DISCOVERY 



83 



with the. data given. The original salary is given as 

 £400 per annum. Any rise of salary given later 

 (according to ordinary practice and failing a definite 

 agreement otherwise) is an increase in the rate of 

 salary, and not in the amount of actual cash paid at 

 the time of the increase. The second half-yearly 

 payment made should, therefore, not be £200 + £10. 

 but (£400 +£io) -f- 2 = £205, and the series of half- 

 yearly pajTTients should read : 

 " First year : 



£200 



£205 



£405 



" Second year : 



£210 

 £215 



£425 



' ' Third year : 



£220 

 £225 



£445-" 

 ***** 



I agree that an employer might be tempted to 

 interpret the bargain in this way. I think, nevertheless, 

 it is a wrong interpretation. The problem stated that 

 the emploj'ee was engaged at a salary which commences 

 at the rate of £400 per annum. Correspondents have 

 led themselves astray by assuming that the man must 

 continue at this rate for the first year. But why 

 should he ? ^V■hat is a half-yearly rise at all unless it 

 becomes operative ever}- sLx months ? Several people 

 think he should wait for the first rise till twelve months 

 were up. But this is quite unfair. What would a 

 man, engaged to receive an annual rise, think of his 

 employer if he had to wait till the end of two years for 

 it ? And why should the cash value of the rise be 

 modified in the least ? A periodic rise of £10 surely 

 means that in any length of time equal to that period 

 the employee receives £10 more than in the preceding 

 period. It seems to me, therefore, that the problem is 

 quite straightforward and was correctly demonstrated 

 by Mr. Stewart. 



***** 



Apropos of my remarks on telepathy in the March 

 issue, a correspondent sends me the following interesting 

 letter : 



" Dr. Paul Bousfield's ' Mr. X ' is the same gentle- 

 man who ' obliged ' by going out of the room in the 

 ' parlour-games ' of our youth — the poker and the 

 hairpin are old friends. 



" There was another pastime of our youth which was 

 on all-fours with the ' simple but illuminating descrip- 

 tion of telepathic power ' given by Dr. Bousfield in his 

 book. It was much more interesting to fix upon some 

 member of the congregation, during the sermon, than 

 to listen to the discourse ; and, having ' fi.xed ' upon 

 him, to make him turn his head in your direction. 

 ***** 



" The writer and his sister have breakfast together 

 almost daily, and have, during that meal, almost 

 daily experiences of ' simultaneously ' mentioning 

 either the same event or the same person. 



" Our mother, who was an invalid for some ten years, 

 and was practically in her bedroom for the whole of 

 the time, had, by some means or other, the appearance 

 of ' knowing ' what was going on around her without 

 any possibility of having been ' informed. ' 

 ***** 



" On one occasion, in particular, we had notice to 

 quit the house we were then living in. The notice was 

 served, by post, in the morning ; but in the afternoon — 

 much to my sister's surprise — my mother said to her, 

 ' As we have to leave this house, I shall not be sorry — 

 it will be a change.' Her hearing was defective, and 

 her room was too far away for her to have heard any 

 conversation in relation to the notice, and, fearing to 

 trouble her, the notice had not been mentioned to her, 

 or spoken of in her presence. 



***** 



" The writer only gives these personal experiences as 

 interesting parallels with the doings of ' Mr. X,' but, 

 interesting though they may be, he still thinks that 

 Bacon was not far wrong when he said : 



" ' The human intellect, in those things which have once 

 pleased it (either because those have been received and 

 believed, or because they delight), draws also all other 

 things to vote with and consent to those — and though 

 the weight and multitude of contrary instances be the 

 greater, yet either it does not observe them, or despises 

 them, or draws distinctions, and so removes and rejects 

 them — not without great and pernicious prejudice — in 

 order that the authority of those previous conclusions 

 may remain unshaken. And so he answered well, 

 who, when the picture of those who had fulfilled their 

 vows after escaping the peril of shipwreck were shown 

 to him hung up in a temple, and he was pressed with 

 the question, did he not after this acknowledge the 

 Providence of the Gods, asked in his turn, "But where 

 are they painted who, after vowing, perished ? " The 

 same is the method of almost every superstition, as in 

 astrolog\^ in dreams, omens, judgments, and the like : 

 in which men who take pleasure in such vanities as 

 these attend to the event when it is a fulfilment : 

 but where they fail (though it be much the more 



