Tests with drawings in carefully sealed envelopes.
1. _Agt._, a coiled snake (Fig. 45); _Per._, no drawing, but this
script: “See something like kitten with tail and saucer of milk. Now it
leaps into action and runs away to outdoors. Turns to fleeing animal
outdoors. Great activity among outdoor creatures. Know it’s some outdoor
thing, not indoor object—see trees, and a frightened bird on the wing
(turned sidewise). It’s outdoor thing, but none of above seems to be
_it_.”
This is much more interesting than if there had been the perfect success
of writing the word “snake,” because we seem to get inklings of the
internal process. “Saucer of milk”—observe that the serpent’s coil plus
the unattached ellipse in the center (due to Mr. Sinclair’s confessed
bad drawing) really does look like a saucer. “Something like a kitten
with a tail”—why mention tail? Most kittens have tails. But a tail
sticks up back of the saucer. Later neither kitten, trees nor frightened
bird is _it_, yet something is causing great commotion among outdoor
creatures. It is an outdoor thing, therefore not a kitten, but evidently
something alive. The scene is very appropriate to the appearance of a
snake. Mr. Sinclair tells us that his wife’s childhood was in part spent
where there were many poisonous snakes, and that fear of them was bred
in her. As he conjectures, it is very likely that dawning in the
subconsciousness, not fully emerging in the conscious, the subject of
the drawing stirred up imagery from childhood. I surmise that, if the
truth, which she may not consciously remember, could be known, she saw
while a child a kitten fleeing from a snake.
2. _Agt._, a daisy (Fig. 59); _Per._ got what is very like the petals
around the disk of the daisy, also two stems, also various curving lines
more or less like the daisy leaves or vegetation at least (Fig. 59a).
3. _Agt._, an axe, seemingly a battle-axe, with AX printed (Fig. 145);
_Per._, as in Figure 145a. Note the parallels: (a) “letter A [right as
far as it goes], (b) with something long (c) above it”; (d) “there seems
to be no end to the handle”; (e) the drawing much resembles the
original, in fact one type of ancient battle-axe was very much of the
same shape. Although she finally guessed that it was a key, yet a
suspicion of military use enters in the conjecture “a sword,” which is
perhaps all the more striking since the drawing bears little resemblance
to a sword.
4. _Agt._, a crab (Fig. 48); _Per._ drew as in Figures 48a, 48b, and
wrote “Wings, or fingers—wing effect, but no feathers, things like
fingers, instead of feathers. Then many little dots which all disappear,
and leave two of them, O O, as eyes of something.” And again, “streamers
flying from something.” The reader will judge for himself whether the
drawings do not suggest the crab’s nippers, and one of them the joint
adjoining. “Wing effect but no feathers, things like fingers”—especially
the lower pair in Mr. Sinclair’s remarkable crab _do_ look like fingers.
“Many dots”; well the original has four. Then she sees but two of them
and they are “O O, eyes of something.” True enough, two of the “dots” in
the crab are O O, and they are eyes.
5. _Agt._, a man in a sledge driving a dog-team (Fig. 60). _Per._ by
accident opened this drawing, so of course could not experiment with it.
But after she had made her drawings for No. 2 she wrote “Maybe snow
scene on hill with a sled.” On the back of No. 3, which was so brilliant
a success, she wrote “I get a feeling again of a snow scene to come in
this series—a sled in the snow.” It is unfortunate that an accident
prevented her trying No. 5 when she had actually reached it, but she
certainly got it by anticipation.
6. _Agt._, a tobacco pipe with smoke issuing therefrom (Fig. 37); Per.
first drew an ellipse and wrote “Now it begins to spin, round and round,
and is attached to a stick”; (2) next she made the conventional “curl”
which usually means smoke; (3) then she made another curl of smoke and
pushed the open end of an ellipse into it,[13] joined a line to the
ellipse just about where the stem of a pipe meets the bowl and at the
end of the line made a small circle, which certainly is not found in the
original but may express the feeling that there is a circular opening
(Fig. 37a).
7. _Agt._, a house with smoking chimney; _Per._, two figures, each very
like the frame of a window lacking the upper side, or like the crenels
or openings in the battlement of Figure 36a, but longer. In connection
with that drawing (Experiment of January 28–29) we made the remark
(which may have seemed fanciful) that the number of these openings or
uncompleted rectangles was the same as that of the windows and door in
the original drawing. Here the uncompleted 2 rectangles equal in number
the one window plus the one door of the house. She also wrote “There is
something above this—can’t see what it is part of.” True, the roof and
chimney are above the window and door.