Addison Darre Crabtre

MIND AND MATTER.

“The evidence of sense is the first and highest kind of evidence of which human nature is capable.”—Wilkins.

“They choose darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil.”—Scripture.

IN WHICH ANIMAL MAGNETISM, MESMERISM, AND CLAIRVOYANCE ARE EXPLAINED.—“THE IGNORANT MONOPOLY.”—YET ROOM FOR DISCOVERIES.—A “GASSY” SUBJECT.—DRS. CHAPIN AND BEECHER.—HE “CAN’T SEE IT.”—THE ROYAL TOUCH.—GASSNER.—“THE DEVIL KNOWS LATIN.”—ROYALTY IN THE SHADE.—THE IRISH PROPHET; HE VISITS LONDON.—A COMICAL CROWD.—MESMERISM.—A FUNNY BED-FELLOW.—CLAIRVOYANCE.—THE GATES OF MOSCOW.—THE DOCTOR OF ANTWERP.—THE OLD LADY IN THE POKE-BONNET.—VISIT TO A CLAIRVOYANT.—“FORETELLING” THE PAST.—THE OLD WOMAN OF THE PENOBSCOT MOUNTAINS.—A SECRET KEPT.—CUI BONO?—VISITS TO SEVENTEEN CLAIRVOYANTS.—A BON-TON CLAIRVOYANT.—A BOUNCER.—RIDICULOSITY.

Mind and matter!

What is the connection?

Why does one’s yawning set a whole room full to yawning?

What is the unseen power, appropriated mostly by the ignorant, which at times controls another weaker mind, or, for the time being, controls disease? The majority of medical men “get around” this question by denying the whole proposition. But that does not satisfy the jury—the people. The great community know that there is some unseen power, which is partially developed in certain persons, which has great controlling influence over certain other persons; hence over their diseases, especially mental or nervous diseases.

I hope to be able to explain something of this “phenomenon.”

Those who practise it know nothing of its modus operandi, any more than the bird that sings on yonder willow knows of the science of music.

To the common suggestion, “It’s spirits,” I say, No, no!

If it were “spirits,” why does the spirit always seek a low organization through which to manifest itself? There are few exceptions to this rule.

It is unnatural, inconsistent with the divine attributes for the supernatural to mingle with the natural. The circulation of the blood was once attributed to the action of the sun—hence a man fell asleep at sunset—and to supernatural causes.

Science has done away with these absurd notions.

“It is a manifestation of divine power,” say others.

Well, for that matter, everything is; but directly it is not, for what answers the “spirit” suggestion answers this one also. Divine power cannot be limited.

For want of a better name, let us call this power “animal magnetism.”

The man who controls the mind of another, or another’s disease, through his mind, must possess the following requisites: First, health; second, will; third, faith that he can control the subject. No reasoning is necessary. The less causality he possesses, the better. The less reasoning faculties, the better he can perform.

Why?

Animal magnetism is an animal power—not a spiritual. All the animal qualities—organs—are located in the back and lower part of the brain. They act independent of reason. Passions have no reason. The affections have no reason. Anger and hate have none. The force, driving power of man is centred back of the ears. The cerebellum, or lower brain, acts independent of reason. Birds, and most of the animals, possess all the qualities that the cerebellum of man contains.

The upper brain—the cerebrum—is the instrument of our thoughts—our reason. In sleep, it is still; its action is suspended. Hence there is no reason in our dreams. The motive power is in the lower brain; hence somnambulism. If there is anything of a “trance” nature, it means shutting off the action of the cerebrum, and concentring the power in the cerebellum. Some persons have but little upper brain. If they have the other requisites, they may become good clairvoyants, or magnetizers, according to the manner in which they exercise the animal power.

I have yet to find a professional clairvoyant with large or active reasoning (intellectual) qualities.

Yet Room for more Discoveries.

The living blood has not yet been analyzed. It contains a vitalizing element which chemistry has not yet been adequate to detect. There is yet as much to be discovered in the science of life as has already been revealed to man. It will yet be found out.

How is the power, or force, conveyed from the operator to the person operated upon? Through what medium does it act?

Let us begin with the brain. Let us take a ball of cotton for our illustration. We draw out a piece from it, and spin it out to our fancy. It is a thread, but cotton still, twisted to a fine string. The brain is located at the top of man. By means of fine threads, called nerves, the brain is distributed over the entire body, so completely that you cannot stick a pin in the flesh without touching a nerve, wounding the brain. Suspend the entire action of the brain, as by ether, chloroform, or nitrous oxygen gas, and sticking the pin is not felt. Partially suspend the action, as by a small quantity of the nitrous oxygen gas, and the force of the brain (or active force) is centred upon the lower brain, and the man under its influence acts out his animal nature in spite of reason.

A man, I hold, who magnetizes or mesmerizes another, uses only the force of the lower brain. Like begets like. He cannot affect a person of large intellectual organs; only one with the animal organs active.

You cannot see the gas, yet it affects the person. You cannot see the subtile power conveyed from one man to a weaker. He conveys it by touch—nerve to nerve. I believe science will yet discover just what this subtile agent is—both in the blood and nerves; for it is in both, or why does the suspension of it in one destroy the other? Destroy the nerve, and the corresponding blood-vessel is inactive. Destroy the blood-vessel, and the corresponding nerve suffers.

It is the power that the mother exercises to hush her sobbing babe to slumber. As the child gathers strength of mind, she loses that control. A person may be used as a mesmeric subject until he becomes a mere idiotic machine. Educate a clairvoyant doctor, and what becomes of his clairvoyant power? It is lost with the increase of intellectual power. Now, is this a “divine” quality, that only ignorance can make use of? Is it really “hidden from the wise and prudent, and given to babes?” All sciences were practised by the uneducated first, before being reduced to a science. I think this will be yet reduced to a useful science. As it now stands, it is useless. If it is a spirit power, the spirits are mighty silent as to the fact.

We come into this world by natural causes. We live, grow, exist, and we die by natural causes. We brought no knowledge with us; we carry none out. All the qualities yet developed in man are natural, and adapted to this life. Millions upon millions have so lived and so died, and a spirit power in this world is no nearer to being established than it was when Adam was a little boy. All that heretofore has been attributed to spirit, or supernatural causes, has been proven to be but natural. I claim that magnetism and the undiscovered sciences are natural, and have no connection with the next world, to which we tend. The human eye, to some extent, is magnetic. A blind man cannot thrill an audience; hardly can an orator with glasses over his eyes. Dr. Chapin approaches the nearest to it. Dr. Beecher’s great magnetic power is in his eyes, and is also let off at the ends of his fingers. But to thoroughly magnetize a person, he must be touched.

Power of the Human Eye.

A wild animal has only small reasoning organs. The influence of the human eye is potent over him. Lichtenstein says, “The African hunters avail themselves of the circumstance that the lion does not attempt to spring upon his prey until he has measured the ground, and has reached the distance of ten or twelve paces, when he lies crouching on the ground, gathering himself up for the effort. The hunters,” he says, “make it a rule never to fire on the lion until he lies down at this short distance, so that they can aim directly at his head with the most perfect certainty. If one meets a lion, his only safety is to stand still, though the animal crouches to make his spring; that spring will not be hazarded if the man remain motionless, and look him steadfastly in the eyes. The animal hesitates, rises, slowly retreats some steps, looks earnestly about him, lies down, again retreats, till, getting by degrees quite out of the magic circle of man’s influence, he takes flight in the utmost haste.”

It is said of Valentine Greatrakes, the great magnetizer and forerunner of Mesmer, that the glance of his eye had a marvellously fascinating influence upon people of a susceptible or nervous organization. All magnetizers, etc., who have tried their powers upon the writer, first bent a sharp, scrutinizing gaze upon the eye of their unruly subject. Yet they have exercised no reason in selecting the subject.

THE LION MAGNETIZED.

I attended the exhibitions of Professor Cadwell, night after night, in Boston. I went on the stage. I examined the subjects whom he controlled “like an old fiddle,” and, physiognomically and phrenologically, not one of them was above mediocrity intellectually, and the most of them were far below. The best subjects had the least intellectuality. His control over them was astonishing. In some he could suspend the power of memory, others all the reasoning faculties. Some he could control muscularly, some mentally.

“This is a hot stove,” he said, setting an empty chair before the row of men, boys, and girls sitting along the wall side of the stage. “It is very hot;” and they began drawing back—all but one. “Don’t you see the stove, and feel the awful heat, Frank?” he asked of one hard subject.

A HARD SUBJECT.

“I can feel the heat, but I can’t see the stove in that chair,” was his droll reply.

The professor could make this gentleman forget his name, but could not make him believe that “a silk hat was a basin of water.”

The Royal Touch.

The old ignorant kings and queens were said to remove the scrofula (king’s evil) by the touch. Gouty old Queen Anne was the last to exercise the royal prerogative to any extent.

A scrofulous development is the result of imperfect action, and obstruction of some one or more of the five excretory organs of the human system. These are the skin (or glands of the same), the lungs, the liver, the kidneys, and the colon. The most that the regular physician does in scrofula (or one who is not a specialist in this branch of physic) is to attend to the general health of the patient of a scrofulous diathesis, build up the strength, and endeavor to increase the vitality. This in a measure tends to reduce the scrofulous development. Now, will not a child sleeping continually with an aged person or invalid tend to reduce the vitality of the child? Yes, it absorbs the disease of the one, while the vitality is thrown off for the benefit of the weaker person. Here, you see, one person may partake of the vitality of another by touch. Then may not the continued touch of a healthy person (king or subject) affect the health of a weaker, on the principle of increased vitality?

But it really removes no cause, hence cannot take the place of an alterative, or anti-scrofulous medicine. The “crew of wretched souls” who waited the king’s touch really believed that he “solicits Heaven.” Hence the cure. The coin which he hung about the neck of these “strangely visited people, all swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,” called their attention continually to “the healing benediction.”

Pyrrhus, who was placed upon the throne by force of arms B. C. 306, was said to cure the “evil” by the “grace of God.” Valentine, who only held his throne—A. D. 375—by the help of Theodosius, not by the “grace of God”—claimed to cure scrofula by the latter power, as did Valentine II., whose wicked temper ended his life in a “fit of passion.”

The subject of the following sketch claimed also divine power:—

Herr Gassner. “The Devil understands Latin.”

It seems from the following truthful account of Herr Gassner, a clergyman at Elwangen, that the devil can understand Latin, as well as “quote Scripture.” About the year 1758 this clergyman became so celebrated in curing diseases by animal magnetism, that the people came flocking from Switzerland, the Tyrol, and Swabia, in great numbers, to be cured of all sorts of ailments, a thousand persons arriving at a time, who had to lodge in tents, as the town could not lodge them all.

GASSNER HEALING “BY THE GRACE OF GOD.”His modus operandi was as follows. Dressed in a long scarlet cloak, a silken sash about his loins, a chain about his neck, and wearing, or holding in one hand, a crucifix, and touching with the other the diseased part, and in the Latin tongue commanding the disease, or the evil spirit, whichever the case was termed, to depart, in the name of Jesus Christ, the patient was usually healed. Dr. Schlisel says, that Gassner “spoke chiefly in Latin, in his operations, and the devil is said to have understood him perfectly.”

The Austrian government gave him its assistance. The excitement became great. Elwangen was overcrowded by people, rich and poor. Riches flowed into the coffers of its trades-people, though Gassner took nothing directly for his cures. Hundreds of patients arrived daily; the apothecary gained a great revenue from dispensing simples ordered by Gassner, principally powder of blessed thistle, oils, and washes. The printers labored day and night at their presses in order to furnish sufficient pamphlets, prayers, pictures, etc., for the eager horde of admirers. The goldsmiths were crowded, also, to furnish all kinds of Agni Dei, crosses, charms, hearts, and rings. Even the beggars had their harvest, as well as bakers, hotel-keepers, and the rest.

During seven years he carried on his public cures. Hundreds of physicians went to see him. Mesmer, in answer to the inquiry of the Elector of Bavaria, declared his astonishing cures were produced merely by the exercise of magnetic spiritual excitement, of which he himself (claiming no God-like power) gave to the elector convincing proofs on the spot.

On the contrary, Gassner claimed that he could heal none unless they exercised faith. His surroundings, trappings, dress, crucifixes, appeals to Jesus Christ, and Latin mummery, had the effect to impress the patient with faith in Gassner’s Christ-like powers.

“Some,” says Dr. Schlisel, “described him as a prophetic and holy man; others accused him of being a fantastic fellow, an impostor, and leagued with the devil. Some accused him of dealing in the black art; others attributed his cures to the magnet, to electricity, to sympathy, to imagination; and some attributed the whole to the omnipotent power of the name of Christ.”

Having touched or rubbed the affected part of the patient, Gassner, in a “loud, proud voice,” commanded the disease to come forth, or to manifest itself. Sometimes he had to repeat this command ten times. Then, when the part was presented, he seized it with both hands; he inspired the patient to himself repel the disease, by saying, “Depart from me, in the name of Jesus Christ.”

“He then gave the patient his blessing by spreading his cloak over the head, grasping his neck or head in both hands, repeating a silent, earnest prayer, making the sign of the cross, ordering some simple from the apothecary’s, which he consecrates, compels the patient to wash his hands clean, when he is permitted to ‘depart in peace.’

“Most diseases he cured instantly. Some required months, and others he could not affect in the least.”

There is but one philosophical way to account for these cures. To say there is nothing in it, or, “It is all humbug,” will not satisfy the people. To affirm it is the arts of the devil is merely nonsensical. It is influence. Of what? Of one powerful mind over another. And when Gassner found a mind equally as powerful as his own, the disease refused to depart. There you have the whole of it, “in a nutshell,”—the exercising of one mind over another; and mind (not unusually) controls matter in the living body.

For about seven years Gassner was a public healer, and then he suddenly and forever disappeared.

Royalty in the Shade.

Sir John Fortesque, the learned legal writer of the time of Edward IV., spoke of the gift of healing by touch as a “time immemorial privilege of the kings of England.” He very seriously attributed the virtue to the unction imparted to the hands in the coronation. Elizabeth was not superior to this superstition, and she frequently appeared before the people in the character of a miraculous healer. There was formerly a regular office in the English Book of Common Prayer for the performance of this ceremony. The curious reader is referred to Macbeth, Scene III. of Act IV. for further particulars.

With the rise of Valentine Greatrakes, the “royal prerogative” received a staggering blow. The marvellous cures of this man, living in Ireland, reached England, and the king invited him to come to London; and along his journey, whither he was preceded by the returning messenger, we are told that the magistrates of the towns and cities waited upon Valentine, and begged him to remain and heal their sick.

On his arrival, the king, “though not fully persuaded of his wonderful gift, recommended him to the care of his physician, and permitted him to practise his power as much as he pleased in London.”

Greatrakes had no medical education, nor claimed aught beyond a gift of healing most diseases by “stroking the parts with his hand.” He is described as being a man of “commanding address, frank and pleasing, having a brilliant eye, gallant bearing, fine figure, and a remarkably handsome face. With a hearty and musical voice, and a natural stock of high animal spirits, he was the delight of all festive assemblies. Yet he was a devout man.”

Daily there assembled a great number of people, invalids from all parts of the kingdom, to be healed, and to see the wonderful miracles performed by a man! Here congregated the dropsical, those afflicted by unsightly sores, tumors, and swellings, the lame, the halt, and the blind. “Some he could not affect, but the most of them he cured.” The only visible means he took was to stroke, or at times violently rub, the part affected. Lord Conway wrote in his praise, but added, “After all, I am far from thinking his cures miraculous. I believe it is by a sanative virtue and a natural efficiency, which extend not to all diseases.” The Viscountess Conway was afflicted by an inveterate headache, which he could not remove. This lady was a positive character. The failure was attributed to the peculiar disease, when it should have been assigned to the peculiarity of the person. Sir Evremond, then at court, wrote a sarcastic novel on the subject of “The Irish Prophet.” The Royal Society held a meeting on the subject, and, unable to refute the facts of his cures, accounted for them as being “produced by a sanative contagion in Mr. Greatrakes’ body, which had an antipathy to some peculiar diseases, and not to others.” They demanded (particularly Dr. Loyd, in a “severe pamphlet”) how he cured, and why he cured some, and could not others. Greatrakes replied that he was not able to tell. And “let them,” he said, “tell me what substance that is which removes and goes out with such expedition, and it will be more easy to resolve their questions.”

To the scandalous reports respecting his operations upon female patients, without referring directly to such report, he says, attributing the diseases to evil spirits, “which kind of pains cannot endure my hand, nay, not with gloves, but fly immediately, though six or eight coats or cloaks be between the person and my hand, as at the Lady Ranelagh’s,” etc.

The clergy had previously taken alarm, and cited Valentine before the Bishop’s Court to account for his proceedings, and when he took a scriptural view of his cures, he was forbidden to practise more; which was as preposterous as the decree of Louis XIV., which commanded that no more miracles should be performed at the tomb of the AbbÉ Paris.

Neither the clergy nor the faculty could prevent him, and daily the crowd of representatives of heterogeneous diseases made pilgrimages to the Squire of Affam. The scene was said to be ludicrously painful. They came in crowds from everywhere; on foot and in carriages; the young and the aged; some hobbling upon crutches, others literally crawling along; the blind carrying the cripple upon his back, while the latter directed the way, and the deaf and dumb followed in their wake.

NO LACK OF PATIENTS.

While the lord mayor and the chief justice, with great physicians, were among his vehement supporters of the sterner sex, the majority of his real admirers were the ladies. The lovely Countess of Devonshire entertained him in her palace, and other high ladies lionized him nightly in their parlors, where he “performed his pleasant operations, with wonderful results, on the prettiest and most hysterical ladies present.” “But his triumph was of short duration. His professions were made the butts of ridicule, to which his presence of mind and volubility were unable to effectually respond. His tone of conversation was represented by his enemies as compounded of the blasphemy of the religious enthusiast and the obscene profligate. His boast that he never received a fee for remedial services was met by a square contradiction, and a statement that he received five hundred dollars at once.” Finally, the tide of opposition and slander became too strong for him, and he returned to his native land, and to oblivion.

We are indebted to several authorities for the foregoing sketch of Greatrakes, particularly Chambers’ Miscellany, Lord Conway, E. Rich, and Jeaffreson.

Mesmerism.

Frederick Anthony Mesmer, to whose name the above ism is affixed, was born in Werseburg, in 1734. He neither discovered, developed, nor understood anything of the art which has immortalized him. He was a designing, audacious man. If Gassner, Prince Hohenloe, and Greatrakes were falsely accused of dealing with the devil, Mesmer was truly leagued with a Father Hell. Father Hell was professor of astronomy at Vienna, where Mesmer obtained a medical diploma, and where he was connected at first with Maximilian Hell in magnetic instruments. Having a falling out with the latter, Mesmer resorted to the arts of his great predecessor, Greatrakes, but professed to cure, without the help of God or man, all curable diseases. He produced marvellous effects (but only temporary, however) in both Vienna and Paris, to which latter place he repaired to practise animal magnetism.

Among the little episodes relative to his treatment is one of Madame Campan, a lady of the royal household, author of “Memoires de Marie Antoinette.” The husband of this celebrated lady sent for Dr. Mesmer—for all Paris was running mad after him—to cure him of lung fever. He came with great pomp, and having timed the pulse, and made certain inquiries respecting the case, he gravely informed the husband and wife that it was not in the way of magnetism, and the only mode of cure lay in the following: “You must lay by his side”—for he was confined to his bed—“one of three things, an old empty bottle, a black hen, or a young woman of brown complexion.”

“A BOTTLE, A HEN, OR A WOMAN.”

“‘Sir,’ exclaimed the wife, ‘let us try the empty bottle first.’

“The bottle was tried, with what result is easily imagined. Monsieur Campan grew worse. Improving the opportunity of the lady’s absence, Mesmer bled and blistered the patient, who recovered.

“Imagine the lady’s astonishment when Mesmer asked for and actually obtained a written certificate of cure by magnetism” (Mesmerism).This is more easily believed when one learns that Mesmer obtained his degree on an address, or thesis, relating to “planetary influence on the human body,” and that afterwards, in answer to the inquiry by a learned Paris physician, who asked him why he ordered his patients to bathe in the Seine, instead of spring water, as the waters of the Seine were always dirty, Mesmer replied,—

“Why, my dear doctor, the cause of the water which is exposed to the sun’s rays being superior to all other water is, that it is magnetized by the sun. I myself magnetized the sun some twenty years ago.”

All that sort of fellows have ever a short course. Mesmer reached his zenith in Paris about the year 1784, when, for one year’s practice, he received the enormous sum of four hundred thousand francs. The government, at the instigation of Count Maurepas, had previously offered him an annuity of twenty thousand francs, with ten thousand francs additional, to support a college hospital, if he would remain and practise only in France. “One unpleasant condition was attached to this offer, which prevented its acceptance; viz., three nominees of the crown were to watch the proceedings.”

The government appointed a commission, consisting of Dr. Guillotin, and three other physicians, and five members of the Academy,—Franklin, Bailly, Borey, Leroi, and Lavoisier,—to examine the means employed by Mesmer. The result of the investigation—the discovery of his battery, which he termed the baquet, around which his patients assembled, and his windy pretensions to the self-possession of some animal magnetism beyond even his disciples, Bergasse and Deslon—was unfavorable to the truth of animal magnetism and morality, and the enthusiasm in his favor rapidly subsided. Mesmer soon found it convenient to repair to London. Here he made no great impression; his day had gone by.He died in his native town, in all but penury and obscurity, in 1815.

Clairvoyance now made its appearance, which was but a different phase of magnetism, and Mesmerism was soon but indifferently practised in France. In England the faculty entirely ignored it.

Clairvoyance.

What is it? The word is French, meaning, literally, clear-sightedness. It is a power attributed to certain persons, or claimed by certain persons, of seeing things not visible to the eye, or things at a distance. It is the action of mind over mind,—the seeing, mentally, of one mind through another.

By personal experiment with clairvoyants, I am positively convinced that they follow the mind (thoughts) of the subject or patient. I have laid out my programme before visiting one, and the operator, whether pretending or not to a “trance” state, has followed that course to the end, but usually adding something which was conjectural. Practice helps them very much. But the most of those persons, male and female, who proclaim themselves clairvoyants, are humbugs and impostors.

Let any clear-headed man, who has good intellectual qualities, go to a good clairvoyant, and try the above plan. Think out just the places and persons you wish the clairvoyant (or spiritualist, if he or she choose to call themselves such) to bring up. Stick firmly to your text, and the operator will follow it, if he or she is a clairvoyant. They can tell you nothing that you do not already know. If they go beyond that, it is guessed at.

No person of large causality can be a clairvoyant. The moment they employ cause and effect, they are lost in doubt. How else can you account for nearly all the professional clairvoyants (and spiritualists) being persons of low intellectuality? Of course they deny this; but a fact is a fact, and it can’t be rubbed out!

There is a magnetizing feature in clairvoyance. The operator can make some persons think they see a thing, when it is an impossibility to see it. This influence is sometimes passed from one person to another imperceptibly.

When the earthquake shook up the minds of the Bostonians, in 1870, there was one grand illustration of this fact. A gentleman standing in front of the Old State House, on Washington Street, soon after the shock, asserted that the earthquake had started a stone in the front end of the Sears Building.

“There! don’t you see it?” he exclaimed to the people on the sidewalk, who are always ready to stop and look at any new or curious object, as he pointed towards an imaginary crack in the marble. “It is just above the corner of that window there”—pointing—“a crack in the stone a foot long.”

“O, yes, I see it,” said one and another; and the gentleman moved on, leaving the gaping crowd to gaze after the imaginary rent in the wall.

“Where is it?” inquired a new comer.

“Right up there over the door,” replied one.

“No, over that third window,” said another.

Some “saw it,” and others didn’t “see it,” but all day long the tide of curious humans ebbed and flowed. At eight o’clock in the morning I took a look—not at the broken stone in the marble front, but at the magnetized crowd looking upon an imaginary break. People with large causality looked, exclaimed, “Pooh!” and went on. The credulous stood gazing, and pointing out the rent to the “blind ones, who wouldn’t see,” hour after hour. At noon I again visited the scene. The crowd had shifted, but the same class, male and female, stood gazing at the “calico building,” and the same sort of people “saw the crack over the window.”

EFFECTS OF AN EARTHQUAKE.

A BELIEVER SEES HIS GRANDMOTHER.At six P. M., I again visited the Old State House, and at dusk still again, to behold the crowd straining to get a last look at the rent before darkness shut out the view. On the following day, the scene was repeated, with no mitigation. The fact of the papers denying that there was any rent went for nothing. The crowd came and went, from morning till evening.

The Gates of Moscow.

Some readers may remember the story of the great Wizard of the North, who performed such marvellous feats before the czar, receiving from his highness a splendid present in money, and finally wound up by announcing that he would leave the city of Moscow on the following day, at twelve M., by all the gates of the city at the same time!

The watchmen were doubled at all the gates, to whom a description of the man was sent, and a sharp lookout was commanded, when, lo! just at noon the wizard was seen leaving the city at each separate outlet at the same moment. Of course he could not have left by but one gate, but which of the twelve no one could tell, for he was seen at all, or the watchmen were made to believe that they saw him, as he passed out. To this the watchmen of the several gates testified, and that he uncovered his head to them, as he went past.

At which gate did he really make his exit? The beautiful gate Spass Voratu, or Gate of the Redeemer, has over the archway a picture of the Saviour. All who pass out here are compelled to uncover. Hence it is my belief, as he was seen uncovered, that this was the gate at which he really went out, and at all the rest the watchmen imagined they saw the wizard make his marvellous exit from Moscow.

The Doctor of Antwerp.

Townsend, on Mesmerism, tells an instructing and amusing anecdote of a test, by a learned doctor of Antwerp, upon a clairvoyant girl. The doctor was allowed, at a seance, to select his own test, when he said,—

“If the somnambulist”—that was what he termed her—“tells me what is in my pocket, I will believe.” Then to her he put the question,—

“What is in my pocket?”

“A case of lancets,” was the reply.

“True,” said the doctor, somewhat startled. “But the young lady may know that I am a medical man; hence her guess that I carry a case of instruments in my pocket. But if she will tell me the number of lancets in the case, I will believe.”

“Ten,” was the correct answer.

Still the doctor was sceptical, and said,—

“I cannot yet believe but if the form of the case is described I must yield to conviction.” And the form of the case was given.

“This certainly is very singular,” said the doctor, “but still I cannot believe. Now, if the young lady will give the color of the velvet lining of the case, I really must believe.”

“The color is dark blue,” was her prompt reply.

“True, true!” said the puzzled doctor, and he went away, saying, “It is very curious, very, but still I cannot believe.”

Now, if the doctor had not known that the case was in his pocket, or no one present had known beforehand, no clairvoyant could have described it. What does this prove? That her mind was led by his inquiry to his mind, thence to the article on his mind at the moment. “This is a book” I say. The fact of my saying it, or thinking it, leads my mind to the book.

As a person may look towards an object, as out of the window towards a tree, and not see it till his mind is directed to it, so, on the other hand, he may have his mind (thoughts) directed to a thing that his eyes cannot see, and in a person whose superior brain is susceptible, it maybe reflected so vividly as to permit a description of the object.

One may walk over a stream, upon stones, or ground, and not realize the fact till the mind is directed to it; and the thing may be reversed, and a susceptible person may be led to think that he or she is walking over or through water when none is present. The mind must be directed to an object in order to see it mentally.

A gentleman recently told me that a “medium brought up his old grandmother.”

“How did she describe the old lady as appearing?” I asked.

“In woollen dress and poke bonnet, with specs on, just as she used to appear when I was a boy, forty years ago.”

“I should have thought the fashions would have changed in the unseen world, even if the clothes had not worn out in forty years’ service,” I suggested.

This slightly staggered him, but he replied, “Perhaps fashions do not change in the spirit-world.”

“Then ladies can never be happy there. Besides, what a jolly, comical set they must be down there; the newer fashions appearing hourly in beautiful contrast with the ancient styles; especially the janty, little, precious morsels called hats of to-day, all covered with magnificent ribbons, and flowers, and laces, in contrast with the great ark-like, sombre poke bonnets of forty and a hundred years ago!”

“Sir,” I said, when he did not reply to this last poser,—“Sir, bring your stock of common sense to bear upon the matter, and see that the mind of the medium controlled yours, and led you to believe you saw, as the medium did, through your thoughts, your ancient grandmother; for how else would you imagine her, but as you remembered her, in woollen gown, poke bonnet, and spectacles.”

Visits to a Clairvoyant.

Twenty-five years ago, I visited Madam Young, in Ellsworth, Me.

“You are going a journey,” she soon said, after I was seated, and she had examined my “bumps” to learn that I was a rolling stone. “You are going south-west from here.” “Marvellous!” one might say, who had little reflective qualities of brain, for that was the very thing I was about to do. But from Ellsworth, Maine, which way else could one go, without going “south-west,” unless he really went to the “jumping-off place, away down east?”

Again I visited her in Charleston, S. C.

“You are going a journey soon,” she informed me.

“Which way?” I amusingly inquired.

“Towards the north,” was the necessary reply.

Charleston is at the extremity of a neck of land. I was not expected to jump off into the bay, by going southward, and her answer was the only rational one. She would minutely describe any person, “good, bad, or indifferent,” whom I would fix my mind upon. I was suffering at the time with bronchitis, which she correctly stated. She was the best clairvoyant I have ever tested. She died at Hartford, in 1862.

The following item of the press does not refer to Madam Young:—

A clairvoyant doctor of Hartford proclaims his superiority over other seers on the ground that he “foretells the past and present as well as the future.” We should say he would probably “foretell” them much better. As the Irishman said, one gets on better when one goes backward or stands still.

I noticed his advertisement in a Providence paper, recently, where “Dr. —— foretold the past, present, and future.”

A Night in the Penobscot Mountains.

At Castine I heard of an old lady residing high up in the Penobscot mountains, who could magnetize a sore or a painful limb at sight. Such marvellous stories were told of her “charming,” that I decided to go over the mountain and see her. She was not a “professional,” however, and objected to being made too public. Therefore I made an excuse for calling at the house “on my way afoot across the country,” and was cordially received by the family, of whom there were four generations residing under one roof. The house was a story and half brown cottage, large on the ground, and surrounded by numerous out-houses and barns. The view from the western slope of the mountain where she lived was most magnificent. I reached the farm before sunset. Here I lingered to overlook the beautiful Penobscot as it flowed at my feet, and the far-off islands of the sea. Here one could “gaze and never tire,” out over the grand old forests, down to the sea-side, and upon countless little white specks, the whitened sails of the fishermen and coasting vessels, with an occasional ship or steamboat flitting up and down the noble Penobscot river and bay. Still above me the eagle built her nest in the rocking pines, on the mountain top, and still far below sung the nightingale and wheeled the hungry osprey in his belated piscatorial occupations.

The sun sank behind the western hills, tinging the soft, fleecy clouds with its golden glory. Slowly changing from purple and gold to faint yellow, to dark blue, the clouds gradually assumed the night hue, and sombre shadows crept adown the western mountains’ sides, flinging their dark mantle over the waters, from shore to shore. The sturdy farmer has shouldered his scythe, and reluctantly he leaves the half-mown lot to seek his evening repast at the family table. Then he discovers me, leaning over the gate-bar, rapt in dreamy forgetfulness, and with a hearty salutation extends to me the hospitality, so proverbially cordial, of the old New England farmer. He shows me his pigs in the pen, and his “stock” in the barn-yard, and reaching the house, he calls “mother,” who, appearing in calico and homespun, though with a cheerful and smiling face, is introduced to me as his wife. “A stranger, belated, and I guess pretty tired-like, climbing up here; and I won’t take no excuses from him; so he stays with us to-night.”

THE CHARMER DIVULGES HER SECRET.

I talk with the lady, I play with the babies, I even toy with Towser and Tabby, till tea is set. Now I am introduced to the old lady. I thought I would get to it at last. She was seventy odd years of age, a deaf, but devout old lady, who was easily wheedled into divulging to me her secret of “charming.” She told me she had the “rheumatiz,” and by my tender sympathies and a roll of plaster for her lame back, I got into her own room before bed-time. O, but I came out soon after! She was very deaf.

“You see,” said she, “a woman can’t learn it to another woman—only to a male. He must be a good man.” I nodded assent. “Yes; well, you must have faith.” Again I nodded—she was very deaf. “You must touch the painful part and say—” Here she bent down her lips to my ear and whispered something in seven words which she said I must never tell, and she compelled me to promise never to divulge the secret while I lived, under pain of God’s great displeasure.

Perhaps I had better keep my promise, though the good old lady has long since “gone to her reward.”

Cui Bono?

The question is repeated every time there is a great robbery or a murder committed,—

“Why do not the clairvoyants tell who has committed this crime?”

Simply because those who consult them do not know. If a person knew where the stolen property was secreted, and he consulted a true clairvoyant, he or she might describe the property and the place where it is secreted. Not otherwise. The same with the murderer. Therefore, of what good is it?

In order to do justice to this subject, to present and explain it in all its various phases, we would require a volume, instead of the space allotted in this chapter. But whatever name one may apply to it,—animal magnetism, Mesmerism, clairvoyance, spiritual or trance mediumship,—its success depends mostly upon the credulity of the person.

During the five days preceding May 15, 1869, a reporter of the Boston Post visited seventeen of these clairvoyants, mediums, etc., and some curious facts and startling contradictions were revealed therein.

“Putting it together,” he says, “and carefully epitomizing the amount of fortune that we have in this way been able to purchase, we present our readers with the following balance sheet:” and this, he says, is from the “most experienced and trustworthy fortune-tellers in the good city of Boston, where everything like humbug is most scrupulously avoided.

“Four times we have been told that we were engaged in no business at all, and as many more that our affairs and prospects were never more flourishing. Repeatedly we have been told that we should speedily change our business and abode. On the other hand, we were destined to be a fixture in Boston, and were so well satisfied with our present calling that we should never change. We are not married, but a great many pretty maidens stood ready to help us out of that difficulty.” Again, “we were married, and the father of several roguish boys and bright-eyed girls. Thus far in life we had enjoyed good health, were free from all infirmities, and stood a good chance to reach fourscore and ten.”

“In less than twenty-four hours this sweet hope was buried, and we were advised that death would overtake us suddenly and soon.”

There are various grades of clairvoyants, as of everything else. Here is one class.

“After ascending a rickety, dirty, greasy stairway, you find the madam quartered in a small, square bedroom, poorly and miserably furnished. The room is dirty, dark, and dingy. Portions of the walls are covered with a cheap and quaint paper, patched, here and there, with some of another figure and quality. Pictures of a cheap class are hanging on two sides of the room,—of Columbus, Webster, and three or four love and courtship scenes in France and Germany. The furniture consists of a cheap bed, a dilapidated parlor cooking-stove, a small pine table, three common chairs, and a rocking-chair, cane-bottomed, a big box, covered with a remnant of the national flag, and a few cheap mantel ornaments.“The madam is a woman under thirty, very stoutly built, weighs one hundred and sixty pounds, has quite fair complexion, with pretty blue eyes, light hair, and withal not bad-looking. She was attired in a loose and rather soiled calico dress, wore no ornaments, and looked rather uninviting.”

A Bon Ton Clairvoyant.

The writer visited a special seance at one of the most aristocratic and recherchÉ abodes of the marvellous in this city, not long since. I was ushered into the brilliantly lighted hall by a janty-looking little biddy in white and embroidered apron. That was all I saw of her, as she disappeared and was substituted by the lady of the house, the medium. She was a pretty, pleasant little lady, with brilliant, dancing, light eyes, hair golden brown, and was dressed in a black silk dress, with blue overskirt, a rich lace collar, and flowing sleeves of the same material.

Depositing hat, coat, and cane on the hall rack, I was introduced to the assembled guests in the great parlors. These rooms were united by a wide, open archway, were high, and brilliantly lighted by rich chandeliers in each room. An elegant piano occupied the west side of the front parlor, upon which was a pile of the latest music. The furniture was of black walnut, and richly upholstered in green and gold rep. The mantel was adorned with vases of porcelain, images of marble and terra-cotta, and little knickknacks of foreign production. The walls were hung with a few of Prang’s chromos, oil paintings, and two “spirit” photographs. The most beautiful, as well as the most remarkable, feature of the rooms was the magnificent bouquets of native hot-house flowers, which covered the two marble-topped centre-tables and sideboard. These were presents to the spirits! They did not take them away; the only one I saw removed was knocked over by a careless elbow. I regret to add, that there was no “manifestation,” nor anything revealed, worth recording.

A Bouncer.

A scene that occurred at another place where I previously visited may be considered worthy of notice. I clambered two flights of stairs, and found myself face to face with a very large woman, answering to the alias of Madam ——. She was very fleshy, weighing probably two hundred and thirty-five pounds avoirdupois. Her face was pleasant, and conversation easy. I handing over the required “picture paper,” she tumbled into a great easy-chair, and, without any pretence to a trance, began,—

“I PERCEIVE YOU ARE IN LOVE.”

“I perceive that you are in love.” This was startling news to a bachelor. “There are two pretty females, one dark-complexioned, the other light.” (This is the usual “dodge,” for, if there is a woman in the question, one of the two is bound to answer this general description.) “Which shall we follow?” she very teasingly inquired.

“Either that comes handiest,” was my indifferent reply.

“Well, the dark one, then. She is tall, fair, and is looking anxiously for you to propose. Do you know a lady of this description whom you like?” I regretted that I did not. My “notion” ran to small ladies, of the opposite complexion. “Well,” she said, not the least flurried, “here is one of that kind.” I instantly placed my mind on one of this class,—my sister,—and she ran on. “She is soon to meet you. She is very rich.” (Nellie will be glad to learn this.) “And I perceive a short-like man looking after her fortune. But have no concern; she loves you fondly, and you will marry her very soon. You are going a voyage, or across some water.” (How far can one travel, in this country, without crossing water?) “You will meet an enemy, who will try to injure you in business.”

“What business?” I inquired.

“You are a—yes—mechanic, though your hand is soft. I reckon you’ve been sick. Yes—machinist; make coffee-mills. Yes” (looking sharply into my face). (I was leading her!) “Corn poppers are in your line.” (I nodded, and smiled, for how could I refrain from smiling?) “You trade in tin and earthen ware—chamber ware—spoons—and old boots.” (True.) “You own a splendid house in the city—a large block”-(head).

“Where was I born? Can you see?”

“Yes; you were reared in the country; where there were deep, dark woods—all woods; in a log house, with thatched roof, and clay and stick chimney. A pig—am I right?—yes, a pig and a dog are kept in the same house. The windows are wooden, and—”

“Where was it?” I suggested.

“I should say in Ireland,” she replied.

“Enough, I believe. Now about the other lady,” I said.“The dark one? Yes. She loves you, but is poor. Since you are rich, and a—” Here I tried to impress her that I was married. “You are married, but your wife will not survive you. No, she will soon go to heaven, and you will marry the dark-complexioned lady.”

“Good,” I exclaimed.

“Yes; and will have five boys and three girls.”

“Who?”

“Why, the lady, of course.”

“O!”

“Yes, and they will be happy and healthy.”

Here she informed me I had got my money’s worth.

I think I had.