CHAPTER I

Produced by Al Haines

[Frontispiece: A DRAWING FROM LIFE BY JOHN CECIL CLAY]

JAP HERRON

A NOVEL WRITTEN FROM

THE OUIJA BOARD

WITH AN INTRODUCTION

THE COMING OF JAP HERRON

by

Emily Grant Hutchings

NEW YORK

MITCHELL KENNERLEY

MCMXVII

COPYRIGHT 1917 BY

MITCHELL KENNERLEY

PRINTED IN AMERICA

THE COMING OF "JAP HERRON"

On the afternoon of the second Thursday in March, 1916, I responded to

an invitation to the regular meeting of a small psychical research

society. There was to be a lecture on cosmic relations, and the

hostess for the afternoon, whom I had met twice socially, thought I

might be interested, my name having appeared in connection with a

recently detailed series of psychic experiments. To all those present,

with the exception of the hostess, I was a total stranger. I learned,

with some surprise, that these men and women had been meeting, with an

occasional break of a few months, for more than five years. The record

of these meetings filled several type-written volumes.

When word came that the lecturer was unavoidably detained, the hostess

requested Mrs. Lola V. Hays to entertain the members and guests by a

demonstration of her ability to transmit spirit messages by means of a

planchette and a lettered board. The apparatus was familiar to me; but

the outcome of that afternoon's experience revealed a new use for the

transmission board. After several messages, more or less personal, had

been spelled out, the pointer of the planchette traced the words:

"Samuel L. Clemens, lazy Sam." There was a long pause, and then:

"Well, why don't some of you say something?"

I was born in Hannibal, and my pulses quickened. I wanted to put a

host of questions to the greatest humorist and the greatest philosopher

of modern times; but I was an outsider, unacquainted with the usages of

the club, and I remained silent while the planchette continued:

"Say, folks, don't knock my memoirs too hard. They were written when

Mark Twain was dead to all sense of decency. When brains are soft, the

method should be anaesthesia."

Not one of those present had read Mark Twain's memoirs, and the plaint

fell upon barren soil. The arrival of the lecturer prevented further

confession from the unseen communicant; but I was so deeply impressed

that I begged my hostess to permit me to come again. For my benefit a

meeting was arranged at which there was no lecturer, and I was asked to

sit for the first time with Mrs. Hays.

In my former psychic investigation, it had been my habit to pronounce

the letters as the pointer of the planchette indicated them, and Mrs.

Hays urged me to render the same service when I sat with her, because

she never permitted herself to look at the board, fearing that her own

mind would interfere with the transmission. Scarcely had our

finger-tips touched the planchette when it darted to the letters which

spelled the words:

"I tried to write a romance once, and the little wife laughed at it. I

still think it is good stuff and I want it written. The plot is

simple. You'd best skeletonize the plot. Solly Jenks, Hiram

Wall--young men. Time, before the Civil War."

Then the outline of a typical Mark Twain story came in short, explosive

sentences. It was entitled, "Up the Furrow to Fortune." A brief

account of its coming seems vital to the more sustained work which was

destined to follow it. I was not present at the next regular meeting

of the society; but at its close I was summoned to the telephone and

informed that Mark Twain had come again and had said that "the Hannibal

girl" was the one for whom he and Mrs. Hays had been waiting. When

they asked him what he meant, the planchette made reply:

"Consult your record for 1911."

One of the early volumes of the society's record was brought forth, and

a curious fact that all the members of the society had forgotten was

unearthed. About a year after his passing out, Mr. Clemens had told

Mrs. Hays that he had carried with him much valuable literary material

which he yearned to send back, and that he would transmit stories

through her, if she could find just the right person to sit with her at

the transmission board. Although she experimented with each member of

the club, and with several of her friends who were sympathetic though

not avowed investigators, he was not satisfied with any of them. Then

she gave up the attempt and dismissed it from her mind. A

twenty-minute test with me seemed to convince him that in me he had

found the negative side of the mysterious human mechanism for which he

had been waiting.

The work of transmitting that first story was attended with the

greatest difficulty. No less than three distinct styles of diction,

accompanied by correspondingly distinct motion in the planchette under

our fingers, were thrust into the record. At first we were at a loss

to understand these intrusions. That they were intrusions there could

be no doubt. In each case there was a sharp deviation from the plot of

the story, as it had been given to us in the synopsis. After one of

these experiences, which resulted in the introduction of a paragraph

that was rather clever but not at all pertinent. Mark regained control

with the impatiently traced words:

"Every scribe here wants a pencil on earth."

Not until the middle of summer did we achieve that sureness of touch

which now enables us to recognize, intuitively, the presence of the one

scribe whose thoughts we are eager to transmit. That the story of Jap

Herron and the two short stories which preceded it are the actual

post-mortem work of Samuel L. Clemens, known to the world as Mark

Twain, we do not for one moment doubt. His individuality has been

revealed to us in ways which could leave no question in our minds. The

little, intimate touches which reveal personality are really of more

importance than the larger and more conspicuous fact that neither Mrs.

Hays nor I could have written the fiction that has come across our

transmission board. Our literary output is well known, and not even

the severest psychological skeptic could assert that it bears any

resemblance to the literary style of "Jap Herron."

Mrs. Hays has found the best market for her short stories with one of

the large religious publishing houses, and in the early days Mark Twain

seemed to fear that her subconscious mind might inadvertently color or

distort his thought, in process of transmission. We had come to the

end of our fourth session when he added this:

"There will be minor errors that you will be able to take care of. I

don't object. Only--don't try to correct my grammar. I know what I

want to say. And, dear ladies, when I say d-a-m-n, please don't write

d-a-r-n. Don't try to smooth it out. This is not a smooth story."

That Mark should fear the blue pencil, at our hands, amused us greatly.

The story bristles with profanity and is roughly picturesque in its

diction. It deals with a section of the Ozark country with which

neither of us is familiar, and in the speech of the natives there are

words that we had never heard, that are included in no dictionary but

are, it transpires, perfectly familiar to the primitive people in the

southwestern part of the state. When the revision of the story was

almost complete. Mark interrupted the dictation, one afternoon, to

remark:

"You are too tired. Forces must be strong for results. Somebody

handed you a lemon, back there. Cut out that part about the apple at

fly time. I am not carping. You have done well. The interpretation

is excellent. I was afraid of femininity. Women have their ideas, but

this is not a woman's story. Good-bye."

There was another meeting, at which the revision of "Up the Furrow to

Fortune" was completed, and then we went to work on the second story,

"A Daughter of Mars." As in the case of the first one, it began with a

partial synopsis. Vallon Leithe, an enthusiastic aeronaut, was resting

after a long flight, when a strange air-craft fell out of the sky,

lodging in the top of a great tree. The occupant of the marvelously

constructed flying machine proved to be a girl from the planet Mars.

Her name was Ulethe, and she had many thrilling adventures on our

earth. The synopsis ended with the wholly unexpected words:

"Now, girls, it is not yet clear in my mind whether we'd better send

Ulethe back to Mars, kill her, marry her to Leithe, or have an

expedition from Mars raise the dickens. But we will let it develop

itself."

The board, on which two short stories and a novel have already been

transmitted, is one of the ordinary varieties, a polished surface over

which the planchette glides to indicate the letters of the alphabet and

the figures from 1 to 10. In the main our dictation came without any

apparent need for marks of punctuation. Occasionally the words

"quotation marks," or "Put that in quotes" would be interjected. Once

when my intonation, as I pronounced the words for the amanuensis who

was keeping our record, seemed to indicate a direct statement, the

planchette whirled under our fingers and traced the crisp statement, "I

meant that for a question."

When I told my husband of these grippingly intimate evidences of an

unseen personality, it occurred to him that a complete set of

punctuation marks, carefully applied in India ink, where the pointer of

the planchette could pick them out as they were required, would

facilitate the transmission of sustained narrative. To him it seemed

that the absence of these marks on the board must be maddening,

especially to Mark Twain, whose thought could be hopelessly distorted

by the omission of so trivial a thing as a comma, and whose subtle use

of the colon was known to all the clan of printers. Before our next

meeting the board had been duly adorned with ten of the most important

marks, including the hyphen and the M-dash. The comma was at the head

of the right-hand column and the apostrophe at the bottom. My husband,

Mrs. Hays and I knew exactly what all these markings meanly yet we had

some confusion because Mark insisted on using the comma when he wished

to indicate a possessive case. The sentence was this, as I understood

it:

"I was not wont to disobey my father, scommand."

Instantly my husband, who had become interested and had taken the place

of our first amanuensis, perceived that I had made a mistake, when I

pronounced the combination, "f-a-t-h-e-r, comma, s-c-o-m-m-a-n-d."

"But," I defended myself, "the pointer went to the comma. I can see

now that it should have been the apostrophe." As I spoke the pointer

of the planchette traced the words on the board:

"Edwin did a pretty piece of work, but that apostrophe is too far down.

I am in danger of falling off the board every time I make a run for it."

The result was that another apostrophe was placed in the middle of the

board, directly under the letter S. In connection with the M-dash we

had a yet more startling evidence of an outside personality, one

dependent on us for his means of communication, but wholly independent

of our thought and knowledge. Mark had dictated the synopsis for the

second story and had enlarged upon the first situation. Then, as has

since become his fixed habit, he indicated that the serious work for

the evening was ended, and returned for an informal chat. Mrs. Hays

and I had discussed the plot at some lengthy and after my husband had

read aloud the second evening's dictation we commented on some of the

obscure points, our fingers resting, the while, lightly on the

planchette. Suddenly it became agitated, assumed a vigorous sweeping

motion and traced very rapidly these words:

"It is starting good; but will you two ladies stop speculating? I am

going to take care of this story. Don't try to dictate. You are

interrupting the thread of the story. There is ample time for

smoothing the rough places. I am not caviling. I am well pleased."

After a pause, he continued: "There is the same class of

interruption--those who could write stories, but are not to write

my----" At this, the planchette turned to the M-dash and slid back and

forth under it several times. It then spelled the word "stories." We

were utterly at a loss, until he explained: "I was using that black

line for an underscore."

Again and again we have had the word "good" in an adverbial

construction, a usage that is not common to either Mrs. Hays or me; but

Mark has told us that he liked it, in familiar conversation. We have

tried to adhere with absolute fidelity to even the seeming errors which

came over the board.

The second installment of the story gave all of us much trouble.

Incidentally it served to develop several bits of humorous

conversation. When it was finished, we received this comment:

"I think that is all we can do to-night. I intend to enlarge upon this

chapter before going further. The forces are not strong enough

to-night. We will rewrite this part Monday night."

We naturally expected a rehandling of that installment, which for

convenience he had designated a "chapter." To our surprise, the

pointer of the planchette gave this:

"I have changed my mind. We will proceed to New York. I will probably

want to handle chapter second in a different way. It reads like a

printed porous plaster; but that is no one's fault. Begin!"

The dictation went smoothly, and there were no interruptions from the

unseen rivals who had so persistently contested Mark Twain's right to

the exclusive use of our "pencil." Before the next meeting I was urged

to take a prominent part in another piece of psychic work, and to

persuade both my husband and Mrs. Hays to join me. I said nothing to

either one of them about it, intending to discuss it with them when the

evening's work was over. As soon, however, as we applied our finger

tips to the planchette, this astonishing communication came:

"I am afraid that my pencil-holders are going to get wound up in other

stuff that will make much confusion. I heard Emily talking over the

telephone and making promises that are not good for our work."

When I had been questioned concerning the meaning of this rebuke, and

had explained its import, Mark added: "If we are going to make good

there must be concentration, to that end. Get busy." We did! It was

a hot July night, and the planchette flew over the board so swiftly

that at times I could scarcely keep pace with it as I pronounced the

letters. With other amanuenses I had been forced to pronounce the

finished words, and to repeat sentences in whole or in part; but after

my husband came into the work this was not necessary. As much as a

score of letters might be run together, to be divided into words after

the dictation was ended. Sometimes, when I had failed utterly to catch

the thought, and would hesitate or ask to have the thing repeated, my

husband would say to me: "Don't stop him. I know what it means." Mrs.

Hays avoided looking at the board lest her own mind interfere with the

transmission, and with less efficient help, the entire responsibility

had been on me. When I came to realize that nothing was expected of me

beyond the mere pronouncing of the letters, the three of us developed

swiftly into a smoothly working machine. Yet Mark was constantly

worried for fear that my heart would be alienated and that I would "go

chasing after strange gods," as he once put it.

When he had finished the fifth installment of the story, with a climax

that surprised and puzzled us, he said:

"I reckon we had better lay by for a few days till I get this thing

riffled out. It has slipped its tether. I have had such things happen

often. Don't get scared."

We discussed the use of the word "riffle," and then Mark became serious.

"I don't want to be disappointed in the Hannibal girl. I have been

trying for several years to get through to the light. I don't want a

false sentiment for a crew of fanatics to wreck my chance. I don't

want to act nasty, but if you go into that other work I am likely to

ruin your reputation. You are likely to explode into some of the

mediocre piffle that is the height and depth of such would-be

communications with the other world. There is nothing to hold to. So,

my dear girls, if you want a future, cut it out. I don't want to

command all your time, but right now it is best to avoid all

complications."

It is needless to say I declined the invitation. After this, whenever

anything went wrong, the rebuke or complaint was invariably addressed

to me. When there were humorous or pleasant things to be said, they

were dispensed equally to the three of us, whom Mark Twain had come to

designate as "my office force." Two bits of personal communication

came within the succeeding week which seem to have a bearing on the

whole mysterious experience. That second installment was undertaken

and abandoned again and again. Finally he said:

"I am going ahead with the main body of the story. There will be

another round with that second chapter, but not until the theme is

fully developed. The second chapter sticks in my throat like the

cockleburr that I tried to swallow when I was five. It won't slip down

or come up."

We had worked patiently on the latter part of the narrative and had

accomplished a big evening's work, when the dictation was interrupted

by this remark:

"It is going good; but I sure wish that I had Edwin's pipe."

We fairly gasped with astonishment; but we had no time for comment, as

the planchette continued its amazing revelation:

"Smoke up, old man, for auld lang syne. In the other world they don't

know Walter Raleigh's weed, and I have not found Walter yet to make

complaint. I forget about it till I get Edwin's smoke. But for pity's

sake, Ed, cut out that tobacco you were trying out. It made me sick.

I hoped it would get you, so that you wouldn't try it again."

My husband; whom neither Mrs. Hays nor I would, under any

circumstances, address by the abbreviation of his name, "Ed," asked

Mark what tobacco he had in mind. He replied:

"That packet you were substituting, or that some one that had a grudge

against you gave you."

A comparison of dates revealed the fact that on the evening when that

troublesome second installment was transmitted, my husband had smoked

some heavy imported tobacco that had been given to him by a friend he

had met that afternoon. The circumstance had passed from the minds of

all of us. Indeed, it had never impressed us in the least, and it had

not occurred to any of us that our unseen visitor still retained the

sense of smell, or that he could distinguish between two brands of

tobacco. He had given evidence of both sight and hearing, had told us

frequently that he was tired, at the end of a long evening's work, and

had made other incidental revelations of his environment and condition:

but his reference to the pipe was more significant than any of them.

Early in August, when our second story was nearing completion, the

transmission began with this curious bit, which none of us understood

for a long time:

"Emily, I think that when we finish this story we will do a pastoral of

Missouri. There appear high lights and shadows, purple and dark, and

the misty pink of dawnings that make world-weary ones have surcease."

Not until "Jap Herron" was more than half finished did we realize that

it was the Missouri pastoral. There was one other veiled reference to

that story which must not be omitted. We had planned a trip to New

York, for some time in October or early November, although we had never

discussed it while at the board. One evening Mark terminated his

dictation abruptly, and said:

"Emily, I think well of your plan." I asked what plan he referred to.

"New York. I will go, too. I will try to convince them that I am not

done working. I am rejuvenated and want to finish my work. When I was

in New York last I had a very beautiful dream. I did not understand it

then. It meant that my days were numbered, and gave me the picture of

an angel bringing a book from heaven to earth, and on its cover was

blazoned this: MARK TWAIN'S COMPLIMENTS. Ask them what they think

about that. I was so tired--so tired that I could not rest. A cool

hand seemed to soothe my weariness away and I slept, and, sleeping,

dreamed."

When I found that passage in the early part of our record, I wondered

if "Jap Herron" might be the book sent to earth with Mark Twain's

compliments. I asked him about it, one evening when our regular

dictation had been finished. The reply was a slow journey of the

planchette to the word, "Yes," followed by the rapidly spelled words,

"But old Mark isn't done talking yet."

We assumed that he had something further to say to us, and when I asked

him what he wanted to talk about, he gave this tantalizing reply:

"Curious? Wait and see." Then, after a pause, "I shall have other

work for my office force."

The explanation of this cryptic statement was not given until we had

completed the final revision of the story. Before I reveal what he had

in mind, I wish to state that which is to me the most convincing proof

of the supernormal origin of the three stories that had been traced,

letter by letter, on our transmission board. That they come through

Mrs. Hays, there can be no doubt whatever. My total lack of psychic

power has been abundantly demonstrated. Mrs. Hays has written much

light fiction; but it is necessary for her to write a story at one

sitting. If it does not come "all in one piece" it is foredoomed to

failure. I know nothing of Mark Twain's habits; but in all the work we

have done for him, the first draft has been rough and vigorous, and

sweeping changes have been made by him while the work was undergoing

revision. In the case of "Jap Herron" some of the most important

changes were made without a rereading of the story, changes that

involved incidents which we had forgotten, and for which I was

compelled to search the original record. When I had substituted these

passages for the ones they were to supplant, I made a typewritten copy

of the entire story and we read it aloud to Mark. Mrs. Hays and I sat

with our finger tips on the planchette so that he could interrupt; but

he made only a few minor corrections. The story had been virtually

rewritten twice, although a few of the chapters, as they now stand, are

exactly as they were transmitted, not so much as a word having been

changed. The only change made in the fourteenth chapter came near the

end, where Mark had suggested a line of dashes or stars to bridge the

break between Jap's leaving his mother and the announcement that his

mother was dead. Forty-eight words were dictated to show what Jap

actually did, in that painful interim, the three sentences being

rounded out by the words, "There, I think that sounds better."

Sometimes, in the course of the revision, we have been interrupted by

the jerkily traced words, "Try this," or "We'll fix that better," or "I

told Emily to take out those repetitions." It has happened that he

used the same word four times in one paragraph, and in copying I have

substituted the obvious synonym. Occasionally he did not approve of my

correction and would rebuke me sharply. In the main he has expressed

himself as well pleased with the labor I have spared him. On the 10th

of January, 1916, Mrs. Hays came to my home for a last reading of the

finished manuscript. When she read it through, I asked her to sit at

the board with me. There was something about which I wanted to

question Mark, and I did not wish her mind to interfere in any way with

the answer. Mrs. Hays had had two curious psychic experiences in

connection with our work. The first came to her when we were still at

work on "A Daughter of Mars." It was in the form of a vivid dream in

which Mark Twain said to her, "Don't be discouraged, Lola. All that we

have done in the past is just forging the hammer for the larger strokes

we are going to make." The second was similar; but the man who

appeared to her was a stocky, bald-headed man in a frock coat. When

she asked him who he was and what he wanted, he replied, "Mark Twain

sent me to call on you."

At this time, "Jap Herron" was being revised, and she supposed that

this man, with the striking personality, would be introduced somewhere.

However, the story was ended, and no such character had appeared. I

wanted to know whether or not the dream was significant. I said:

"Mark, did you ever send anybody to call on Lola?" The planchette

replied:

"Yes, I sent him. We will do another story. We will wait until the

smoke of this one clears away. I want Emily to have a rest, and many

other things will be adjusted. I would like to have my old office

force. It is to be a bigger book than this one--more important. The

man I sent you was Brent Roberts."

We dropped our hands in amazement. Brent Roberts appears twice in the

Jap Herron story. He is not half so conspicuous as Holmes, the

saloon-keeper, or Hollins, the grocer. In truth, we had scarcely

noticed him. I asked:

"Mark, are you going to give a sequel to 'Jap Herron'?" He said:

"No. Brent Roberts had a story before he elected to spend his last

years in Bloomtown. Now, girls, don't speculate. I am taking care of

Brent Roberts."

He added that it was "up to Emily" to give his book to the world, and

that he intended to explore a little of the Uncharted Country while he

was waiting for his office force to resume work. Once I asked him,

while he was transmitting "A Daughter of Mars," whether he had ever

visited that planet. He replied:

"No, this is pure fiction. I elected to return to earth. I wanted to

take the taste of those memoirs out of my mouth."

One other passage from the early record may profitably precede the

actual story of Jap's coming. We were in the midst of the most

critical revision. My husband was commanded to read the story,

paragraph by paragraph. When there was no comment, the planchette

remained motionless under our fingers, but there were few passages that

escaped some change. Several times the changed wording conflicted with

something farther along in the story, and it was necessary to go back

and make another correction. The revision sheets covered a big table,

and my husband found it very exasperating to make the corrections. At

length Mark said:

"Smoke up and cool off, old boy. Perhaps I should apologize. The last

secretary I had used to wear an ice-soaked towel inside his head. The

girls and old Mark together make a riffle. Well, we will slow up. In

my ambition, I have been too eager. It is hard to explain how great a

thing is the power to project my mentality through the clods of

oblivion. I have so long sought for an opening. Be patient, please.

I am not carping. I get Edwin's position. We will be easy with the

new saddle, so the nag won't run away. I heard Edwin's suggestion, and

it is a good one. We will go straight through the story, beginning

where we left off to-night. That was what I intended to do, but that

second chapter nipped me."

When next we met we had no thought of any other work than the revision

of the story on which we had been working at frequent intervals for

about two months. We never knew whether a session at the board would

begin with a bit of personal conversation or a prolonged stretch of

dictation. We held ourselves passive, ready to fall in with the humor

or whim of our astonishingly human though still intangible guest. The

beginning of that evening's work--it was the 6th of September--was

almost too great an upheaval for me. The planchette fairly raced as it

spelled the words:

"This story will have legitimate chapters. Nosy nopsis. Then

ameisjapherron. Begin. Asevery well-bred story has a hero, and as the

reseems better material in jap than in any other party to this story,

we will dignify him."

I wanted to stop, but my husband insisted that I make no break in the

impatient dictation. He had perceived that the first string of letters

spelled the words, "No synopsis. The name is Jap Herron," but I could

not see his copy, and to my mind the sentences spelled chaos. A little

farther along I ventured an interruption, when we had transmitted the

sentence, "The folks in Happy Hollow continued to say Magnesia long

after she left its fragrant depths." I had just spelled out the name,

Agnesia, and I was too deeply engrossed with the labor of following the

letters to even attempt to understand the meaning. I turned to my

husband and said:

"It probably didn't intend to stop on that letter M," whereat the

planchette rebuked my stupidity thus: "Emily, they called her Magnesia."

After that, I contrived to get control of my nerves, and the rest of

the dictation was not so difficult. When we had received the crisp

final sentence, "And stay he did," the planchette went right on with

this information, "This is the first copy of the first chapter. There

will be 25 or more chapters. This is enough for this time, as the

office force is a little weak. But results ... very good. We will

finish the other story and dip into this at the next session. There

will be better speed in this, for there will be no revision until it is

finished. We will work hard and fast. Emily may meet folks she knows

in this tale, for she knows a town with a river and a Happy Hollow. I

did not intend to start another story so soon, but other influences are

so strong that they may try to dominate the board. This will not tire

you so much. You must be determined not to permit intruders. If they

are recognized, you will not be free of them again. I am pushed aside.

Leave the board when they appear. Good-bye."

The use of the name, Happy Hollow, forms a link with Hannibal; but if

any of the characters in "Jap Herron" were drawn from life, they must

have belonged to Mark Twain's generation and not to mine. Mark never

seems to take into account the fact that he left Hannibal before I was

born, and that there have been many changes in the old town. The

character of Jacky Herron may have been suggested by a disreputable

drunken fisherman whose experiences I have heard my father relate; but

there is one little touch in that first chapter that must have come

from Mark's own mind, since the underlying fact was not known to any of

us until we read Walter Prichard Eaton's article on birds' nests,

months later. When we transmitted that statement, "The father of the

little Herrons was a kingfisher," none of us knew that the kingfisher's

home nest is a filthy hole, close to the river bank. The application

is too perfect to have been accidental.

Before another chapter of the story was transmitted, I went to spend a

morning with Mrs. Hays. At the request of her son, we consented to

allay his curiosity by a visible demonstration of the workings of the

mysterious board, of which he had necessarily heard much. He hoped to

receive some definite communication from his father, or the sister who

had died in her girlhood; but this is what he recorded:

"Emily, I gave those synopses not for a guide but to prevent others

from imposing their ideas and confusing you. It might be said that it

made it easier for you, but that idea is wrong. It would be easier to

write the story direct. You have learned that this was wise, because

constant efforts have been made to break in and alter the stories. For

this reason I gave you the synopses, so that you could not be deceived.

Now I am going to trust you. I intended to advise you that it would be

a more convincing psychic record, if you have nothing on which a

subconscious mind might be said to be working. The synopsis was for

your protection, and has no value to the record. At first you had such

a conglomerate method of working that it was necessary. You did not

recognize the difficulties that were likely to occur. You were apt to

employ temporary help, so eliminate."

Just what was meant by "temporary help" is not apparent; but there was

no opportunity to question him further, for at that moment we were

interrupted by the arrival of another luncheon guest and the board was

put aside. We devoted two sessions to the revision and finishing

touches of the troublesome short story, and then we plunged into the

transmission of "Jap Herron" in deadly earnest.

As far as possible, we sat twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. We

usually worked uninterruptedly for two hours, with no sound save that

of my voice as I pronounced the letters and punctuation marks over

which the pointer of the planchette paused in its swift race across the

board. My husband discovered early in the work that if he permitted

himself the luxury of a smile he was in danger of distracting Mrs.

Hays, who always sat facing him, and thus of bringing about confusion

in the record. Under Mark's specific instruction she has schooled

herself to keep her mind as nearly blank as is possible for a woman who

is absolutely conscious and normal, and the evidence that something

humorous was being transmitted through her would be diverting, to say

the least. As for my own part in the work, I seldom realized the

import of the sentences I had spelled out, my whole attention being

concentrated on the rapidly gliding pointer. When my husband read

aloud the copy he had taken down it almost invariably came to Mrs. Hays

and me as something entirely new.

The story of Jap Herron, as it stands completed, does not follow the

original order of the first fifteen chapters. The early part of the

tale was handled in a manner so sketchy and rapid in its action that

three whole chapters and seven fragments of chapters were dictated and

inserted after the work was finished. In the original copy the second

chapter suffered little change up to the point of George Thomas's

advent, with the suggestion that he might bring in some more turnips.

Following the disaster to Judge Bowers's speech, Mark took a short cut

to pave the way for the next chapter. It ran thus:

"But bad luck cannot camp on your trail forever. In the gladsome

June-time, Ellis married Flossy Bowers, and her dowry of two thousand

dollars and her following of kin set the _Herald_ on its feet."

These two sentences were expanded into the more important half of the

third chapter, almost five months after they had been dictated, and

this without a rereading of the story. At another time, when this

curious kind of revision was under way, Mark dictated the latter part

of the second chapter, wherein Ellis Hinton tells Jap how he happened

to be starving in Bloomtown. When he had finished the dictation, with

the words, "My boy, that blue calico lady was Mrs. Kelly Jones," he

continued:

"Emily will know where to fit it in."

This fitting in was not extremely difficult, since there was only one

place in the story into which each of the inserted chapters or

fragments could be made to fit; but the original copy had to be read

several times before these thin places became apparent, and I got no

help whatever from Mark. Once, when I implored him to tell me where a

certain brief but gripping paragraph belonged, he replied, "Emily, that

is your job. I don't want the Hannibal girl to fall down on it."

On that second Monday night in September, when the "office force"

settled itself to serious work, my husband read to us the copy we had

transmitted. The chapter ended with what is now the closing paragraph

of the third chapter:

"The _Herald_ put on a new dress, and the hell-box was dumped full of

the discarded, mutilated types that had so long given strabismus to the

patient readers of the Bloomtown _Herald_."

The diet of turnips and sorghum and the other humorous touches of the

narrative overwhelmed us with laughter, whereat the planchette under

our fingers wrote:

"Sounds like Mark, eh?"

I asked him if he was satisfied with the use of the word "_Herald_"

twice in that last sentence. He replied:

"You must excuse me. I am all in. I told you I would leave minor

points to your pencil. T-i-r-e-d. Good-bye."

Our first acquaintance with Wat Harlow, as he appeared in the fourth

chapter, gave little promise of the character into which he was

destined to be developed. To the three of us, who laughed over the

episode of the vermilion handbill, he appeared to be nothing more than

a third-rate country politician. In the original transcription he

received only an occasional passing touch, until the death of Ellis

brought him forth in a new light. We did not know then what Ellis had

meant by "that reformed auctioneer," for the story of Wat's connection

with the upbuilding of Bloomtown, as it is set forth in the sixth

chapter, was not told until we were well along with the work of

revision.

One of the most interesting personal touches, to be found only in our

private record, was introduced at the end of the fourth chapter. It

had been a long stretch of dictation, and when the planchette stopped I

asked if there was any more. The pointer gave only this, "No--30."

Having had no experience with printing offices, I was mystified until

my husband explained that "30 on the hook" means the end of a given

piece of work.

Mark once made use of the expression, "the story contains a great deal

of brevity that will have to be untied later on." This untying process

is nowhere more aptly illustrated than in the fourth chapter of our

original copy, a brief chapter that contained the condensed material of

Wat Harlow's letter to Jap, the birth of little J.W. and Isabel

Granger's first kiss. There was nothing about Bill's boyhood, no

record of Jap's home surroundings, none of the amusing details of the

printing office wherein Jap and Bill were learning their trade. All

these incidents, which seem so essential to the story, were introduced

when the first draft of the story had been completed. The seventh

chapter, which has to do with the babyhood of little J.W., was dictated

after the revision had apparently been completed. When I asked Mark

why he inserted it, the planchette made this curious reply:

"I was thinking that we'd better soften the shock of the boy's death."

For us, through whom the story was being transmitted, there was no

softening of Ellis Hinton's death. We knew from the foregoing chapter

that the country editor had gone to the mountains for his health, and

that Flossy had no hope; but when we had recorded the words: "Jap

closed the press upon the inky type, and gathered the great bunches of

fragrant blossoms and heaped them upon the press, to be forever

silent," a great wave of sadness swept over me, I knew not why. The

action of the planchette was so rapid that I could not stop to think or

question. It was as if the man dictating the story had an unpleasant

task before him, which he wished to have done with as soon as possible.

When the final words, "At rest. FLOSSY," had been spelled out, and the

planchette stopped abruptly, Mrs. Hays cried:

"My God, what has happened!" and I looked up to see that she was very

white, and tears were slipping down her cheeks.

"Ellis is dead," my husband said, very simply. He had foreseen the

end, had grasped the infinite pathos of that old Washington press,

decked as a funeral casket with the flowers that had been sent to usher

in the new regime.

When the evening's copy had been read, I asked Mark if he wished to

comment on it.

"Not to-night, Emily," the planchette spelled. "I am all broken up. I

didn't want Ellis to die. I tried to figure a way to save him; but I

couldn't make it go."

When we met again, on the 2d of October, the dictation began with these

words:

"I want Edwin to go back to the beginning of the last chapter. I left

out a sentence that is necessary. It explains why Ellis left by rail.

You insert."

Then he dictated the passage relating to the new railroad and the

temporary station. When he had finished he said, "Go on with the

story," and the next sentence began, "When Ellis went away it was to

the sound of jollity." The reference to Robert Louis Stevenson was new

to both of us, and we have not sought to verify the incident. That

Mark wanted it included in his story was sufficient for us.

That next chapter contained another accumulation of brevity which was

afterward untied. The funeral, the reading of Ellis Hinton's will,

Judge Bowers's candidacy, the nomination of Jap Herron as the ugliest

man in Bloomtown, Bill's first spree and the local option fight, all

these were sketched with the sharpness and sudden transition of

pictures on a cinematograph screen. The following chapter was almost

as tightly packed with incident, and in the midst of it there was a

break, with an astonishing explanation. Three evenings in succession

we had had trouble with the planchette. It had seemed to me that Mrs.

Hays was trying to pull it from beneath my fingers. Meanwhile she had

mentally accused me of digital heaviness. She uses the finger tips of

her left hand while I use my right. As a rule our touch is so light

that the planchette glides automatically. On these three evenings we

had left the board with cramped fingers, and a general sense of

dissatisfaction. Several sentences that were plainly spurious were

afterward stricken from the record; but we had forgotten about the

other scribes who wanted "a pencil on earth," until Mark interrupted

the story to say:

"I must ask you to be wary and sharp to dismiss impostors. Right now

there are more than twenty hands trying to control your dictation. It

is very hard for me. I am disconsolate, and powerless to help myself.

If we do not watch every avenue, our work is spoiled. There has been a

constant struggle for my rights. I only ask a little help, and you are

all my hope. If you fail me, I am undone."

This illuminating outburst served to clear the atmosphere, and the

three chapters were afterward expanded into seven, much of the same

diction being reproduced. It was as if Mark, knowing the difficulties

on his own side of the shadow-line, had tried to get at least the

outline of his story down on paper, lest he lose his hold entirely.

After that evening we had almost no trouble with intruders.

The story of Jones, of the Barton _Standard_, came to us like a thunder

clap from a cloudless sky, for the part which old Pee-Dee Jones played

in the development of Bloomtown and Barton was not related until we had

begun the work of revision. In the original story of that near-fight,

Mark gave us a significant cross-light on the conditions under which he

lives. The marshal had appeared in the office at the crucial moment,

as if he had dropped through the roof or arisen out of the floor.

Several times in the earlier part of the work the characters had thus

appeared without obvious means of locomotion, and I had called

attention to the inconsistency, with the result that Mark had dictated

a few words to show how or whence the new arrival had come. When

Wilfred Jones shouted to the marshal, "I demand protection," my

husband, who was reading the evening's copy aloud to us, said:

"How does the marshal happen to be there? I don't see any previous

mention of him."

Instantly the planchette, which we always kept in readiness under our

finger tips, began to move. It dictated this:

"You might say, 'at that moment the town marshal, wearing his star

pinned to his blue flannel shirt, strolled in.' I have been away from

the need of going up-stairs and down-stairs for so long that I forget

about it."

"How do you get from one place to another, Mark?" I asked.

"Now, Emily, curiosity! But you know we haven't any Pullman cars or

elevators here. When I want to be at a place where I am free to

go--why, I am there."

He took occasion, when our difficulties seemed to be at an end and his

grip on his "pencil" was once more firmly established, to make it very

plain to me that I alone was responsible for the annoyance we had had.

He put it thus:

"Things will be all right if you don't give way to any more curiosity.

In the beginning I told you that it would not do. Emily wants to

investigate too much. It must be one or all. Edwin and I understand.

It was you that mixed the type. Lola must be passive. If she tries to

watch for intruders, she gets in my way. So it is up to the Hannibal

girl."

I do not know, even now, how I could have prevented the trouble that

well-nigh wrecked our work. It is true I had taken part in another

psychic demonstration, but it was in a remote part of the city and it

had nothing to do with Mark Twain's "pencil." However, I took no

further chance with psychic investigation.

When Jap Herron was elected Mayor of Bloomtown, and the girl he loved

had walked right into his astonished arms, it seemed to us that the

story must be ended. We had forgotten that Jap ever had a family of

his own, a mother and two sisters, and when the drunken hag reeled into

the _Herald_ office we were as greatly horrified as Jap himself was. I

had put my husband's carefully kept copy into type-written form, and it

occurred to me to get the opinion of a master critic on the story, not

as evidence of the survival of the human mind after physical death, but

as pure fiction. Acting upon the impulse, and without telling either

my husband or Mrs. Hays what I intended to do, I took the copy to

William Marion Reedy,[1] permitting him to infer that I had created it,

and asked him to tell me whether, in his judgment, the story was worth

finishing. It was the beginning of the week, when the issuing of the

_Mirror_ consumed all his time, and while I was waiting for his verdict

we received three more chapters. In the first of these we had a new

light on Isabel Granger's character, and came for the first time

absolutely to love Bill Bowers. After that nothing that Bill might do

would shake our faith in his ability to make good in the end. He might

be weak and foolish, but we understood why Jap believed in and loved

him. We were jubilant when Rosy Raymond was eliminated from the game,

for we feared, whenever we permitted ourselves to speculate, that Bill

would marry her, and regret the step. We assumed that the son of the

much-married Judge Bowers had inherited a nature sufficiently mobile to

recover from the shock of the silly girl's perfidy.

While this unexpected development of the story was being revealed to

us, William Marion Reedy sent me, in the envelope with the first ten

chapters of "Jap Herron," a criticism that fairly made me tingle with

delight. Had the work been my own, I could not have been more pleased

with his unstinted praise. I wanted to go to him at once and confess

the truth; but he was not in his office when I called.

Two of the succeeding chapters were taken down by friends who had been

let into the secret of our work and had asked permission to sit with

us. It was the time of year when my husband could seldom spare an

evening from his work, and Mark consented to break into his beloved

office-force arrangement, for the sake of expediency. Three men and

five women served us in the capacity of amanuenses while the latter

third of the book was being transmitted. The first deviation from our

original arrangement came in connection with the dictation of the

seventeenth chapter, the chapter that ends with the death of Flossy and

her son. We were three sympathetic women, and when the planchette had

traced the words, "It was a smile of heavenly beauty, as the pure soul

of Ellis Hinton's wife flew to join her loved ones," we three burst

simultaneously into violent weeping. I have never experienced more

genuine grief at the grave of a departed friend or relative than I felt

when this woman, who had come to be more than human to me, was released

from her envelope of mortal clay.

The following day Mrs. Hays and I were invited to the home of a

delightful little Scotch woman who asked us to bring the planchette

board. She knew nothing of the story, and had no intimation of the

personality on the other side who was sending it across, through our

planchette; nevertheless she was willing to keep copy for us. The

chapter she wrote down is the eighteenth in the finished story, Jap's

funeral sermon and Isabel's song beside Flossy's coffin. Even now I

cannot think of that scene without a swelling of the throat and a

blinding rush of tears. It is needless to say we wept when the

dictation was ended.

When our hostess had read aloud the copy I asked our invisible

companion if he had anything more to say. I avoided mentioning his

name, for we did not wish his identity disclosed. The planchette

traced the curious words:

"You know that the air gets pretty damp for an old boy after this."

I looked out of the window. It was a murky November afternoon, and I

asked, "Do you feel the dampness of the material atmosphere?" Like a

flash came the reply:

"Emily, girl, you have been getting sob stuff."

Then I yearned to get my fingers in his shock of white hair, for I knew

Mark Twain was laughing at me. But I had that which gave me

consolation, for I had brought with me Mr. Reedy's letter, analyzing

and commenting upon the story that Mark had created. Incidentally Mrs.

Reedy had asked Mrs. Hays and me to come to her home the following day

to luncheon. I had told her that Mrs. Hays possessed a high degree of

psychic power, and I consented to bring our board for a demonstration.

I wanted to see Mr. Reedy alone and explain to him that "Jap Herron"

had come to us over that insensate board, but opportunity was denied

me. As soon as luncheon was over we went up to that beautiful yellow

room in which the best of _Reedy's Mirror_ is created, and Mrs. Hays

and I placed the board on our knees. As soon as Mr. Reedy's fountain

pen was ready for action our planchette began:

"Well, I should doff my plaidie and don a kirtle, for 'tis not the

sands o' Dee but the wearing o' the green." There was a wide sweep of

the planchette, and then, "'Tis not the shine of steel that always

reflects; but it is the claymore that cuts. Both are made of steel and

both will mirror sometimes the shillalah. Yet the shillalah is better

than the claymore, for the man that is cut will run; but if ye slug him

with the blackthorn he will have to listen. This is just a flicker of

high light. Bill jumped from bed as the rattle of the latch announced

the arrival of a visitor."

My heart thumped wildly for a moment, then sank. I knew that the Bill

referred to was Bill Bowers, and not the editor whom hundreds delight

to call "Bill Reedy," and I knew, too, that it would be only a moment

until he must realize that the sentences he was writing down from my

dictation were part and parcel of the story whose first ten chapters he

had read and praised. I dared not lift my eyes from the board, yet I

wanted to stop and explain that I had not intended to deceive him--that

I only wanted an unbiased opinion of Mark Twain's story. In vain I

tried to stop the whirling planchette, my voice so husky that I could

scarcely pronounce the letters. It went right on, with a situation

that neither Mrs. Hays nor I had anticipated. We had schooled

ourselves not to speculate, yet the previous afternoon we had left Jap

in a fainting condition and on the verge of a long illness. The

chapter we transmitted that day was the story of a gubernatorial

election in a small Missouri town.

Subsequently, when Mark gave us the intervening chapter, Jap's visit to

the cemetery and the humorous incidents of the campaign, I asked him:

"Why didn't you give this chapter last Thursday?"

"I thought that election would amuse Reedy. Don't worry, Emily. He

understood you. He knows the Hannibal girl is honest," was the

comforting reply.

When the revision of the story was under way, and several fragments had

been dictated, the planchette spelled the words, "I want to add

something to the Reedy chapter," and without further ado it proceeded:

"The Bloomtown _Herald_ did itself proud that week." That fragment was

the easiest of them all to fit into place. At its conclusion we were

favored with a bit of pleasantry that seems significant. My husband

gave us a lift whenever he could spare the time; but on this occasion a

woman friend was sitting with us. She had written about two thousand

words of copy, when the tenor of the dictation changed suddenly to the

personal vein.

"Old Mark has been working like a badger, and is pleased with the

story. The girls and friend Ed are going as well as Twain ever did

when he wielded his own pen. When Edwin lights up a fresh smoke and

smiles, I know that all is well. But when Lola frowns and Edwin

forgets to smoke, look out for leaks. The story has sprung and therain

was hesitthininspots." The last of the sentence came so rapidly that

none of us had any idea what it meant, or that it meant anything at

all. Before we had separated it into the words, "the rain washes it

thin in spots," I asked that that last part be repeated. Instead we

got the words:

"When a board is sprung, it lets in rain. It is Emily who has to hold

the drip pan for the temperamental ones."

"Thank you for those few kind words, Mark," I said. "But if you think

enough of me to trust me with this important work, why do you single me

out for all the scoldings, when Edwin and Lola sometimes deserve at

least a share in your displeasure?"

"Whist, Hannibal girl, we know our office force," was the humorous

rejoinder.

The appearance of Agnesia was one of the keen surprises of the story,

and before we realized what Jap's little sister would mean to

Bloomtown, Mark interrupted his dictation with the words, "Stop!

Girls, the yarn is nearly all unwound. We will skip a bit that we will

tie in later. But now--Bill sat doubled over the case, the stick held

listlessly in his hand. Nervously he fingered the copy, not knowing

what he was reading."

Without a break, we received the brief final chapter, ending with the

words, "Isabel wants to call him Jasper William." The planchette

added, "The End." We transmitted no more that day, although we knew

that our story was far from completion.

The next time we met we had another surprise in the coming of Jap's

elder sister. When the twenty-fifth chapter was finished, Mark said:

"Girls, I think the story is done."

"It's pretty short for a book," I protested. By way of reply, he gave

this:

"Did you ever know about my prize joke? One day I went to church,

heard a missionary sermon, was carried away--to the extent of a hundred

dollars. The preacher kept talking. I reduced my ante to fifty

dollars. He talked on. I came down to twenty-five, to ten, to five,

and after he had said all that he had in him, I stole a nickel from the

basket. Reason for yourselves. Not how long but how strong. Yet I

have a sneaking wish to tell you something of the early days of Ellis's

work, especially about Granger and Blanke. But to-day I have writer's

cramp. So let's get together soon and make the finish complete."

There were two more sessions, with the dictation of a whole chapter and

several fragments, at each meeting, and we met no more until I had put

the whole complex record into consecutive form. We had a final review

of the work, and a few minor changes in words and phrases were made.

Mark expressed himself as well pleased, and as a little farewell he

gave us this, which has nothing to do with Jap Herron:

"There will be a great understanding some day. It will come when the

earth realizes that we must leave it, to live, and when it can put

itself in touch with the heavens that surround it. I have met a number

of preachers over here who would like to undo many things they

promulgated while they had a whack at sinners.

"There are hardshell Baptists who have a happy time meeting their

members, to whom they preached hell and brimstone. They have many

things to explain. There is one melancholy Presbyterian who frankly

stated the fact--underscore 'fact'--that there were infants in hell not

an ell long. He has cleared out quite a space in hell since he woke

up. He doesn't rush out to meet his congregation. It would create

trouble and be embarrassing if they looked around for the suffering

infants. As I said before, there is everything to learn, after the

shackles of earth are thrown aside. I would like to write a story

about some of these preachers, and the mistakes they made, when the

doctrines of brimstone and everlasting punishment were ladled out as

freely to the little maid who danced as to the harlot. It showed a

mind asleep to the undiscovered country."

"Can you shed any light on that undiscovered country?" I asked him.

"Perhaps. But for the present there is enough of the truth of life and

death in 'Jap Herron' to hold you."

And with that he told us good-bye.

EMILY GRANT HUTCHINGS.

[1] William Marion Reedy, Editor and Publisher of _Reedy's Mirror_, a

weekly journal published in St. Louis, has long been interested in

psychic phenomena, as a source of exotic and unusual literature. He

has also discovered and developed much purely terrestrial literary

talent, having brought out some of the best poets and fiction writers

of present-day America. As a critic, he is a recognized master.

JAP HERRON

CHAPTER I

As every well-bred story has a hero, and as there seems better material

in Jap than any other party to this story, we will dignify him. Mary

Herron feebly asserted her rights in the children by naming them

respectively, Fanny Maud, Jasper James and Agnesia. Jasper

deteriorated. He became Jap, and Jap he remained, despite the fact

that Fanny Maud developed into Fannye Maude and Agnesia changed her

cognomen, without recourse to law, to Mabelle. The folks in Happy

Hollow continued to say "Magnesia" long after she left its fragrant

depths.

The father of the little Herrons was a kingfisher. He spent his hours

of toil on the river bank and his hours of ease in Mike's place. One

Friday, good luck peered through the dingy windows of the little shanty

where the Herrons starved, froze or sweltered. It was Friday, as I

remarked before. Mary was washing, against difficulties. It had

rained for a week. The clothes had to dry before Mary could cash her

labor, and it fretted Jacky Herron sorely. His credit had lost caste

with Mike, and Mike had the grip on the town. He had the only thirst

parlor in Happy Hollow. So Jacky smashed the only remaining window,

broke the family cup, and set forth defiantly in the rain. And in the

fog and slashing rain he lost his footing, and fell into the river. As

it was Friday, Mary had hopefully declared that luck would change--and

it did!

The town buried Jacky and moved his family into decent lodgings,

because the Town Fathers did not want to contract typhoid in

ministering to them. Loosed of the incubus of a father, the little

family grew in grace. Jappie, as his baby sister called him, was the

problem. Agnesia was pretty, and the Mayor's wife adopted her. Fanny

Maud went west to live with her aunt, and Jap remained with his mother

until she, after the manner of womankind, who never know when they have

had luck, married another bum and began supporting him. Jap ran away.

He was twelve years old, red-headed, freckled and lanky, when he

trailed into Bloomtown. He loafed along the main street until he

reached the printing office, and there he stopped. An aphorism of his

late lamented dad occurred to him.

"Ef I had a grain of gumption," said dad, during an enforced session of

his family's society, "I would 'a' went to work in my daddy's printin'

office, instid of runnin' away when I was ten year old. I might 'a'

had money, aplenty, 'stid of bein' cumbered and helt down by you and

these brats."

Jap straggled irregularly inside and heard the old Washington hand

press groan and grunt its weary way through the weekly edition of the

_Herald_. After the last damp sheet had been detached from the press,

and the papers were being folded by the weary-eyed, inky demon who had

manipulated the handle, he slouched forward.

"Say, Mister," he asked confidently, "do you do that every day?"

indicating the press, "'cause I'm goin' to work for you."

The editor, pressman and janitor looked upon him in surprise and pity.

"I appreciate your ambition," he said, more in sorrow than anger, "but

I have become so attuned to starving alone that I don't think I could

adjust myself to the shock of breaking my fast on you."

Jap was unmoved.

"My dad onct thought he'd be a editor, but he got married," he said

calmly.

"Sensible dad," commented the editor, with more truth than he dreamed.

"I suppose that he had three meals a day, and a change of socks on

Sunday."

"But Ma had to get 'em," argued Jap. "I want to be a editor, and I am

agoin' to stay." And stay he did.