I
A hush fell over the dinner-table, and every ear was open and inclined
as Cameron, the host, continued: "No, I wouldn't say that. There are
some things that are pretty well established--telepathy, for instance."
"I don't believe even in telepathy," asserted Mrs. Quigg, a very
positive journalist who sat at his right. "I think even _that_ is mere
coincidence."
Several voices rose in a chorus of protest. "Oh no! Telepathy is real.
Why, I've had experiences--"
"There you go!" replied Mrs. Quigg, still in the heat of her opposition.
"You will all tell the same story. Your friend was dying in Bombay or
Vienna, and his spirit appeared to you, _a la Journal of Psychic
Research_, with a message, at the exact hour, computing difference in
time (which no one ever does), and so on. I know that kind of thing--but
that isn't telepathy."
"What is telepathy, then?" asked little Miss Brush, who paints
miniatures.
"I can't describe a thing that doesn't exist," replied Mrs. Quigg. "The
word means feeling at a distance, does it not, professor?"
Harris, a teacher of English, who seldom took a serious view of
anything, answered, "I should call it a long-distance touch."
"Do you believe in hypnotism, Dr. Miller?" asked Miss Brush, quietly
addressing her neighbor, a young scientist whose specialty was
chemistry.
"No," replied he; "I don't believe in a single one of these supernatural
forces."
"You mean you don't believe in anything you have not seen yourself,"
said I.
To this Miller slowly replied: "I believe in Vienna, which I have never
seen, but I don't believe in a Vienna doctor who claims to be able to
hypnotize a man so that he can smile while his leg is being taken off."
"Oh, that's a fact," stated Brierly, the portrait-painter; "that happens
every day in our hospitals here in New York City."
"Have you ever seen it done?" asked Miller, bristling with opposition.
"No."
"Well," asserted Miller, "I wouldn't believe it even if I saw the
operation performed."
"You don't believe in any mystery unless it is familiar," said I,
warming to the contest.
"I certainly do not believe in these childish mysteries," responded
Miller, "and it is strange to me that men like Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir
William Crookes should believe in slate-writing and levitation and all
the rest of that hocus-pocus."
"Nevertheless, hypnotism is a fact," insisted Brierly. "You must have
some faith in the big books on the subject filled with proof. Think of
the tests--"
"I don't call it a test to stick pins into a person's tongue," said Mrs.
Quigg. "We newspaper people all know that there are in the hypnotic
business what they call 'horses'--that is to say, wretched men and boys,
women sometimes, who have trained themselves so that they can hold hot
pennies, eat red pepper, and do other 'stunts'--we've had their
confessions times enough."
"Yes, but their confessions are never quite complete," retorted young
Howard. "When I was in college I had one of these 'horses' appeal to me
for help. He was out of a job, and I told him I'd blow him to the supper
of his life if he would render up the secrets of his trade. He took my
offer, but jarred me by confessing that the professor really could
hypnotize him. He had to make believe only part of the time. His
'stunts' were mostly real."
"It's the same way with mediums," said I. "I have had a good deal of
experience with them, and I've come to the conclusion that they all,
even the most untrustworthy of them, start with at least some small
basis of abnormal power. Is it not rather suggestive that the number of
practising mediums does not materially increase? If it were a mere
matter of deception, would there not be thousands at the trade? As a
matter of fact, there are not fifty advertising mediums in New York at
this moment, though of course the number is kept down by the feeling
that it is a bit disreputable to have these powers."
"You're too easy on them," said Howard. "I never saw one that wasn't a
cheap skate."
Again I protested. "Don't be hasty. There are nice ones. My own mother
had this power in her youth, so my father tells me. Her people were
living in Wisconsin at the time when this psychic force developed in
her, and the settlers from many miles around came to see her 'perform.'
An uncle, when a boy of four, did automatic writing, and one of my aunts
recently wrote to me, in relation to my book _The Tyranny of the Dark_,
that for two years (beginning when she was about seventeen) these powers
of darkness made her life a hell. It won't do to be hasty in condemning
the mediums wholesale. There are many decent people who are possessed by
strange forces, but are shy of confessing their abnormalities. Ask your
family physician. He will tell you that he always has at least one
patient who is troubled by occult powers."
"Medical men call it 'hysteria,'" said Harris.
"Which doesn't explain anything," I answered. "Many apparently healthy
people possess the more elementary of these powers--often without
knowing it."
"We are all telepathic in some degree," declared Brierly.
"Perhaps all the so-called messages from the dead come from living
minds," I suggested--"I mean the minds of those about us. Dr. Reed, a
friend of mine, once arranged to go with a patient to have a test
sitting with a very celebrated psychic who claimed to be able to read
sealed letters. Just before the appointed day, Reed's patient died
suddenly of heart-disease, leaving a sealed letter on his desk. The
doctor, fully alive to the singular opportunity, put the letter in his
pocket and hastened to the medium. The magician took it in his hand and
pondered. At last he said: 'This was written by a man now in the spirit
world. I cannot sense it. There isn't a medium in the world who can read
it, but if you will send it to any person anywhere on the planet and
have it read and resealed, I will tell you what is in it. I cannot get
the words unless some mind in the earth-plane has absorbed them.'"
Harris spoke first. "That would seem to prove a sort of universal mind
reservoir, wouldn't it?"
"That is the way my friend figured it. But isn't that a staggering
hypothesis? I have never had a sealed letter read, but the psychic
research people seem to have absolutely proved psychometry to be a fact.
After you read Myers you are ready to believe anything--or nothing."
The hostess rose. "Suppose we go into the library and have more ghost
stories. Come, Mr. Garland, we can't leave you men here to talk
yourselves out on these interesting subjects. You must let us all hear
what you have to say."
In more or less jocose mood the company trooped out to the library,
where a fire was glowing in the grate and easy-chairs abounded. The
younger people, bringing cushions, placed themselves beside the hearth,
while I took a seat near Mrs. Cameron and Harris.
"There!" said Miss Brush, with a gurgle of delight. "This is more like
the proper light and surroundings for creepy tales. Please go on, Mr.
Garland. You said you'd had a good deal of experience--tell us all about
it. I always think of you as a trailer, a man of the plains. How did you
happen to get into this shadow world?"
"It came about while I was living in Boston. It was in 1891, or
possibly 1892. A friend, the editor of the _Arena_, asked me to become a
member of the American Psychical Society, which he was helping to form.
He wished me to go on the Board of Directors, because, as he said, I was
'young, a keen observer, and without emotional bias'--by which he meant
that I had not been bereaved."
"Quite right; the loss of a child or a wife weakens even the best of us
illogical," commented Harris. "No man who is mourning a relative has any
business to be calling himself an investigator of spiritualism."
"Well, the upshot was, I joined the society, became a member of the
Executive Board, was made a special committee on 'physical
phenomena'--that is to say, slate-writing, levitation, and the like--and
set to work. It was like entering a new, vague, and mysterious world.
The first case I investigated brought out one of the most fundamental of
these facts, which is, that this shadow world lies very close to the
sunny, so-called normal day. The secretary of the society had already
begun to receive calls for help. A mechanic had written from South
Boston asking us to see his wife's automatic writing, and a farmer had
come down from Concord to tell us of a haunted house and the mysterious
rappings on its walls. Almost in a day I was made aware of the illusory
side of life."
"Why illusory?" asked Brierly.
"Let us call it that for the present," I answered. "Among those who
wrote to us was a woman from Lowell whose daughter had developed strange
powers. Her account, so straightforward and so precise, determined us to
investigate the case. Therefore, our secretary (a young clergyman) and I
took the train for Lowell one autumn afternoon. We found Mrs. Jones
living in a small, old-fashioned frame house standing hard against the
sidewalk, and through the parlor windows, while we awaited the psychic,
I watched an endless line of derby hats as the town's mechanics plodded
by--incessant reminders of the practical, hard-headed world that filled
the street. This was, indeed, a typical case. In half an hour we were
all sitting about the table in a dim light, while the sweet-voiced
mother was talking with 'Charley,' her 'poltergeist'--"
"What is that, please?" asked Mrs. Quigg.
"The word means a rollicking spirit who throws things about. I did not
value what happened at this sitting, for the conditions were all the
psychic's own. By-the-way, she was a large, blond, strapping girl of
twenty or so--one of the mill-hands--not in the least the sickly, morbid
creature I had expected to see. As I say, the conditions were such as to
make what took place of no scientific value, and I turned in no report
upon it; but it was all very curious."
"What happened? Don't skip," bade Mrs. Cameron.
"Oh, the table rapped and heaved and slid about. A chair crawled to my
lap and at last to the top of the table, apparently of its own motion. A
little rocking-chair moved to and fro precisely as if some one were
sitting in it, and so on. It was all unconvincing at the time, but as I
look back upon it now, after years of experience, I am inclined to think
part of it at least was genuine. And this brings me to say to Mrs.
Quigg, and to any other doubter, that you have only to step aside into
silence and shadow and wait for a moment--and the bewildering will
happen, or you will imagine it to happen. I will agree to furnish from
this company a medium that will astonish even our materialistic friend
Miller."