had done several times before, passing the ends under the chair-arm in such wise that any movement of the psychic would be plainly and instantly detected. We then returned to our seats, and, though conditions seemed favorable, no marked phenomena took place; the cone was lifted, it is true, but we were used to this now, and accepted it as quite commonplace.
At six o'clock the voice of "Maudie" came: "Please go down to supper. Mr. Mitchell says he will be able to give you what you ask for after you return."
I did not ask to what he referred, but I had in mind the test to prove the voices independent of the psychic's vocal organs, and at the dinner we discussed methods by which this could be made clear.
"If they will let me put my hand over her mouth," I said to Fowler, "I will be satisfied."
"Do you mean that you will believe in spirits?" he smilingly challenged me.
"Oh, I won't go so far as to promise that, but I confess it would help to prove their existence."
"We may be about to get something more conclusive than that."
"Let us fix our minds on two things: first, to get the writing, or at least movement, with every hand controlled; and, second, the voices, while one of us covers Mrs. Smiley's mouth with a hand."
"Very well," acquiesced Fowler. "But the unexpected is what usually happens in these performances."
We were gone but twenty minutes, so eager were we for our demonstration. We found everything quite as when we left: the psychic was asleep, the fastenings undisturbed. Fowler and I regained our threads and resumed our places at the sides of the table, while Frank and Mrs. Fowler sat close together at the end opposite Mrs. Smiley. I ask the reader to recall that the psychic's ankles were encircled with tape which was nailed to the floor behind her chair. Two bands of tape, after being sewn to her cuffs, had been tacked solidly to the chair, three strong tacks were driven down through the hem of her dress, and, finally, Fowler and I were holding the threads which, after encircling the psychic's wrists, passed under the chair-arm.
And yet, in spite of all these bonds and precautions, the cone was almost immediately lifted, and "Mitchell" spoke through it. In a deep, clear,well-delivered, and decidedly masculine whisper, and with stately periods, he promised the complete co-operation of the spirit world in the great work to which I was devoting myself. He directed his exhortation to me, as usual; and for the benefit of those who think the spirits are always trivial or foolish, I wish to say that "Mitchell's" remarks were dignified and very suggestive. He produced in my mind the distinct impression of a serious man of seventy, ornate of rhetoric, but never vague or wandering in his thought, and he never went outside the circle of Mrs. Smiley's mind.
For fully a quarter of an hour he discussed with me the value of the investigation which we were pursuing. "I and my band," he assured me, "are working as hard from our side as you are from yours, equally intent upon opening up channels of communication between the two worlds." He solemnly urged me to proceed in this "grand work," and at last said, "Good-bye for the present," and fell silent.
The cone was then deposited on the table, and "Maud" said: "If Mr. Garland and Mr. Fowler will go quietly up to mama's side, holding all the time tightly to the threads, 'Mr. Mitchell' will do what Mr. Garland so much desires. Please be very careful not to touch mama until I tell you. Keep as far apart as you can as you go up to her. When you reach my mama's side, you may put one hand on herhead and one on her wrist. 'Mr. Mitchell' says please have Frank take Mrs. Fowler's hands, so that every hand in the circle is accounted for."
I was now very eager and very alert. I felt that at last, after many, many requests and many trials, I was about to secure a clear, complete, and satisfying demonstration. Surely no trickster would permit such rigorous control as that toward which we were now invited. I was sorry that Miller was not present to share with me the satisfaction of the moment. My admiration went out toward this heroic little woman, who was enduring so much pain and suspicion for the sake of science. "She believes in herself," I thought. "If she succeeds, all honor to her."
Slowly we crept to her side, being careful to touch nothing until directed by the voice of "Maud." At last the childish voice said: "Mr. Garland may put his right hand on top of mama's head and his left hand on her wrist. Mr. Fowler may place his left hand above Mr. Garland's and his right hand on mama's wrist. 'Mr. Mitchell' says he will then see if the voices will not come."
I then said aloud: "My right hand is on the psychic's head, my left is on her wrist."
Fowler repeated: "My left hand is above Garland's right, which is on the psychic's head, and my own right hand is on the right wrist of the psychic. Now, 'Wilbur,' go ahead."
Our challenge was almost instantly caught up. While thus double-safeguarding the psychic, the cone, which was resting on the table a full yard away, rose with a sharp, metallic, scraping sound, and remained in the air for fully half a minute, during which I called out, sharply: "We are absolutely controlling the psychic; her hands are motionless; Mrs. Fowler, be sure you are holding both of Frank's hands."
"I have both his hands in mine," she answered.
As the cone was gently returned to the carpet Fowler was moved to say: "Garland, that was a supreme test of the psychic. She was absolutely not concerned in any known way with that movement. Save for a curious throbbing, wave-like motion in her scalp, she did not move. If she lifted the horn, it was by the exercise of a force unrecognized by science."
To this I was forced to agree. I here definitely declare that the psychic was not concerned with the flight of the cone in any way known to biology. If she produced the voices, they too must have been examples of supernormal ventriloquism, for they came through the megaphone. Of that I am as certain as one can be of an auditory impression.
A few moments later we returned to our seats, while "Wilbur" and "Mitchell" and several other voices spoke to us. Fowler, now that I had admitted telekinesis, wanted me to go further. "Isthe psychic speaking to us," he asked, "or are these voices independent of her?"
"An investigator is never satisfied," I answered. "I must have the voicesthroughthe cone while I am covering the psychic's mouth."
To this "Mitchell" replied: "We are doing all we can, and we will yet be able to meet every demand you make upon us."
"I am anxious for conviction," I said. "I want to secure the voice of the psychic and your voice at the same time, 'Mr. Mitchell.' Can you do that for me?"
He seemed to hesitate, and at last said: "We will try." I perceived in his tone a certain doubt and indecision. Again we were permitted to hold the psychic's wrists, and, as before, the cone was lifted and drummed upon as if to show its position high in the air; but no voices came. Hidden forces seemed to be struggling for escape beneath our hands; the woman's brain seemed a powerful dynamo. I could not rid myself of a sense that there was an actual externalization of the psychic's nerve force, and with this conviction I could well understand why the command had so often been given not to touch her unbidden. Suppose the poor naked "astral body" were abroad and a strong light were suddenly turned upon it!
Now came on a singularly engrossing game of "hide-and-seek." Convinced that Mrs. Smileywas innocent of any trick in the movement of the horn, I tried every expedient to satisfy myself that "Wilbur's" voice was independent of her own; but I did not succeed. Mrs. Smiley spokealmostat the same moment but never precisely synchronous with Wilbur's whisper. She answered all my questions perfectly unconcerned and unexcited, lending herself to my experiments. All in vain. At no time did I succeed in getting "Wilbur's" voice atpreciselythe same moment with her own, though the whisper, following swiftly on her speech, interjected remarks as if echoing her questions. There was always an approximate interval between her voice and the spirit whisper.
This was to me very significant, and strengthened me in my belief that the entire process, while inexplicable, was, after all, not the work of spirits.
When the gas was lighted we found the cone had been placed on the table, a distance of forty inches from the utmost reach of the psychic's hands. Her feet were twenty-three inches from the nearest leg of the table. We carefully examined the tapes which were sewed to her sleeves. They were tied, and the doubled ends tacked precisely as described so many times, and to remove the tacks we were forced to use a hammer. It is useless to talk of a possible release of her arms during the phenomena of the cone.
As I was about to leave the house that night,Mrs. Smiley said: "I do not feel able to sit any more for the present, Mr. Garland. I feel myself growing weaker, and 'Mitchell' tells me I would better stop for the present. I feel that my power belongs to the world, and I want to do all I can to convince you of the truth of spiritualism, but I feel the strain very greatly."
"I do not wonder at that," I responded, "and I cannot blame you for demanding a rest. No one could have endured more uncomplainingly. You have been a model subject, and we are deeply in your debt. I am sorry Miller was not with us to-night; he would have been convinced of your supernormal power at least. Have no fear of my report; for while I am not convinced of the spirit hypothesis, I have found you honest and patient and very brave. I thank you very sincerely for what you have done."
And in this spirit we parted.[1]
FOOTNOTE:[1]Since these words were written I haveseenthe cone move. In the presence of another medium, with no one in the room but myself, I held the psychic's hands what time the horn circled over my head. It shone like a golden rod as it moved. I could see the gleam of light along its entire side. At last it came softly down and laid itself across my shoulder. In order to satisfy myself of its presence, I bent and touched it with my forehead. The touch seemed to disturb conditions, to break the current, for it dropped instantly to the floor. Twice it answered to my request in this manner until my doubts were satisfied. It seemed to move with the swiftness of a dragonfly as silent and horizontal it hung in the air about my head.
[1]Since these words were written I haveseenthe cone move. In the presence of another medium, with no one in the room but myself, I held the psychic's hands what time the horn circled over my head. It shone like a golden rod as it moved. I could see the gleam of light along its entire side. At last it came softly down and laid itself across my shoulder. In order to satisfy myself of its presence, I bent and touched it with my forehead. The touch seemed to disturb conditions, to break the current, for it dropped instantly to the floor. Twice it answered to my request in this manner until my doubts were satisfied. It seemed to move with the swiftness of a dragonfly as silent and horizontal it hung in the air about my head.
[1]Since these words were written I haveseenthe cone move. In the presence of another medium, with no one in the room but myself, I held the psychic's hands what time the horn circled over my head. It shone like a golden rod as it moved. I could see the gleam of light along its entire side. At last it came softly down and laid itself across my shoulder. In order to satisfy myself of its presence, I bent and touched it with my forehead. The touch seemed to disturb conditions, to break the current, for it dropped instantly to the floor. Twice it answered to my request in this manner until my doubts were satisfied. It seemed to move with the swiftness of a dragonfly as silent and horizontal it hung in the air about my head.
Cameron's Amateur Psychic Club, which had so nearly disintegrated by reason of the long series of barren sittings, was drawn together again by the news of my startling success at Fowler's house. Cameron at once decided that the members should hear my report, and I was notified to be ready to relate my experiences in full. We met, as before, at Cameron's table, and even before the soup-plates were removed the interrogation began, and by the time the company was in full possession of the facts the coffee and cigars had appeared.
"Why didn't these wonders take place in our presence?" asked Mrs. Quigg, who had returned to something like her original truculence of doubt. "Why should you and Brierly be so favored?"
"In this business everything comes to him who waits," I replied, a tinge of malice in my voice. "You obtained a few results, Miller a few more; but Fowler and I, for our pains, reaped the rich reward. By remaining long on the watch-tower we saw the armies pass. Harmony and patience areessentials in the production of these marvels. With people yawning or shuffling about uneasily, results are necessarily unimportant."
Miller continued firm in his agnosticism. "Although puzzling, I cannot grant so much as even one of the phenomena. Belief in the smallest of those manifestations at my house would be uprooting to all established theories of matter—not to mention time and space."
"Were not the notions of Galileo and Darwin also subverting?" asked Fowler. "Is there anything sacred in error? If we are wrong in our theories about the universe, let's correct them. You do not stand out against wireless telegraphy or the Röntgen ray?"
Miller fired at this. "I'm not going to take instruction from a tipping table or a flying hair-brush!" he fiercely retorted.
"I'll take illumination from any source whatsoever," responded Fowler.
Here I interposed: "The only question that concerns me at this stage is: Does the table tip and the brush really fly? No physical fact is trivial, for it stands related to mountains and the clouds."
Fowler's eyes gleamed with contempt. "That's the way of you so-called scientists: you narrow the mighty fund of occult phenomena down to a floating feather. As a matter of fact, there is a sea of evidence accumulated by the investigations of men quiteas scientific as Miller, testimony that is neither petty nor ignoble. It is because you and your associates are so trifling in methods that the tables and the chair play leading parts in your drama."
"Good for you!" cheered Brierly. "You're quite right. When these materialistic investigators get done with trying to prove that independent slate-writing exists, they'll begin to give some attention to the fundamental truths of the messages which the slates set forth. Going after small things, they get small things. If Miller and his like went forth seeking the essentials of the faith, they would find them instead of being amazed with foolish tricks of hand."
"Essentials such as what?" interrupted Harris, with snappy suddenness.
"Such as—as—direct spirit communication, a knowledge of the astral, the reincarnation of souls, and—and—faith in the upward progression of the self," stammered Brierly, much disturbed.
Here again I interposed a quieting word: "I confess that it begins to look as though the theosophist's theory of the astral (at which some of us have smiled) were in a fair way to be scientifically demonstrated. Since our last meeting I have been studying the bound volumes ofThe Annals of Psychic Science, and I have found them full of comfort. They sustain Mrs. Smiley at every point. To my mind, the most important event in the history of spiritism is the entrance of Eusapia Paladino into the clinicallaboratory of Cesare Lombroso. Nothing since Crookes's experiments has had such value for the scientist."
"We have heard of Lombroso, but who is Paladino?" asked Mrs. Quigg. "Is she a psychic?"
"She is the most renowned now living. Though only an illiterate peasant woman, she has been able for more than twenty years to baffle every scientist who has studied her. Her organism remains the most potent mystery on this earth."
"Tell us about her! Who is she? Where does she live?"
"She was born at Minerva-murge, a mountain village near Bari, in Italy. According to Lombroso's daughter, who has written a sketch of her, she is about fifty-three years of age. Her parents were peasants. She is quite uneducated, but is intelligent and rather good-looking. Her hands are pretty and her feet small—facts which are of value when studying her manifestations, as you will see later on. Her mother died while Eusapia was a babe, and her father 'passed over' when she was twelve, leaving her at large in the world 'like a wild animal,' as she herself says. A native family of her village took her to Naples, and her own story is that she was adopted soon after by some foreigners 'who wished to make me an educated and learned girl. They wanted me to take a bath every day and comb my hair every day,' she explains, with some humor.
"She didn't like the life nor the people, and she soon ran away back to her friends, the Apulians, and it was while she was in their house and at the precise moment when they were planning to put her in a convent that her occult powers were discovered. Some friends came in to spend the evening, and, in default of anything better to do, formed a circle to make a table tip. No sooner were they all seated, as she herself relates, than 'the table began to rise, the chairs to dance, the curtains to swell, and the glasses and bottles to walk about, till everybody was scared.' After testing every other person present, the host came to the conclusion that the medium was his little ward, Eusapia. This put an end to her going into a convent. She was proclaimed a medium, much to her disgust, and made to sit whole evenings at the table. 'I only did it,' she says, 'because it was a way of recompensing my hosts, whose desire to keep me with them prevented their placing me in a convent. Finally I took up laundress work, thinking I might render myself independent and live as I liked without troubling about spiritualistic séances.'"
"It is remarkable how many of these women psychics begin their career when they are ten or twelve years old," said Miller. "Mrs. Smiley was about that age, wasn't she?"
"Yes, and so was Mrs. Hartley, another psychic of my acquaintance. Mrs. Smiley complained of thetedium of sitting. She tells me that her father kept her at it steadily, just as Eusapia was not permitted to escape her fate. One day an Englishwoman, wife of a certain Mr. Damiani, came to a séance, and was so impressed by what took place that she interested her husband in Eusapia's performances. Damiani then took up the young medium's development along the good old well-worn lines of American spiritualism, and she acquired all the tricks and all the 'patter.' Among other notions, she picked up the idea of an English 'control' known as 'John King,' who declared himself a brother of 'Kate King,' of Crookes fame, and from that day Eusapia has been a professional 'mejum.'"
"What does she do?" asked Cameron. "What is her 'phase,' as you call it?"
"It must be confessed that most of her phases are of the poltergeist variety, but they are astounding. She produces the movement of mandolins, chairs, sofas, and small tables without contact (at least, such is the consensus of opinion of nearly a score of the best-known scientists of France and Italy), and also materializes hands and arms. There is vastly more than the poltergeist in her, that is evident; for she has conquered every critic with her miracles. Take, for instance, Lombroso's conversion, a fairly typical case. He was not only sceptical of spirit phenomena, but up to 1888 was openlycontemptuous of those who believed in them. However, in an article called 'The Influence of Civilization upon Genius,' published in 1888, he made this admission: 'Twenty or thirty years are enough to make the whole world admire a discovery which was treated as madness at the moment when it was made.... Who knows whether my friends and I who laugh at spiritualism are not in error, just like hypnotized persons, or like lunatics; being in the dark as regards the truth, we laugh at those who are not in the same condition.'"
"True enough," said Fowler. "The man who has made no study of these phenomena is like one color-blind: he has never seen a landscape."
"It was this candid statement by Lombroso that moved Professor Chiaia, a friend of Eusapia's, to write the great alienist a letter which was in effect a challenge. After recounting a score or two of the wonderful doings of Paladino, whom he had studied carefully, he ended in this amusing fashion: 'Now you see my challenge. If you have not written the paragraph cited above simply for the fun of writing it, if you have the true love for science, if you are without prejudices—you, the first alienist of Italy—please take the field. When you can afford a week's vacation, indicate a place where we can meet. Four gentlemen will be our seconds: you will choose two, and I will bring the other two.... If the experiment does not succeed, you will consider me but as a man suffering from hallucination, who longs to be curedof his extravagances.... If success crowns our efforts, your loyalty ... will attest the reality of these mysterious phenomena and promise to investigate their causes.'"
"I hope Lombroso was man enough to accept the challenge," said Cameron. "Nothing could be fairer than the spook-man's offer."
"He did not at once take up the gage. It was not, in fact, till February, 1891, that he was able to go to Naples to meet Eusapia, who had begun to interest some of his trusted scientific friends. He found the great psychic quite normal in appearance and rather attractive in manner. She was of medium size, with a broad and rather serious face lit with brilliant dark eyes. The most notable thing about her physical self was a depression in her skull caused by a fall in her infancy. This scar figures largely in nearly all the reports of her."
"Why?" asked Harris.
"Because they all agree that a singular sort of current of force, like a cool breeze, seems to come and go through this spot."
Harris groaned, and Howard said: "Oh, rubbish!"
"Rubbish or not, they all speak of this scar and its singular effects. At the time when Lombroso saw her first, Eusapia was just beginning to be known to scientists, but no one of special note had up to this time (1891) reported upon her. She was known as the wife of a small shop-keeper in Naples, andseemed a decent, matronly person, quite untouched by mysticism. Although not eager to sit for Lombroso and his party of scientists, she finally consented. Among those who took part in these celebrated experiments were Professor Tamburini, an eminent scientist; Dr. Bianchi, the superintendent of the Insane Asylum of Sales; and Dr. Penta, a young nephew of Lombroso, a resident of Naples. Lombroso had charge of the sittings, which were held in a room of his own choice and with the medium entirely under his control. He was astonished at the prompt response obtained. At the first sitting, while he and Professor Tamburini held the psychic's hands, a bell was carried tinkling through the air and a small table moved as if it were alive. Many other mysterious movements took place. Lombroso was very much disturbed by these inexplicable phenomena, and could not rest till he sat again. At the second séance spectral hands developed, profoundly mystifying every sitter, and Lombroso went away, promising to carry forward a study of spiritism. In a letter written the following June he manfully said: 'I am filled with confusion, and regret that I combated with so much persistence the possibilities of the facts called spiritualistic. I say facts, for I am opposed to the theory.'"
"Did Lombroso say that?" asked Harris.
"He wrote it, which is still more to the point, and it was his acceptance of the mainfactsof Paladino'smediumship that led other groups of scientists to take up her case. Professor Schiaparelli, Director of the Observatory at Milan; Gerosa, Professor of Physics; Ermacora, Doctor of Natural Philosophy; Aksakof, Councilor of State to the Emperor of Russia; and Charles du Prel, Doctor of Philosophy in Munich, were in the next group, which met at Milan with intent to settle the claims of this bold charlatan.
"The sittings took place in the apartment of Monsieur Finzi at Milan, and were more rigid and searching than any Paladino had ever passed through, but she was again triumphant. She bewildered them all. Lombroso himself was present during some of the sittings. The results of the series of experiments were very notable and very far-reaching. For the first time, so far as I know, a table was photographed while floating in the air—"
"No!" shouted Howard.
"Yes; and certain other telekinetic happenings were proved, to the stupefaction of most of those in the group. One special experiment, the success of which confounded the shrewdest, was the attempt to secure on a smoke-blackened paper the print of one of the spectral hands."
"Did it succeed?"
"Yes. The impression was made while Paladino's hands were imprisoned beyond all question, and, what was most singular of all, the handthat made the print smudged the wrists of one of theexperimenters, and yet not a particle of black appeared on the fingers of the psychic."
"That ought to have convinced them of her honesty," remarked Fowler, with a note of amusement in his voice, "but it didn't; these scientific folk are so difficult."
"No," I replied, "it didn't convince them, but it jarred them not a little. In their report they admitted this much. They said, 'We do not believe we have the right to explain these things by the aid of insulting assumptions.' (By this they meant to acquit the psychic of fraud.) 'We think, on the contrary, thatthese experiments have to do with phenomena of an unknown nature, and we confess that we do not know what the conditions are that are required to produce them.'"
"That seems to me like a very mild statement, but I suppose they considered it epoch-making," remarked Fowler.
"From this time forward learned men in Russia, France, and Italy successively sought Paladino out and tried to expose her to the world. Professor Wagner, of the Department of Zoölogy at the University of St. Petersburg, made a study of her in 1893, and found her powers real. A year later M. Siemeradski, correspondent of the Institute, experimented with her in Rome, obtaining, among other miracles, the plucking of the strings of a closed piano under strictly test conditions."
"You had that experience, did you not?" asked Mrs. Cameron.
"Yes, I've had that."
"How do you account for a thing of that sort?"
"I don't account for it—or if I did give my theory, you would laugh at me. Wait till I tell you what these Italians are doing. Among the most eminent and persuasive of all Eusapia's investigators was Professor Charles Richet, the French physiologist and author. Eusapia came to revere and trust him, and gave him many sittings. He, too, was bowled over. He tells the story of his conversion very charmingly. 'In my servile respect for classic tradition,' he writes, 'I laughed at Crookes and his experiments; but it must be remembered in my excuse that as a professional physiologist I moved habitually along a road quite other than mystical.' His attention, he goes on to say, was first drawn to spiritist phenomena by the word of a friend who had discovered a power that caused a table to move intelligently. He was trying to explain this and one or two other little things like telepathy and prophetic vision by the word 'somnambulism,' when his friend Aksakof, a great psychical expert, reproached him for not interesting himself more keenly in experiments with mediums. 'Well,' said Richet, 'if I were sure that a single true medium existed, I would willingly go to the ends of the world to meet him.'"
"That's the spirit!" exclaimed Fowler. "That is the way the scientist should feel. What then? Aksakof told him all he needed to do was to go round the corner, didn't he?"
"Not exactly. Two years later Aksakof wrote to him: 'You needn't come to the end of the world; Milan will do.' So Richet went to Milan, and took part in those very celebrated séances with Eusapia. 'When I left Milan,' Richet says, 'I was convinced that all was true; but no sooner was I back in my accustomed channels of work than my doubts returned. I persuaded myself that all had been fraud or illusion.'"
Here Harris interrupted: "Miller can testify to this inability to retain a conviction. He, too, has slumped into doubt. How about it, Miller?"
"I never professed to believe," declared Miller.
"You were pretty well convinced that night in your study, weren't you?" I asked.
"I was puzzled," he replied, guardedly.
There was a general smile of amusement at his manifest evasion, and I resumed: "Richet went to Rome, and together with Schrenk-Nötzing, the philosophic expert, and Siemeradski, the correspondent of the French Institute, made other and still more convincing experiments, and yet doubt persisted! 'I was not yet satisfied,' he says, further. 'I invited Eusapia to my house for three months. Alone with her and Ochorowicz, a man of penetratingperspicuity, I renewed my experiments in the best possible conditions of solitude and quiet reflection. We thus acquired a positive proof of the reality of the facts announced at Milan.'"
"By George, that's going it strong!" said young Howard. "You've got to believe that a man like Richet has seen something after three months' experiment in his own house."
Miller faced them all stubbornly: "And yet even Richet may have been deceived."
"Areyouthe only one competent to study these facts?" asked Brierly, hotly. "The egotism of you professional physicists is a kind of insanity. The moment a man like Richet or Lombroso admits a knowledge of one of these occult facts, you who have no experience in the same phenomena jump on him like so many wolves. Such bigotry is unworthy a scientist."
"Would you have us accept the word of any one man when that word contradicts the experience of all mankind?" asked Miller.
"Listen to what Richet says in confession ofhisperplexity," I called out, soothingly. "He writes: 'It took me twenty years to arrive at my present conviction—nay! to make one last confession.I am not yet absolutely and irremediably convinced.In spite of the astounding phenomena which I have witnessed during my sixty experiments with Eusapia, I have still a trace of doubt.Certainty does not follow on demonstration; it follows on habit.' So don't blame Miller or myself for inability to believe in these theories, for our minds are the kind that accept the mystical with sore struggle."
"Go on with Eusapia's career," said Harris. "I am interested in her. I want the story of the investigations."
"Her story broadens," I resumed. "Her fame spread throughout Europe, and squad after squad of militant scientists grappled with her, each one perfectly sure that he was the one to unmask her to the world. She was called before kings and emperors, and everywhere she triumphed—save in Cambridge, where she made a partial failure; but she redeemed herself later with both Lodge and Myers, so that it remains true to say that she has gone surely from one success to another and greater triumph."
"But there have been other such careers—Slade's and Home's, for instance—which ended in disaster."
"True, but nothing like her courage has ever been known. The crowning wonder of her career came when she consented to enter the special laboratories of the universities of Genoa and Naples. It is in the writings of Morselli, Professor of Psychology at Genoa, and in the reports of Bottazzi, head of the Department of Physics at Naples, that scepticism, such as my own, is met and conquered. I defyMiller or any man of open mind to read the detailed story of these marvellous experiments and deny the existence of the basic phenomena produced by Eusapia Paladino."
"You speak with warmth," said Harris.
"I do. I am at this moment fresh from a reading of the reports of Bottazzi's up-to-date experiments, and I am compelled to grant that he has not only sustained Crookes at every point, but has gone beyond him in his ingenuity of test and thoroughness of control. He adds the touch of certainty that we all needed to complete our own experience. He has given me courage to say what I believe Mrs. Smiley did for us."
"Won't you tell us all about it?" pleaded Mrs. Cameron. "Please do."
"It is too long and complicated. You must read it for yourself. It is too incredible to be told."
"Never mind, Garland; we'll take it as part of your fiction. Go ahead."
As I looked about me, I could detect in the faces of some of my friends an expression of apprehension. The coffee had grown cold. Our ice-cream had melted with neglect. Every eye was fixed upon me. It was plain that Harris and Miller considered me "on the high-road to spiritualism." Quite willing to gratify their wish to be startled, I proceeded:
"You will find the latest word on all these matters in a small but valuable review, publishedsimultaneously in London and in Paris, calledThe Annals of Psychic Science. It is edited by César de Vesme in France, and by Laura I. Finch in England, and is a mine of reliable psychic science. Its directors are Dr. Dariex and Professor Charles Richet. Its 'committee' is made up of Sir William Crookes, Camille Flammarion, Professor Lombroso, Marcel Mangin, Dr. Joseph Maxwell, Professor Enrico Morselli, of Genoa; Dr. Julien Ochorowicz, head of the General Psychologic Institute of Paris; Professor Porro, the astronomer; Colonel Albert de Rochas, author ofThe Externalization of Motivity, and others of like character."
"We don't want the review, we want your account," said Harris. "Don't spare us. Give us detail—lots of it."
"Thank you; you shall have it hot-shot, but I'll have to generalize the story for you. The most decisive of all the tests have been made during the last eighteen months, and the final and most convincing of all within the year, under the direction of Lombroso, Morselli, and Bottazzi. It is safe to say that with these experiments (and the reports which accompany them) a new era has dawned in biology. The facts of mediumship are in process of being scientifically observed by a score of the best-qualified men in Europe, and at last we are about to study mediumship apart from any question of religious tenets."
Fowler took issue with me here: "It is absurd to say that no one but these physicists has ever properly studied spiritualistic phenomena; spiritists themselves have put the screws on quite as effectively as ever Crookes or Richet has done. Some of the best investigators ever known have been spiritists."
"Even if that were true, their testimony would lack the convincing power that flames from Morselli's book or Bottazzi's report. The essential weakness of the spiritist's testimony lies in the fact that for the most part he assumes that the facts of mediumship are somehow, and necessarily, in opposition to somebody's religion. He finds it sustained (or opposed) by the Bible, or he fancies it mixed with deviltry or the black art. He trembles for fear it will affect the scheme of redemption or assist some theosophical system. Whereas, a man like Bottazzi is engaged merely with the facts; he lets the inferences fall where they may. He is not concerned with whether Eusapia's manifestations oppose Christian theology or not; he wants the phenomena. He is alert to note their effect on biologic science, but he does not shrink from any report of them. So far as I am concerned, my lot is cast with these men who put the clamps on the fact and wait for larger knowledge before constructing a system of religion on the half-discovered."
"I'm with you there," said Miller. "And if our university officials took the same view, we Americans would hold higher rank in the world's thought."
"Bottazzi himself says, with reference to his experiments: 'In spite of all the hundreds of those who have observed Eusapia, it still remained true to say that hitherto she had been free to throw things about as she pleased.' But all this took a sharp turn when she came into Bottazzi's laboratory."
"Just who is Bottazzi?" Harris asked.
"He's the head of the Physiological Institute of the University of Naples; of his age and general character I am not precisely informed, but he writes delightfully of his experiments. Morselli, who preceded him in his study of Eusapia, is the Professor of Psychology in the University of Genoa. Foà and Herlitzka are of the same university. Within the last two years Eusapia has also been rigorously studied in Lombroso's clinical laboratory at Turin. All honor to her for breaking away from the traditions of mediumship!"
Mrs. Quigg caught me up on this: "What do you mean by 'traditions of mediumship'?"
"I mean that for the most part investigators have nearly always been kept at arm's-length by the fiction that the 'guide' should control everything, that the séance is a religious rite, that the medium must not be touched nor exposed to the light, and so on, tillthe scientist was reduced to the feeble rank of an on-looker in the dark, so that no real test was possible. These Italians did not grant any of these traditions. They were scientists, not devotees at a new shrine."
"However, I am ready to grant that some of the good old rules were justified. As you have seen in my own experiments, I have proceeded cautiously, for if you suppose mediumship to be a psycho-dynamic adjustment of the organisms in the circle—a subtle physical relationship—there is all the more reason to be careful. I did not find it necessary to mistreat Mrs. Smiley in order to test her powers. ButEusapia has set a new pace for mediums. She has gone into the lion's den alone and unarmed—not once, but a hundred times. She entered Lombroso's study, a room previously unexplored by her, and there placed herself before a cabinet that she was not permitted to examine—a cabinet filled with machines for dividing the true from the false. In Morselli's presence she submitted to tests the like of which not even Crookes was permitted to apply, and all sacred rules and regulations, all ideas of religion or questions of morality, vanished when she entered the cold, clear air of Bottazzi's physiological laboratory."
"This begins to sound like the grapple of a cuttlefish and a mermaid. Was the woman crushed?"
"No; she more than sustained her greatreputation. She conquered the remorseless scientist and performed the impossible."
I had the strained attention of my audience now. Time was forgotten, and cries of "Tell us!" "Tell us all!" arose.
"It is an exciting story, an incredible story—"
"So much the better!" exclaimed Miss Brush.
"I am full of enthusiasm for Bottazzi," I resumed. "His was the kind of investigation I should like to put through myself. It appeals to me as no spiritualistic performance has ever done. In a sense the facts he has demonstrated make all material tests inoperative. Matter is all we have to cling to when it comes to physical tests. A nail driven down through the sleeve of the medium's dressseemsto increase our control of her, and a metronome or a Morse telegraphic sounder does add value to our testimony, and yet Zöllner seems nearer right than Miller: matter seems only a condition of force, and subject to change at the will of the psychic.
"Up to the beginning of last year Bottazzi confesses that he had read little or nothing on the subject, and, like our friend Miller here, considered it beneath the dignity of a scientist to be present at spiritualist circles. It is highly instructive to note that Paladino, the most renowned medium of her time, was in Naples at his very door; but that doesn't matter—a scientist is blind to what he does not wish to see. In this case Bottazzi's eyes were opened bya young friend, Professor Charles Foà, of Turin, who sent him an account of what he and Dr. Herlitzka had witnessed in Eusapia's presence."
"They really seem to be taking the phenomena seriously over there," said Harris.
"These particular sittings at Turin made a great sensation in Italy. They were under the direction of Drs. Herlitzka, Foà, and Aggazzotti, assistants to Professor Mosso, of the University of Turin. Dr. Pio Foà, Professor of Pathologic Anatomy, was also present during one séance. The conditions were all of the experimenters' own contriving. They were young men and had been companion workers in science for many years, and were accustomed to laboratory work. They all came to this experiment perfectly sure that no mediumistic phenomena could endure the light of science. At the end of their three sittings they manfully said: 'Now that we are persuaded of the authenticity of the phenomena, we feel it our duty to state the fact publicly in our turn, and to proclaim that the few pioneers in this branch of biology (destined to become one of the most important) generally saw and observed correctly.... We hope that our words may serve to stimulate some of these colleagues to study personally and attentively this group of interesting and obscure phenomena.' You will note they relate their tests, not to theology, but to unexplored biology."