342 MY LIFE 



ETe also urged that the mental tests and that of the unex- 

 pected answer about Bellew did not require any other intelli- 

 gence, because equally unexpected things and sayings occurred 

 in dreams, in which we ourselves supply the whole of the matter 

 dreamt of. He therefore thought "that a man may, uncon- 

 sciously, or subconsciously, supply the other side of a dialogue 

 when he is wide awake, just as well as he can when he is 

 fast asleep." This shows how ingenious was my correspondent 

 as a dialectician, and rendered me disinclined to carry on a 

 further correspondence which seemed likely to be a long one. 

 He quite overlooked, however, the circumstance that our cor- 

 respondence began, not on account of his being unconvinced 

 by what he witnessed, but by using the fact that I, after much 

 longer experience and a much wider acquaintance with the 

 subject, had been convinced, as a weapon against me in a 

 scientific argument. 



However, on the whole, he took my criticism, and even my 

 ridicule, in very good part- — better in fact than I expected — 

 and he was completely mystified when I told him that my 

 knowdedge of his letters did not come directly or indirectly 

 through any of Darwin's family. In order to relieve their 

 minds of such a supposition, I told them how I got to see 

 copies of the letters. 



In this letter, however, he gave me an account of a " sack 

 trick " he had seen, which he thought as wonderful as anything 

 he saw with Williams, but which he persuaded the performer 

 to show him the secret of. As I think this may interest my 

 readers, I will give it in his own words. 



" But for the fact that he is now dead, I could have intro- 

 duced you to an American medium who would have gone to 

 your own house, and allowed you to furnish your own cabinet, 

 handcuffs, canvas sack, twine, sealing-wax, and seal. Having 

 fastened his hands together behind his back by means of hand- 

 cuffs as tightly as possible, you might have taken him to the 

 cabinet, placed him inside the sack, tied the mouth of the 

 sack as tightly with the string as you could, sealed the knots 

 and likewise the two ends of the string to the outside of the 

 sack. Lastly, you might have shut and locked the cabinet 



