Seen and Unseen | Page 4

no news at the moment; and yet I had spoken of my dreams to no one, "for fear they should come true," having some pathetic, childish notion that silence on my part might avert the catastrophe. In all his previous and numerous illnesses I had never dreamt that any special one was fatal.
During the next few years of school life my psychic faculty remained absolutely in abeyance. In a fashionable school, surrounded by chattering companions and the usual paraphernalia of school work, classes, and masters, etc., I can, however, recall many a time when suddenly everything around me became unreal and I alone seemed to have any true existence; and even that was for the time merged in a rather unpleasant dream, from which I hoped soon to wake up. This sensation was quite distinct from the one--also well known to me in those days and later--of having "done all this before," and knowing just what somebody was about to say.
Probably both these sensations are common to most young people. It would be interesting to note which of the two is the more universal.
I pass on now to the time when I was about eighteen years old, and a constant visitor, for weeks and months at a time, in the house of my godfather, the archdeacon of a northern diocese. His grandson, then a young student at Oxford, of about my own age, must have been what we should now call a very good sensitive. It was with him that I sat at my first "table," more as a matter of amusement than anything else, and certainly young Morton Freer treated the "spirits" in the most cavalier fashion. They did not seem to resent this, and he could do pretty much what he liked with them. This may be a good opportunity for explaining that when I speak in this narrative of "spirits" I do so to save constant periphrasis, and am quite consciously "begging the question" very often, as a matter of verbal convenience.
In those days I don't think we troubled ourselves much about theories, and when we found that Morton and I alone could move a heavy dining-room table, or any other piece of heavy furniture quite beyond our normal powers, practically without exerting any strength at all, we looked upon it as an amusing experience without caring to inquire whether the energy involved had been generated on this side the veil or on the other side. We could certainly not have moved such weights under ordinary circumstances, even by putting forth all our combined strength, and we could only do so, for some mysterious reason, when we had been "sitting at the table" beforehand. Ingenious Theories of Human Electricity raised to a higher power by making a Human Battery, etc. etc., were not so common then as now, and we accepted facts without trying to solve their problems.
The dear, hospitable Archdeacon would put his venerable head inside the door now and then, shake it at us half in fun, and yet a good deal in earnest, and I think he was more than doubtful whether our parlour games were quite lawful!
We were very innocent and very ignorant in those days on the subject of psychic laws; and probably this was our salvation, for I can remember no terrible or weird experience, such as one reads of nowadays when tyros take to experiments.
And yet my knowledge and experiences of later days lead me to endorse most heartily the well-known dictum of Lawrence Oliphant--namely, that when he saw people sitting down in a casual, irresponsible way to "get messages through a table," it reminded him of an ignorant child going into a powder magazine with a lighted match in its hand.
Staying in this same house, I can next recall a flying visit from a brother of mine, who had just spent three months, on leave from India, in America, where he had taken introductions, and had been the guest of various hospitable naval and military men, who had shown him round the Washington Arsenal, West Point Academy, and so forth. My kind old host had begged him to take us on his way back to London; and I remember well his look of utter amazement when Morton and I had lured him to "the table" one afternoon, and he was told correctly the names of two or three of these American gentlemen.
"I must have mentioned them to my sister in my letters," he said, turning to the younger man. I knew this was not the case, but it was difficult to prove a negative.
It was a relief, therefore, when my brother suggested what he considered a "real test," where previous knowledge on my part must be excluded.
"Let them tell me the name of a bearer I had once in