— 492 — 



came at "last, on the edge of something white, which turned out, as it was com- 

 pletely excavated, to be the required cup. A corresponding saucer was also found 

 after a little more digging. Both objects were in among the roots which spread 

 every-where through the ground, so that it seemed as if the roots were growing 

 round them. The cup and saucer both corre-ponded exactly, as regards their 

 pattern, with those that had been brought to the picnic, and constituted a seventh 

 cup and saucer when brought back to where we were to have break fast. I may 

 well add at once that afterwards, when we got home, my wife questioned our 

 principal khitmutgar, as to how many cups and saucers of that particular kind 

 we possessed. In the progress of years, as the set was an old set, some had been 

 broken, but the man at once said that nine teacups were left. "When collected 

 and counted that number was found to be right, without reckoning the excavated 

 cup. That made ten, and as regards the pattern, it was one of a somewhat 

 peculiar kind, bought a good many years previously in London, and which 

 assuredly could never have been matched in Simla. 



Now, the nation that human beings can create material objects by the 

 exercise of mere psychological pow^r, will of course be revolting to the under- 

 standings of people to whom this whole subject is altogether stränge. It is. not 

 making the idea much more acceptable to say that the cup and saucer appear in 

 this case to have been „doubled" rather than created. The doubling of objects 

 seems merely another kind of creation — creation accoiding to a pattern. However, 

 the facts, the occurrences of the niorning I have described, were at all events 

 exactly as I have related them. I have been careful as to the strict and minute 

 truthfulness of every detail. If the phenomenon was not what it appeared to be — 

 a most wonderful display of a power of which the modern scientific world has 

 no comprehension whatever — it was, of course, an elaborate fraud. That suppo- 

 sition, however, setting aside the moral impossibility from any point of view of 

 assuming Madame Blavatsky capable of participation in such an imposture, will 

 only bear to be talked of vaguely. As a way out of the dilemma it will not 

 serve any person of ordinary intelligence who is aware of the facts, or who trusts 

 my Statement of them. The cup and saucer were assuredly dug up in the way 

 I describe. If they were not desposited there by occult agency, they must have 

 been buried there beforehand. Now, I have described the character of the ground 

 from which they were dug up ; assuredly that had been undisturbed for years by 

 the character of the Vegetation upon it. But it may be urged that from some 

 other part of the sloping ground a sort of tunnel may have been excavated in 

 the tust instance through which the cup and saucer could have been thrust into 

 the place where they were found. Now this theory is barely tenable as regards 

 its phvsical possibility. If the tunnel had been big enough for the purpose it 

 would have left traces which were not perceptible on the ground — which were 



