634 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



studies, and incorporate a manual department with your high-school. 

 The investment will pay, and the means of further growth will soon 

 be found. 



2. Mature your plans and lay them before your wealthy, public- 

 spirited men. Almost for the first time in America we are harvesting 

 a splendid crop of millionaires. They abound in every city. They 

 know that boundless wealth left to sons and heirs is often a curse, 

 rarely a blessing, and they would fain put it to the noblest uses. In 

 England such wealth would naturally go to the establishment of noble 

 families, or the purchase of grand estates which should be transmitted 

 unimpaired to the oldest sons through successive generations. 



Our American peerage shall consist of those who devote the gains 

 of an honorable career to the establishment of institutions for the bet- 

 ter education of generations that shall come after them. Let others 

 follow the example of Cornell, Vanderbilt, and Cooper, of New York ; 

 Stevens, of Hoboken ; Girard, of Philadelphia ; Johns Hopkins, of 

 Baltimore ; Case, of Cleveland ; Rose, of Terre Haute ; the Commer- 

 cial Club, of Chicago ; and those whom I could name in St. Louis. 



-+++- 



A NOTE ON "THOUGHT-BEADING." 



Bt hoeatio donkin. 



AN article on this subject in the "Nineteenth Century" for June 

 contains conclusions so inadequately supported by trustworthy 

 facts that a few words of comment seem to be called for. The matter 

 in question has attained a somewhat undue prominence of late ; but if 

 it is as simple and intelligible as it appears to be to most who have 

 investigated it with care, and with minds free from mystical bias, any 

 aid toward the extinction of what must then be regarded as an ignis 

 fatuus of pseudo-science carries with it its own justification. 



The position of the writers of the article seems to be that it is pos- 

 sible for one person to divine the thoughts of another in the absence 

 of any known means of communication. This inference is based 

 mainly on a series of statements of cases where several children of a 

 certain family, as well as a servant-girl in the same family, were pro- 

 fessedly able to tell words and objects thought of in their absence, 

 without contact with or sign from those who knew what they were 

 required to do. 



It may be taken as proved that the explanation of muscular indi- 

 cation amply covers all cases where, as in the well-known drawing- 

 room game of " Willing," there is actual contact between the person 

 who guides and the person guided. It is difficult, indeed, for the 

 guider, who is intent on the success of the experiment, to avoid giving 



