898 PSYCHOLOGY. 



have taken full possession for a short time. At last, after 

 some fourteen weeks, conformably to the prophecy which 

 ' Mary ' had made when she first assumed ' control,' she 

 departed definitively and the Lurancy-consciousness came 

 back for good. Mr. Eoft" writes : 



" She wanted me to take her home, which I did. She called me Mr. 

 Roff, and talked with me as a young girl would, not being acquainted. 

 I asked her how things appeared to her — if they seemed natural. She 

 said it seemed like a dream to her. Slie met her parents and brothers 

 in a very affectionate manner, hugging and kissing each one in tears of 

 gladness. She clasped her arms around her father's neck a long time, 

 fairly smothering him with kisses. I saw her father just now (eleven 

 o'clock). He says she has been perfectly natural, and seems entirely 

 well." 



Lurancy's mother writes, a couple of months later, that 

 she was 



" perfectly and entirely well and natural. For two or three weeks after 

 her return home, she seemed a little strange to what she had been before 

 she was taken sick last summer, but only, perhaps, the natural change 

 that had taken place with the girl, and except it seemed to her as 

 though she had been dreaming or sleeping, etc. Lurancy has been 

 smarter, more intelligent, more industrious, more womanly, and more 

 polite than before. We give the credit of her complete cure and restora- 

 tion to her family, to Dr. E. W. Stevens, and Mr. and Mrs. Rotf, by 

 their obtaining her removal to Mr. Roff's, where her cure was perfected. 

 We firmly believe that, had she remained at home, she would have died, 

 or we would have been obliged to send her to the insane asylum ; and 

 if so, that she would have died there ; and further, that I could not have 

 lived but a short time with the care and trouble devolving on me. 

 Several of the relatives of Lurancy, including ourselves, now believe 

 she was cured by spirit power, and that Mary Kofi: controlled the girl." 



Eight years later, Lurancy was reported to be married 

 and a mother, and in good health. She had apparently out- 

 grown the mediumistic phase of her existence.* 



On the condition of the sensibility during these inva- 

 sions, few observations have been made. I have found the 

 hands of two automatic writers anaesthetic during the act. 



* My friend Mr. R. Hodgson informs me that he visited Watseka in 

 April 1890, and cross-examined the principal witnesses of this case. His 

 confidence in the original narrative was strengthened by what he learned; 

 and various unpublished facts were ascertained, which increased the plau 

 sibility of the spiritualistic interpretation of the phenomenon. 



