MIND-READING. 



ries and prejudices and agreed to base their 

 subsequent reasoning upon absolute facts de- 

 monstrated in their presence. In approaching 

 the subject of mind-reading, Prof. Sidgwick, 

 of Trinity College, Cambridge, declared it to be 

 a. scandal that there should still be so much in- 

 credulity as to the well authenticated phenom- 

 ena ; and he announced that the basis of all 

 future investigation or theorizing would be 

 the establishing of facts that no one could 

 question. Of course, the element of collusion 

 bars from the investigation any apparent phe- 

 rt'onenon. There is no place for the magician 

 who names cards or articles with the assistance 

 of a confederate. Genuine mind-reading may 

 be divided into four forms : 1. Where some 

 action is performed, the hands of the operator 

 being in gentle contact with the subject of the 

 experiment. 2. Where a similar result is ob- 

 tained with the hands not in contact with the 

 subject. 3. Where a number, name, word, 

 card, or other object has been guessed and ex- 

 pressed in speech or writing without contact, 

 and apparently without possibility of trans- 

 mission of the idea by the ordinary channels 

 of sensation. 4. Where similar thoughts have 

 simultaneously occurred, or impressions been 

 made, in minds far apart. 



The first two forms of the phenomenon are 

 familiar to all as the " willing " games of the 

 drawing-room. A conspicuous example was 

 given by Stuart Cumberland, a professional 

 mind-reader, in Edinburgh, in 1884. He had 

 undertaken to find out by his art a pin secreted 

 anywhere within a radius of a quarter of a 

 mile of the Scott monument. A diamond 

 scarf-pin was handed over for the experiment, 

 and those in the room elected that the pin 

 should be hidden by Mr. Black, and that Mr. 

 Black should be accompanied by a committee. 

 The committee left to secrete the pin, Mr. 

 Cumberland remaining in the hotel with the 

 rest of the company. Mr. Cumberland, blind- 

 folded, then set out in search of the pin. By 

 a thin wire he attached his wrist to that of Mr. 

 Black. At the greenhouse at the foot of the 

 embankment, near Waverly bridge, Mr. Cum- 

 berland found the pin pushed into the earth 

 just inside a little wicket-gate. From the mo- 

 ment Mr. Cumberland left the hotel in his 

 search for the pin till his return, only twelve 

 minutes elapsed. Every possible precaution 

 had been taken to preclude the possibility of 

 collusion between Mr. Cumberland and any one 

 else. Mr. Black and the committee pretended 

 to hide the pin in four different places before 

 they actually secreted it ; and in this way they 

 drew the attention of onlookers from the actual 

 spot in which the pin was placed. A similar 

 instance took place in Boston recently. Wash- 

 ington Irving Bishop proposed to find a scarf- 

 pin that had been hidden within half a mile of 

 the Vendome Hotel. He left the hotel accom- 

 panied by three gentlemen, to whom he was 

 attached by means of twelve or fifteen feet of 

 copper-wire, the thickness of a shoe-lace, which 



passed from wrist to wrist. This wire, Mr. 

 Bishop had explained, was not supposed to 

 serve as a conductor of thought or magnetic 

 power, but simply as an aid to concentrate the 

 thoughts of the party upon the details of the 

 task they had undertaken. Mr. Bishop and his 

 escort clambered into a carriage, and, taking 

 the reins, the former drove off at a trot. With 

 his head enveloped in a black sack or bag, and 

 with the hand of one companion against the 

 back of his head, and the hand of another now 

 at his forehead, and again above and below the 

 wrists, Mr. Bishop drove through Common- 

 wealth Avenue to Exeter, Marlboro, Glouces- 

 ter, and Beacon Streets, making two sharp 

 turns, and now and then retracing his route. 

 Suddenly he pulled up his horses on Exeter 

 Street, midway between Marlboro and Beacon 

 Streets, remarking that he knew he was near 

 the spot where the pin was hidden. He dis- 

 mounted, and led the way to the corner of 

 Marlboro Street, turned to the west, hastened 

 along the sidewalk, and ran up the steps of 

 No. 225 Marlboro Street. He pulled the bell 

 and the party was admitted ; Mr. Bishop led 

 the way up the stairs to the parlor on the sec- 

 ond floor, and hurried to the fire-place. Stoop- 

 ing, he searched among a pile of shavings, and 

 held up the scarf-pin. It was afterward told 

 that, though the route taken by Mr. Bishop 

 was not exactly that pursued by the committee, 

 the general direction was the same, and that 

 Mr. Bishop had once during the journey driven 

 past the house where the pin was concealed. 

 He, however, soon checked his horses and re- 

 traced his steps. Another instance by Mr. 

 Cumberland was closely allied to the phenom- 

 enon called Planchette. The Prince of Wales 

 undertook to think of an animal which Mr. 

 Cumberland should endeavor to describe. " I 

 am no artist," said the Prince, " but I will try 

 to do my best to think in the way in which 

 the animal should be drawn." Mr. Cumberland 

 thereupon took the Prince by the hand, and in 

 a few minutes drew upon a piece of paper a 

 rough outline of an elephant, which, it turned 

 out, was the animal that was in the mind of 

 the Prince. 



As an example of the third form of mind- 

 reading, which is the most interesting, there 

 may be in the same room three persons, two 

 agents so-called, and one percipient, or mind- 

 reader. The reader sits at a table blindfolded, 

 the ears stopped, and all ordinary means of 

 communication with the agents cut off. The 

 agents then go out, one of them draws a figure 

 of some sort and shows it to the other, the lat- 

 ter fixes the picture in his icind, then, closing 

 his eyes (for concentration), he is led back into 

 the room in which the percipient is seated, but 

 at a distance from him. The agent who has 

 the figure vividly in his mind so impresses the 

 percipient or the percipient so penetrates the 

 mind of the agent, that he (the percipient) 

 draws what he sees with his mind's eye, and 

 often the reproductions are remarkable for 



