March 1, 1888.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



103 



an attempt to pxplaiii obscurum per ohscurius. The only 

 path to an explanation that seems worth trying is that on 

 which Professor Barrett and others have attempted to 

 advance inquiry — namely, as to the influence of mind on 

 mind under test conditions. And unfortunately, while this 

 path is infested bj- charlatanism and trickery, what has 

 been thus far disclosed with more or less clearness in this 

 direction has been of little promise. Like Sir Isaac New- 

 ton's experiments on the action of gi-avity under test con- 

 ditions, which gave evidence only as to the nature of the 

 attractive force exerted by matter on matter, but in no 

 sense explained how matter can act on matter instantly 

 over vast distances, so these experiments on the action of 

 mind on mind within the same room, though useful as indi- 

 cating the nature of this action, sugge.--t no explanation 

 whatsoever of the observed foct that mind can act on mind 

 at a distance, and apparently in an instant of time. 



In fine, it appeirs to mo that the evidence regarding the 

 communication of impressions from mind to mind over 

 great distances, in such sort that apparitions of distant 

 persoriS dying or suffering seem to be seen by their friends 

 or relatives, is too strong to be rejected by any conscientious 

 student of facts. Science is no more justified in rejecting 

 this evidence merely because no explanation is available 

 than astronomers would he justified in rejecting the ob- 

 served fact that bodies influence other bodies from a distance, 

 merely because, as Newton himself admitted, no one can 

 explain how matter can act where it is not. Some com- 

 munication there must be between sun and planet, between 

 planet and satellite, and, beyond each solar .system, between 

 sun and sun and between galaxy and galaxy ; but no one 

 has 3-et shown what that communication may be. In like 

 manner even the most cautious student of science may well 

 believe that there may be some means of communication, 

 under special conditions, between mind and mind at a 

 distance, though no one may be able to explain how such 

 communication is brought about. 



VARIETIES OF AMERICAN LIFE. 



ceiving dangers 

 for generations, 



S^IERICANS are apt sometimes to be amused, 

 and occasionally get rather angrj', when 

 they hear Englishmen who ought to know 

 better blundering about American life, 

 imagining semi-savage conditions in regions 

 where culture prevails at least as fully as 

 in the greater part of the old country, con- 

 from Indians where no Indians have lived 

 and in general assuming that the wild ways 

 of frontier regions continue in regions long since reduced to 

 order and civilisation. I have been gravely asked whether 

 it is not well always to be armed even in New York and 

 Boston, whether in my Missouri home I felt safe from 

 Indians outside the suburbs of St. Joseph, wiiether in my 

 Florida home I am not in continual dread lest alligators 

 should devour my children. And I have foncied that my 

 answers have been doubted when I have x-eplied that in all 

 my time in America, from 1873 until now, I have never 

 thought of carrying any weapon more effective than a 

 pocket penknife (kept only for a penknife's work), that the 

 nearest approach to an Indian I have seen within a hundred 

 miles of St. Joseph has been an Indian negro half-breed 

 working in my own stable, and very far from warlike in 

 aspect, while in Florida I have only seen alligators when on 

 board a launch or river steamer specially chartered for a trip, 

 in which, if fortunate, an alligator or two might be caught 

 sight of, lazily lying in some sequestered nook, and, even so, 

 not safe from the band of man. 



But, although most of the ideas which untravelled English- 

 men too commonly entei'tain respecting life in America, and 

 especially in the far "West, are absurdly remote from the 

 truth, yet Americans are somewhat too apt to deny actually 

 existent varieties of American life, which do unquestion- 

 ably differ in marked degree from anything we have in the 

 old country. An American fellow-passenger a few days ago 

 (I write on February 1, and the conversation took place on 

 January 2-i) so persistently claimed that no differences exist, 

 that I took the first newspaper which came to my hands 

 afterwards, viz., the Chicaijo Trihme for Sunday, January 25, 

 and carefully noted all the paragraphs which indicated, as I 

 think the English reader at least will perceive, the existence 

 of varieties in American life for which in England, and for 

 the most part in Europe itself, we have no counterparts. 



I take these in the order in which I noted them : — 



First. I read that at a meeting of Irish Volunteers, 

 O'Donovan Rossa and Frank O'Byrne advised Irishmen to 

 imitate the men who killed Cavendish and Burke, and to 

 use dynamite. I do not read any expressions of abhon-ence 

 for the utterances of these shameless miscreants, or of dis- 

 gust for the state of law in America which permits such 

 utterances to be safely made in public. No nation has quite 

 shaken off savagery in which such a thing is possible. 



Secondly. I read news from Nogales, Arizona, of a fight 

 in which the Federal troops, aided by a party of citizens 

 (" most all the citizens " of the town where the fight took 

 place " were engaged in it," says the paper ungrammatically), 

 " whipped a band of Indians, killing three and wounding 

 many, besides capturing five squaws and seven children. 



Thirdhj. At Amite City, Louisiana, a coloured man 

 accttsed of an assault on a white girl, and lodged in gaol, is 

 taken from the hands of the sheriff by a body of armed 

 citizens (a highly respectable body we are assured, and we 

 should imagine they must have been), and " hanged to a 

 tree " a hundred yards from the gaol. 



Fourthly. W. A. Pinkerton, of the Pinkerton detectives, 

 captures a gang of train robbers who had " operated " in 

 Arkansas and Texas. (" Operated" is good!) Among the 

 multitudinous train robberies operated by this party one 

 will strike Englishmen who are accustomed to attriljute a 

 certain degree of pluck to their kindred in America as 

 remarkable, to say the least. A number of coloured men 

 belonging to the United States army, ofiicered by four white 

 men, were on board a train attacked by three ruffian 

 brothei-s named Barrows. Those gallant men, coloured 

 and white, and a number of other passengers who were 

 armed, allowed the thieves to rob the train undisturbed, and 

 were themselves despoiled of their property and disarmed, 

 their reason for this " calm, dishonorable, vile submission " 

 being lest in the interchange of shots any of the women on 

 board should be injured I Their rank cowardice might thus 

 be extenuated, possibly, if the women had requested them 

 to display it ; but as a matter of fact several of the women 

 on board expressed their indignation loudly. It is hardly 

 necessary to say that train robbery, thus encouraged by the 

 cowardice of passengers, remains a thriving business. I 

 was travelling over the road where the robbery took place 

 only a few days before ; and so far as I can judge, if I had 

 been one of the passengers, and cowardice had so far un- 

 nerved me that I could have joined those who advised passive 

 submission on the part of four armed ofiicers, a .score of 

 soldiers, and a hundred armed passengers, to three ruffians, 

 I should have wished afterwards to be put carefully out of 

 existence by some process such as my nerves (shown to be 

 so weak) could comfortably bear — say laudanum. " Shamed 

 life" must be a hateful thing to those four officers, at 

 least. 



Fifthly. A party of dunderpated Kentucky farmers arm 



