Upon a July evening in 1913 two women of St. Louis sat with a ouija board upon their knees. Some time before this a friend had aroused their interest in this unfathomable toy, and they had since whiled away many an hour with the inscrutable meanderings of the heart-shaped pointer; but, like thousands of others who had played with the instrument, they had found it, up to this date, but little more than a source of amused wonder. The messages which they had laboriously spelled out were only such as might have come from the subconsciousness of either one or the other, or, at least, were no more strange than innumerable communications which have been received through the reading of the ouija board. But upon this night they received a visitor. The pointer suddenly became endowed with “Many moons ago I lived. Again I come. Patience Worth my name.” The women gazed, round-eyed, at each other, and the board continued: “Wait. I would speak with thee. If thou shalt live, then so shall I. I make my bread by thy hearth. Good friends, let us be merrie. The time for work is past. Let the tabbie drowse and blink her wisdom to the firelog.” “How quaint that is!” one of the women exclaimed. “Good Mother Wisdom is too harsh for thee,” said the board, “and thou shouldst love her only as a foster mother.” Thus began an intimate association with “Patience Worth” that still continues, and a series of communications that in intellectual vigor and literary quality are virtually without precedent in the scant imaginative literature quoted in the chronicles of psychic phenomena. These records have accumulated until they have filled several volumes of typewritten pages, and upon them, and upon the writer’s personal observations of the workings of the phenomena, this narrative is based. They include conversations, maxims, epigrams, allegories, tales, dramas, poems, all the way from sportive to religious, and even prayers, most of them of no little beauty and of a character that may reasonably be considered unique in literature. The women referred to are Mrs. John H. Curran, wife of the former Immigration Commissioner The ouija board is a rectangular piece of wood about 16 inches wide by 24 inches in length and half an inch thick. Upon it the letters of the alphabet are arranged in two concentric arcs, with the ten numerals below, and the words “Yes” and “No” at the upper corners. The planchette, or pointer, is a thin, heart-shaped piece of wood provided with three legs, upon which it moves about upon the board, its point indicating the letters of the words it is spelling. Two persons are necessary for its operation. They place the tips of their fingers lightly upon the pointer and wait. Perhaps it moves; perhaps it does not. Sometimes it moves aimlessly about the board, spelling nothing; sometimes it spells words, but is unable to form a sentence; but often it responds readily enough to the impulses which control it, and even answers questions intelligibly, occasionally in a way that excites the wonder and even the awe of those Mr. W. T. Carrington, an eminent English investigator of psychical phenomena, in an exhaustive work upon the subject, has this to say of the ouija board: “Granting for the sake of argument that the board is moved by the sitter, either consciously or unconsciously, the great and vital question still remains: What is the intelligence behind the board, that directs the phenomena? Whoever sets out to give a final and decisive answer to this question in the present state of our knowledge will have his task cut out for him, and I wish him happiness in the undertaking. Personally I am attempting nothing of the kind.” The ouija board has been in use for many years. There is no element of novelty in the mere fact that curious and puzzling messages are received by means of it. I emphasize this |