Part 10 (1/2)

That she had lived near the Kennebec River, in the State of Maine

That riting letters it had been her custo Nellie Norton

That she had died inshe had had a love affair with a Mr L C Broas still living and engaged in business in Boston, at an address which the ”spirit” gave

As goes without saying, Mr Cleaveland at once wrote to Mr Brown, and in a few days received a reply from him, in which he said:

”I was out in the town of Sharon very recently, and called on an elderly gentleman as a manufacturer there when I resided there as a boy inold recollections of fifty years ago, he spoke of a Miss Norton that he said I eet on at that time

”The facts of the case are that Mary B Norton, who always signed herself Nellie B Norton, cauess, ardent lovers, but in the course of two years I left the town and she did, and I knew very little of her for a few years after that I think it was about five years later that on my way home from the White Mountains I stopped off at her hoe river I feel sure this was the Kennebec River Her father was an orthodoxof the 'water type' I think so in Fairhaven and sent me some papers that contained letters written by Mary B Norton, but from that time--some over forty years--I have not seen her I heard that she died soo, and think she e”

Later Mr Brorote again, saying that on second thought he was not certain that her naht not have been Amelia instead of Mary, as he had always known her ”only as Nellie B”[23]

[23] This case is reported in detail in the _Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research_, vol ii, pp

119-138

It is to the constant occurrence of incidents like these that the vitality of spiritism is mainly due To many people it seems impossible to account for such detailed and abundantly corroborated proofs of personal identity on any hypothesis short of actual spirit control Yet in the last analysis, when viewed in the sober light of latter-day scientific knowledge of the workings of the human mind, it will be found that they do not afford the conclusive demonstration of the validity of the spiritistic doctrine which on the surface they appear to yield For there is always the possibility--a, to certainty--that what they really indicate is not coht transference between living minds

In fact the telepathic connection between the mind of the medium and the mind of the sitter is often most obvious Take the three cases just cited, and which are typical of mediumistic communications The statements made by the medium Corliss to the friend of Henry Ward Beecher were state to an incident fresh in the latter's memory, and therefore easily obtainable by the telepathic process, which, there is reason to believe, is exceptionally at the coenuine psychics Likewise, my artist friend was much occupied mentally with the problems involved in the California offer, and was doubtless thinking of it, consciously or subconsciously, at the time the medium invoked the ”spirit” of the arht had that officer still been in the flesh All the medium had to do was to tap telepathically my friend's subconsciousness and extract from it every detail of the ”revelation” so sensationally htly different, however, is the case of Miss Edith Wright Here the facts thought to e which Miss Wright's sitter, the Reverend Mr Cleaveland, was ignorant But it ishis researches, Mr Cleaveland made the discovery that Miss Norton's old sweetheart, Mr

Brown, had had at least one sitting with Miss Wright Mr Brown denied that he had ever said anything about Miss Norton in Miss Wright's presence; but his memory ot from him by telepathy the data hich she afterward astonished both hi the few definitely ascertained laws of telepathy is the fact that it is possible for telepathiclatent in the recipient'sabove the threshold of consciousness

This is of even greater significance in connection with the rarer, but still quite numerous, instances in which the mediumistic communications offered as evidence of spirit identity refer to incidents not known by the medium or by the sitter or by any previous sitter These, spiritists insist, are absolutely inexplicable on the telepathic basis I canan illustrative case taken froland medium, Mrs

Leonora E Piper, whose remarkable mediumistic faculty was first made known to the scientific world by Professor Jao, and who has since been repeatedly investigated by leading members of the Society for Psychical Research Detectives have been e her footsteps, open her mail, watch her every move But not once have they detected her in fraudulent practices; and, on the other hand, she has given such convincing proof of the genuineness of her power that soators have ended by accepting at face value her ”es fro investigated in England by a colish psychical researcher, Sir Oliver Lodge, placed in her hands, while she was entranced, a gold watch once the property of an uncle of his who had died some twenty years before It was noned by another uncle, a twin brother of the dead man

”I was told aled to one of my uncles--one that had been very fond of Uncle Robert, the name of the survivor--that the watch was now in the possession of this same Uncle Robert, hom its late oas anxious to co atte Mrs Piper--caught the name Jerry, short for Jere him: 'This is my watch, and Robert is my brother, and I am here Uncle Jerry,on the verythe watch had arrived by post, no one but myself and a shorthand clerk, who happened to have been introduced for the first ti bypresent

”Having thus ostensibly got into coh some means or other hat purported to be Uncle Jerry, whohtly in his later years of blindness, but of whose early life I knew nothing, I pointed out to him that to make Uncle Robert aware of his presence it would be well to recall trivial details of their boyhood, all of which I would faithfully report

”He quite caught the idea, and proceeded during several successive sittings ostensibly to instruct Doctor Phinuit to s such as would enable his brother to recognize him

References to his blindness, illness, and main facts of his life were comparatively useless from my point of view; but these details of boyhood, two-thirds of a century ago, were utterly and entirely out of my ken

”'Uncle Jerry' recalled episodes such as swi so a cat in S, peculiar skin, like a snakeskin, which he thought was now in the possession of Uncle Robert

”All these facts have beenis that his twin brother, froot the watch and hom I was thus in correspondence, could not re the creek, though he himself hadhad the snakeskin, and of the box in which it was kept, though he did not knohere it was then But he altogether denied killing the cat, and could not recall Smith's field

”His ood enough to write to another brother, Frank, living in Cornwall, an old sea captain, and ask if he had any better re any inexplicable reason for asking The result of this inquiry was triumphantly to vindicate the existence of Smith's field as a place near their ho, Essex; and the killing of a cat by another brother was also recollected; while of the swiiven, Frank and Jerry being the heroes of that foolhardy episode”

Sir Oliver Lodge himself appears to believe that he was actually in coh Mrs Piper, with his dead Uncle Jerry; and by spiritists generally this is alluded to as a characteristic instance impossible of explanation on the theory of telepathy between living minds But it is pertinent to point out that possibly, in his childhood, Sir Oliver may have heard his uncles, in so these very incidents He would naturally have forgotten the episode, so far as conscious recollection of it was concerned; but he would none the less have retained some memory of their conversation in his subconsciousness, whence Mrs Piper could have gained knowledge of it telepathically And, even had he never heard of the incidents, they ht indeed have been trans uncles, and been by him retrans as it does telepathy between more than two persons, may seem to be far-fetched But there is plenty of evidence that telepathy of this sort--known technically as _telepathie a trois_--is an actuality I have incase studied by Mr Andrew Lang, the brilliant essayist and psychical researcher It concerns a crystal-gazer na's oords, ”Miss Angus, sitting with man or woman, described acquaintances of theirs but not of hers, in situations not known to the sitters but proved to be true to fact