FURTHER EXPERIENCES IN AMERICA
My second visit to America was paid in the year of the Diamond Jubilee,
1897.
After wintering in the West Indies, I went on to America in the spring,
chiefly with the view of meeting Mrs Piper for the first time, and
securing a few sittings with her if possible.[5]
[5] The portion of this chapter referring to "Mrs Piper and her
Controls" is published by kind permission of Mr Ralph Shirley, editor
of _The Occult Review_, in which my article under this heading appeared
in March 1906.
I was writing some articles for _Borderland_ at the time, and Mr Stead
was specially anxious for me to take this opportunity of "sampling" the
famous American sensitive.
This proved no easy task. My visit to Boston, unfortunately, occurred at
the very time when an organised attempt was being made by the American
branch of the Society for Psychical Research to get into some sort of
evidential communication with the late Mr Stainton Moses through his
"controls" _Imperator_, _Rector_, etc.
In vain I wrote to Dr Hodgson (to whom I carried letters of
introduction) telling him of my chief reason for visiting America a
second time. Even the plea that I had known Mr Stainton Moses in earth
life, and that we had several intimate friends in common, was of no
avail.
Dr Hodgson expressed regrets, but assured me that _no_ sittings could be
allowed under existing circumstances, and that it was impossible to make
any exception to this rule.
We seemed to have arrived at a _cul-de-sac_, when a bright idea struck
me.
Why not ask the UNSEEN themselves for a decision in the matter?
I wrote again, therefore, to Dr Hodgson, suggesting this idea, and
mentioning that I should arrive in Boston on a certain date, and could
be found at the Hotel Bellevue in that city.
The next day but one after my arrival, and quite early in the morning,
Dr Hodgson came to call upon me.
It was my first sight of that genial and delightful personality. At the
very moment of shaking hands, he said cheerily, and with a look of
half-rueful amusement at his own discomfiture:
"Well, you've got to come! They insist upon it, so there is nothing more
to be said."
My preconceived ideas of a critical, elderly, and white-haired
professor, taking himself very seriously, were dissipated on the spot;
and this was the beginning of a sincere and loyal friendship between us
which lasted for nine years on this sphere, and will last, I trust and
believe, through whatever forms of existence may succeed to this one.
We made arrangements at once for my joining Dr Hodgson next morning at
Arlington Heights, where my first sitting with Mrs Piper took place,
and where I met for the first time this refined and interesting-looking
woman.
I was told that with the advent of the Imperator and Stainton Moses'
controls, the character of Mrs Piper's mediumship had undergone a
complete change. The former communications through the voice ceased, and
gave place to automatic writing, except at the moment of return to the
physical body, when a chance sentence or two might be uttered during the
transition period, but that these were not always intelligible to the
listener.
Mrs Piper's arm and hand became curiously "dead" and limp when
unconsciousness set in; the blood departed, leaving it as white and
helpless as that of a corpse. By degrees this dead look disappeared. The
blood flowed once more through the veins, and as I noticed this change,
the hand moved gropingly towards the pencil held out by Dr Hodgson, and
finally grasped it. The latter's long practice and infinite patience
were invaluable in making out the often rather illegible script. The
hospitality he gave to all attempts at definite communications, however
vague and shadowy at first; the infinite patience with which he repeated
again and again a question not fully comprehended--all this, combined
with intelligent criticism, alert, dispassionate judgment and balance of
mind, made an investigator of psychic phenomena very rarely to be met in
a world where most of us evince in a marked degree "_les défauts de nos
qualités_."
To combine sympathy, patience, and receptivity with cool and critical
judgment is well-nigh impossible for ordinary men and women.
Dr Richard Hodgson certainly solved the problem to a very remarkable
extent.
The first thing that struck me in the two sittings I had with Mrs Piper,
was the hopeless breakdown of the Thought Transference Theory, as
accounting for the automatic writing.
The ostensible reason for my presence at Arlington Heights was the idea
entertained by the "controls" that, having known Mr Stainton Moses in
earth life, I might be able to facilitate his communications. I hope
this may have been the case, but if so, it was certainly not due to any
power of Thought Transference I may have possessed.
Again and again I asked for names of friends we had known in common, but
nearly always in vain. Even when, in despair of getting these normally,
I concentrated my mind consciously on some short and easy name, the
latter was not given.
Yet next day some of these names would appear spontaneously on the
script, when my mind was entirely occupied by other subjects.
References were made to Mr Moses' lack of appreciation for music, and he
asked whether our mutual friend Mrs Stratton still played LISZT. He also
referred to his visiting the Strattons, and finding them playing duets
together, in London.
On my return to town Mrs Stratton fully endorsed the fact that Mr Moses
disliked music (this was unknown to me), but she denied emphatically
that she and her husband ever played duets in his presence. Mr Stratton,
however, corrected this impression, and reminded her of several
occasions when Mr Moses had come to them from University College, found
them at the piano, and being on very intimate terms, had begged they
would finish the passage or movement; and on one or two occasions this
had been done.
These slight but evidential incidents, forgotten by Mrs Stratton
herself, and unknown to me, were conveyed quite correctly in the
automatic script through Mrs Piper--three thousand miles across the
Atlantic--and nearly six years after the death of Mr Stainton Moses.
The most convincing test upon these occasions, however, was the
reference to a Mrs Lane--the lady to whom Mr Moses had been engaged when
he passed away.
Very few of his friends knew of this engagement, even in England. Dr
Hodgson, who had never met Stainton Moses in earth life, had naturally
not heard of it. It was only by chance that I knew anything of the
matter, and this merely through once meeting the lady at Mrs Stratton's
house some time after Mr Moses had died. On that occasion Mrs Lane had a
young daughter with her; I knew nothing of any other members of the
family.
During my second visit to Mrs Piper I mentioned meeting this
lady--already a dim memory with me--and the "control" at once asked if I
had met a _sister_ also.
I answered "No," remarking that a young daughter had been with her.
The writing at once continued in these words:
"Well, now I am giving you this as a test: she _has_ a sister, and one
who has been the cause of the deepest sorrow of her life. You will find
this is true when you go back to England."
These words were amply justified.
On applying to Mrs Stratton for information, she denied the possibility
of there being any truth in the test. She said: "I have come to know Mrs
Lane very intimately since you met her here. I don't believe she has any
sister; anyway, I am _quite_ sure she would have told me if a sister had
caused her such sorrow as you mention."
I persevered, however, in getting at the truth of the matter by writing
to Mrs Lane herself (an almost entire stranger), and asking if she cared
to hear the references to herself in the Piper records; if so, would she
come and lunch with me?
She came, and when I reached the passage about the sister, expecting
that she would endorse Mrs Stratton's denial, I noticed, to my great
surprise, that her eyes filled suddenly with tears, and that she was
literally unable to speak through emotion.
The tears ran down her cheeks, when at length she said in a broken
voice: "_That_ is the most convincing test he could have given me! No! I
have never mentioned that sister, even to Mrs Stratton, kind and good as
she has been" (by this time I had spoken of Mrs Stratton's denial of the
sister's existence). "I could not speak of her to _anyone_. She was the
cause of the greatest sorrow in my life; _but no one upon earth knew
this except Mr Stainton Moses_. I was engaged to him at the time, and he
was the natural person to turn to in my deep tribulation. No one else
ever heard of the circumstances."
At this second sitting of mine Mr Stainton Moses spoke also of a
valuable watch he had possessed, and expressed some regret that it had
not been given to Mrs Lane at the time of his death.
I knew nothing at all about any watch of his, but on appealing to one of
his executors, an old friend of mine, found there was such a watch,
which had been a presentation one, and was of considerable value. Upon
the death of Mr Moses it had been given (quite with the approval of Mrs
Lane) to the son of a very old and esteemed friend.
This executor also told me, as a curious coincidence, that when I was
staying with the excitable sensitive in Sussex Gardens, mentioned in a
previous chapter, and he and his wife had come to tea with me one
afternoon (to be introduced to this remarkable lady), she had given him
a similar message about the same watch, purporting to come from Stainton
Moses.
I remember perfectly well having asked Mr and Mrs Harrington to come to
tea with me one afternoon to meet my eccentric landlady, and I also
remember his having a long talk with her whilst his wife and I were
immersed in our own conversation. But I heard no details of this talk.
He had merely said how much interested he had been in meeting Mrs
Peters, and that she evidently had some mediumistic power.
It was certainly curious that the watch should have been mentioned,
first in Sussex Gardens, London, and six years later in Arlington
Heights, Boston, and that on each occasion the same wish with regard to
it should have been expressed!
During this Arlington Heights sitting (the second one), Mr Moses also
referred to an MS., of which I knew nothing at the time. This allusion
also was verified by his other executor, the late Mr Alaric Watts, upon
my return to England.
* * * * *
During this visit to America I also came across a Mr Knapton Thompson, a
hard-headed Yorkshire man, who had invented a new kind of smokeless
combustion stove, which must have been a good one, for our shrewd
American cousins were employing him to put up these stoves in several
public buildings, including the Smithsonian Institute in Washington.
Mr Thompson combined psychic proclivities with his smokeless invention,
and had become greatly interested in the New York medium, Mrs Stoddart
Gray, who has been already mentioned in connection with my own
investigations, twelve years previous to my present visit. He had
written to tell Mr Stead of his experiences, which included several in
which the Julia of "Julia's Letters" had purported to be present.
Mr Stead had turned this gentleman over to me by giving me an
introduction, accompanied by the request that "I should see the man and
report what I thought about him and his wonderful experiences."
So I asked Mr Thompson to call upon me, and arranged to be present with
him next day (Saturday) at Mrs Stoddart Gray's circle.
I found that he had taken up his abode with the medium and her son
during his short stays in New York, with the openly expressed intention
of finding out if there were any trickery behind the scenes. He had,
however, convinced himself of her _bonâ fides_, and was deeply
interested in the interviews he was able to obtain by means of these
mediums, with a daughter he had lost some years previously. He was much
pleased to find that I knew Mrs Gray already and could also testify to
some very remarkable phenomena occurring to me at her house.
So I met him there next afternoon, with every expectation of a good
sitting. These hopes, however, were entirely destroyed owing to the
presence of a noisy, vulgar man, whom they called the "Whisky King." He
made the most inane remarks, cracked stupid jokes, antagonised every
respectable person in the room, I should suppose; and as all this took
place without a word of protest from the lady of the house, one can only
conclude that she considered it worth her while to endure his
vulgarities.
Certainly the afternoon was spoilt for the rest of us, and I remarked
upon this to a very pleasant, smart-looking young American lady when the
sitting was over and we had retired to the reception-room to find wraps
and galoshes, etc.
"Oh yes; wasn't he just exasperating?" she said, with ready sympathy.
She looked much too young and smart and good-looking for the ordinary
type of "investigator," and I could not refrain from asking how she had
come into this _galère_.
She explained her position readily, and it was very interesting to me.
She was a young married lady, and had first been brought to the house,
six months before, by a cousin of hers who was staying with them in New
York, and thought the experience might be amusing.
"We just came in for a joke," she said; "but something happened which
interested me so much that I have come again several times, and until
to-day have always had an interesting time."
Then she told me about her first sitting.
I had noticed upon her ungloved hand a very beautiful _scarabæus_, set
in fine gold, and evidently by an artist in the craft. "Yes, it is a
Tiffany setting," she observed, seeing my eyes drawn to it. She took off
the ring, and gave it into my hands.
"That ring is really the cause of my being here to-day," she continued.
"The scarabæus was given to me some years ago by Professor----" (she
gave the name of a well-known American Egyptologist). "He made a great
pet of me when I was a child, and I begged it from him. When I was going
to be married last year he insisted upon having it set for me by Tiffany
as a wedding present, and he then told me there was no doubt at all
about its being a genuine _antique_. He had come across it many years
before by a curious chance when travelling in Egypt, and had been
assured that it was a genuine _Cleopatra_ relic. 'I can't answer for
that,' he said, laughing, 'but it is certainly many centuries old. I
have no doubt it is genuine so far as age goes.' Well, the night my
cousin and I came here together I did not take off my gloves until
_after_ we had gone in to the _séance_ room, so no one could have seen
my ring--and you know Mrs Gray's sittings always begin in the dark? I
took my gloves off when I found we had to sit in a circle holding hands,
and one of the first materialisations was announced to be that of
Cleopatra." (_I_ had seen "Cleopatra" more than once in 1886, in the
same house--E. K. B.) "She rushed across the room in the complete
darkness, seized my right hand, amongst all the hands in a circle of
twenty people or more, almost tore this special ring from my finger, and
said in a tone of indescribable grief and longing: '_Mine! Mine!_ Ah,
_Chem!_ CHEM!'"
This was sufficiently startling, even apart from the mention of _Chem_,
as the ancient name for Egypt, in a _milieu_ of this kind!
The ring was faithfully restored later in the evening; and the young
lady who owned it had been sufficiently impressed by the circumstances
to confide them to her kind professor, and also to pay more than one
visit to Mrs Stoddart Gray since the episode had occurred, which was
just six months before our meeting there.
During this second visit to America I made the acquaintance, and, I
trust I may say, gained the friendship, of Miss Lilian Whiting, so well
known by many thousands of grateful readers. We saw a great deal of each
other in Boston, and during one of my long chats with her in her pretty
sitting-room at the Brunswick Hotel, she told me of the visit of Lady
Henry Somerset and Miss Frances Willard to that city, some years before
our conversation. Miss Whiting also mentioned a friend who had
accompanied these two ladies, and who had been taken ill, and had died
very suddenly in the hospital at Boston.
"I never met the lady," said Miss Whiting, "but Miss Willard and Lady
Henry told me they had been obliged to leave their friend behind owing
to an attack of influenza, and asked me to call upon her someday. I went
a day or two later, carrying some fruit and newspapers with me. The
matron, whom I knew well, said her patient was doing splendidly, and was
likely to be leaving in a few days, but that as I was a stranger, it
would perhaps be better for me not to come in and see her that
afternoon. So I left my little gifts, and was shocked next day to hear
of her sudden and quite unexpected death. By-the-by, I believe she was
Stead's 'Julia'--I am not sure about this, but somebody told me so
lately."
Miss Whiting then mentioned the lady's name, which I withhold, as Mr
Stead still makes use of it as a test when strangers profess to be in
communication with "Julia."
The day following the _séance_ just described as taking place in New
York, Mr Knapton Thompson called at my hotel to ask me to accompany him
to Mrs Stoddart Gray, as he had arranged to have a short "_writing
séance_" that afternoon.
The son was the agent as usual. On this occasion he had an alphabet
mounted on card, and pointed to the letters in turn, whilst his mother
wrote them down as indicated. Thinking I would verify Miss Whiting's
story if possible, my first question was:
"Can Stead's Julia give me her surname?"
"Julia O." was spelt out, and then the O was given again.
"They often do that," said Mrs Gray casually--"begin the name over
again, I mean."
So it passed at that. The rest of the letters corroborated the surname
mentioned by Miss Whiting.
Then I asked: "In what country did you pass away--Europe or America, or
elsewhere?"
"_America_" was spelt out at once.
"In what city?"
"_Boston._"
"Was it in a private house, a hospital, a hotel, or _where_ did you
die?"
"In a hospital" was again spelt out.
"How long ago?"
"_Five years_" was the answer.
I may note here that Miss Whiting had _not_ mentioned the number of
years, only having said "A few years ago" when speaking of the event.
_Five years_ proved to be true. My last question was:
"What was your age when you passed over?"
"_Twenty-three_" was the answer.
This last, I felt sure, must be wrong. Miss Whiting had not mentioned
any age, but it seemed to me unlikely that so young a woman should have
been travelling round the country with two temperance lecturers.
When these answers were being given, Mrs Gray's son, the medium, asked
if he might put one hand on my wrist to come into magnetic conditions
with me.
I agreed to this, but said I should turn my eyes away from the alphabet,
lest my muscles should give him any unconscious indications.
When I sent these answers to Mr Stead on returning to England, I wrote
down Julia O. (ignoring the repetition of the O); and in connection with
the other answers, told him, of course, of my previous conversation
with Miss Whiting, which reduced the whole episode to one of possible
Thought Transference.
In answering me he said: "I am glad Julia was able to give her name,
even if it were Thought Transference; but, as a matter of fact, it is
not her whole name which you received--she always signed her letters to
me '_Julia O. O...._'" This makes rather a good bit of evidence, seeing
that the second O _had_ been given, but discarded by Mrs Gray and myself
as a repetition of the first letter of the _surname!_
To resume my experiences with Mr Knapton Thompson.
In the evening of this writing incident Mrs Gray had another public
_séance_, at which I was again present, Mr Thompson sitting on one side
of me.
After some "materialisations," for other members of the circle had
appeared, Mrs Gray announced that Stead's "Julia" was present in the
cabinet, and wished to speak to me.
I went up at once, and the form came out and stood in very fair light
from the gas-burners. She seized my hands with every appearance of
delight and eagerness, and her grasp was strong and tense. It is my
peculiarity always to notice hands very accurately. They always seem to
me to indicate character very closely; and apart from this, I am
attracted by people who have well-shaped hands (not necessarily _small_
ones), and find it very difficult to ignore clumsy or ugly fingers,
which, unfortunately, never escape my notice.
Now the medium's hands were broad, short, and flabby, as I had had
plenty of opportunities of noting in the afternoon when he held my
wrist. The hands which grasped mine now were, on the contrary, well
made, small, and rather narrow, the true type of the American female
hand.
Mr Thompson had come up also to greet "Julia," and I whispered to him:
"Do ask Julia if there was not a mistake about her age this afternoon."
"No; you ask the question yourself, Miss Bates," he answered.
So I said rather eagerly: "Julia, do tell us, please, if there was not a
mistake this afternoon in your age--the answer was twenty-three. Is that
correct?"
A very emphatic shake of the head signifying "No" was the reply to this
last question, but no sounds proceeded from the lips.
Disappointed by this, I asked; "Can you not speak to us?"
She made a little gesture of rather helpless dissent; and Mrs Gray, who
stood by, explained that probably all her strength had gone to building
up the materialised body sufficiently to make it visible to us. Julia
bowed her head in assent to this, and then, still speechless, retired
once more behind the curtains.
I did not mention this appearance of Julia when writing to Mr Stead on
my return--I was so anxiously hoping that she might have tried to
impress the fact of having appeared to me, upon his consciousness, as a
test; but he said nothing about it in his first letters. So I let the
matter alone for a time, determining to tell him some day, but much
disappointed by the usual failure in getting corroborative evidence.
A week later, however, at the end of a long letter on other subjects, I
put this short P. S. in a casual way to him:
"Did Julia ever tell you that she had appeared to me in New York?"
In answering my letter he replied--also in a P. S.:
"By-the-by, to answer your last query--yes. Julia told me weeks ago that
she had appeared to you in New York, _but that she could not give you
her age on that occasion, because she was not accustomed to speaking
through the embodiment_."
Now in sending the list of questions and answers to Mr Stead I had
merely marked against the answer as to her age, "_twenty-three_," that
doubtless it was an error, _but I had never hinted to him that I had
asked her to correct the error in New York, or that she had been unable
to speak on that occasion_.
This again was a good bit of independent evidence.
I will now give a description of Mr Knapton Thompson's interview with
his daughter, on the same evening that Julia appeared to me. I have
already said that the magnet which drew Mr Thompson to these _séances_
was the opportunity given to him of meeting and talking to a daughter
who had passed away some years previously.
On this special evening the daughter materialised as usual, and came out
from the cabinet. As Mr Thompson was sitting next to me at the time, I
could distinctly hear Mrs Gray whisper to him:
"Would you not like to take your daughter into the other room, Mr
Thompson? It is rather crowded here to-night. You would be quieter in
there."
Mr Thompson got up at once, and greeted the materialised form, and they
disappeared through the folding doors to the reception-room. Other
matters of interest were occurring, and I had quite forgotten the
absence of Mr Thompson in the dimly lighted room (in those days the
light was always dim _at first_), until I found he was again occupying
the seat next to my own. I had not noticed his return, and asked him at
once 'what he had done with his daughter.' A good half hour must have
elapsed between his disappearance and return. He said, quite simply and
as a matter of course: "Oh, she did not care to come back into this
crowded room. We had half-an-hour's chat, and then she de-materialised
in the other room, and I returned alone."
I can only repeat that Mr Knapton Thompson was a shrewd, practical
Yorkshireman, and a very successful man of business, as was proved by
the orders he received in America for the stoves he had invented.
He was certainly under the impression that he could be trusted to
recognise his own daughter when allowed the privilege of half-an-hour's
conversation with her, _tête-à-tête_ in a private room.
I cannot end this chapter without saying something about Keely of
Philadelphia and his intuitional genius.
I had hoped to have the opportunity of meeting this wonderful man during
my last stay in Philadelphia, U.S.A. (March 1897), but was disappointed
in this expectation. Therefore, on the outer plane, my connection with
Keely never went beyond a single interview with his wife; but this is a
record of personal intuitions as well as of personal events, and I know
no one with regard to whom my intuitions--absolutely lacking in any
physical ground of proof, or even mental ground of comprehension--have
been stronger or more obstinate.
At the time of my first visit to America, so far back as 1885, I had not
the faintest conception of Keely's work, or what he claimed to have
discovered or to be on the track of discovering. I never heard his name
mentioned without being told at the same time that he was either a silly
madman or a conscious impostor, and as I came with an entirely
unprejudiced mind (for I had never heard of Keely before landing in
America), it would have been natural to accept this universal opinion.
Yet something stronger than reason was always silently contradicting
these assertions, when made in my presence. Friends and acquaintances
alike in those days laughed at Keely's claims, and denounced his boasted
discovery as pure imposture.
"'Tisn't! 'Tisn't! 'Tisn't!" that persistent little voice kept
whispering in my ear all the time, like a naughty, obstinate child who
contradicts from sheer ignorance--or was it a spiritual intuition? Time
alone can answer that question; anyway, I kept my ideas to myself, for
they had no foundation in fact at the time of which I speak.
In 1897 the position for me was altered. A sensible and dependable
friend of mine--a well-known banker in Philadelphia--described to me his
experiences and those of other prominent citizens during a demonstration
of Mr Keely's powers; and the old insistent voice that spoke to my
ignorance before, spoke now to some glimmering understanding of the
claim put forth. This claim--even then jeered at by the world at
large--had to wait shivering in the cold another nine years, before Mr
Frederic Soddy clothed it in respectable scientific garb by speaking
publicly of the possibilities in the future connected with atomic
disintegration and consequent liberation of energy.
But the yelping curs of Calumny that pursued Keely during his lifetime
are still upon the dead man's tracks.
"_His_ methods were fraud and imposture, anyway"; "His wires were tubes
containing compressed air," and so forth. The M.F.H. of this pack of
hounds was the son of a lady whose name will always be honourably
mentioned with that of Keely as one of his most generous supporters.
The initial misfortune in the whole matter was the forming and starting
of the Keely Motor Company to utilise the discovery, which should first
have been placed under the protection of Science.
Ignorant and impatient shareholders thought only of their own material
advantages and dividends. They were Keely's first enemies, with their
sensational and premature advertisements of results and "_200
horse-power engines ready to patent, etc._," whilst the poor man was
still struggling with his tremendous problem--_i.e. to control_ the
force that he had discovered.
He attempted this first by confining it, but it blew everything to
atoms, and his own fingers off into the bargain!
Occultists--including Madame Blavatsky--always declared this latent
atomic energy was a _fact_, but that Keely would never be allowed to
demonstrate it, for the world was not yet prepared for such a tremendous
dynamic force to be let loose upon it, and that the most serious abuses
and disasters would follow, if once he succeeded in bringing his
discovery into practical working order.
They said it would be one of two things: either Keely's experiments in
this direction would continue to fail in the crucial point necessary,
_or_ that if he succeeded it would be his own death warrant, lest any
mischief should accrue from his making his methods public.
In view of these pronouncements, the succeeding events in Keely's career
are interesting.
_The Times_ (U.S.A.) of 6th March 1898 contained the following
announcement, under Keely's own signature:--
After twenty-five years' labour I have solved the problem of harnessing
the ether (which elsewhere he says is only the _medium_ of the force he
discovered) and adapting it to commercial uses. I have finished
experimenting.--My work is now completed.
(Signed) JOHN W. KEELY.
_On 18th November of this same year he died._
Within two months, his generous friend and patron, Mrs Blomfield Moore,
followed him to another sphere. Keely's final discovery of the means of
"harnessing the ether," as he calls it, was through holding it _in
rotation_ instead of in confinement.
I am allowed to quote an extract from a private letter with regard to
this statement.
"This instrument ruptures the luminous envelopes of the hydrogen
corpuscles, liberating the mysterious substance, which is put into such
high rotation that it forms its own wall of confinement at 420,000
revolutions per second, as calculated. Independent of this rotation in
the tube, where it is projected, it could be no more held in suspension
than a ray of sunshine could be held in a darkened room."
I have been given to understand that a faithful account of everything
that has occurred in connection with Keely's discovery has been
compiled, and will be published "_when the time comes for the truth to
be made known_."
It is, of course, possible that this disclosure may be anticipated by
the arrival of another "crank and impostor" of the Keely type. Let us
trust he may arise from _within_ and not from without, scientific
circles, and thus avoid his martyrdom!
Meanwhile it may be interesting to quote from a published letter of
Lascelles-Scott, the Government physicist from Forest Gate, who visited
Keely's workshop in the interests of Science, and who was allowed to cut
and bring away with him pieces of the wire Keely was using. (Said to be
_tubes_ by the wiseacres!)
The following is the essential portion of Mr Lascelles-Scott's letter. I
only omit courteous expressions of gratitude to the editor and "to the
institutions and individuals alike" of the "beautiful city of
Philadelphia" where he was able to carry out his investigations.
Letter from Mr Lascelles-Scott to the Editor
of _The Public Ledger_, Philadelphia.
The only corrections of sufficient importance, to the general sense of
my observations at the Franklin Institute last Wednesday night, to call
for notice in your otherwise admirable report, are the following:--
Although my observations were only put forward as "preliminary,"
inasmuch as I have not yet _completed_ the outlined programme I had in
view, no words actually used by me justified the expression that "_I had
formed no very definite opinions_."
On the contrary, I stated more than once the very _definite opinion that
Mr Keely has demonstrated to me, in a way which is absolutely
unquestionable, the existence of a force hitherto unknown_. (The italics
are mine.--E. K. B.)
The conditions under which the experiments were carried out (as I
distinctly stated) _were such as to preclude the possibility of the
results obtained being due to any ordinary source of power, evident or
concealed_.
Moreover, I satisfied myself that the rotation of the "vibrodyne" was
neither due to, nor accompanied by, any traces of electricity or
magnetism. So far my opinion is and was expressed as being of the most
definite kind possible.
... I stated, and the statement was greeted by the audience with great
and prolonged applause, that, after a little adjustment of the
"Sympathetic Transmitter," it was found that by the sounding of one of
the small English tuning forks I had brought with me from the other side
of the Atlantic, upon the said "Transmitter," I could myself start the
vibrodyne, and cause it to revolve rapidly, without Mr Keely's
intervention, and I exhibited to the meeting, the fork actually used by
me.--Thanking you in anticipation, etc., I am, sir, yours obediently,
W. LASCELLES-SCOTT.
One would have supposed that this testimony, in addition to that of
other scientists and practical electricians, would have sufficed to
disintegrate Atomic Stupidity and Calumny, and liberate the forces of
Humility and Sane Investigation.
But prejudiced Ignorance dies hard!
* * * * *
To end my chapter on a pleasanter note than this, I will quote from a
private letter which I have been privileged to read, the beautiful words
in which Keely describes his own achievements.
_I have no power that is not communicated to me in the same way that
this machine receives its power: through celestial radiation from the
Soul of Matter, the Mind force of the Creator, whose instrument I am. I
know who is leading me and making all things work together for good._