The Shadow World | Page 2

exist," replied Mrs. Quigg. "The
word means feeling at a distance, does it not, professor?"
Harris, a teacher of English, who seldom took a serious view of
anything, answered, "I should call it a long-distance touch."
"Do you believe in hypnotism, Dr. Miller?" asked Miss Brush, quietly
addressing her neighbor, a young scientist whose specialty was
chemistry.
"No," replied he; "I don't believe in a single one of these supernatural
forces."
"You mean you don't believe in anything you have not seen yourself,"
said I.
To this Miller slowly replied: "I believe in Vienna, which I have never
seen, but I don't believe in a Vienna doctor who claims to be able to
hypnotize a man so that he can smile while his leg is being taken off."
"Oh, that's a fact," stated Brierly, the portrait-painter; "that happens

every day in our hospitals here in New York City."
"Have you ever seen it done?" asked Miller, bristling with opposition.
"No."
"Well," asserted Miller, "I wouldn't believe it even if I saw the
operation performed."
"You don't believe in any mystery unless it is familiar," said I, warming
to the contest.
"I certainly do not believe in these childish mysteries," responded
Miller, "and it is strange to me that men like Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir
William Crookes should believe in slate-writing and levitation and all
the rest of that hocus-pocus."
"Nevertheless, hypnotism is a fact," insisted Brierly. "You must have
some faith in the big books on the subject filled with proof. Think of
the tests--"
"I don't call it a test to stick pins into a person's tongue," said Mrs.
Quigg. "We newspaper people all know that there are in the hypnotic
business what they call 'horses'--that is to say, wretched men and boys,
women sometimes, who have trained themselves so that they can hold
hot pennies, eat red pepper, and do other 'stunts'--we've had their
confessions times enough."
"Yes, but their confessions are never quite complete," retorted young
Howard. "When I was in college I had one of these 'horses' appeal to
me for help. He was out of a job, and I told him I'd blow him to the
supper of his life if he would render up the secrets of his trade. He took
my offer, but jarred me by confessing that the professor really could
hypnotize him. He had to make believe only part of the time. His
'stunts' were mostly real."
"It's the same way with mediums," said I. "I have had a good deal of
experience with them, and I've come to the conclusion that they all,

even the most untrustworthy of them, start with at least some small
basis of abnormal power. Is it not rather suggestive that the number of
practising mediums does not materially increase? If it were a mere
matter of deception, would there not be thousands at the trade? As a
matter of fact, there are not fifty advertising mediums in New York at
this moment, though of course the number is kept down by the feeling
that it is a bit disreputable to have these powers."
"You're too easy on them," said Howard. "I never saw one that wasn't a
cheap skate."
Again I protested. "Don't be hasty. There are nice ones. My own
mother had this power in her youth, so my father tells me. Her people
were living in Wisconsin at the time when this psychic force developed
in her, and the settlers from many miles around came to see her
'perform.' An uncle, when a boy of four, did automatic writing, and one
of my aunts recently wrote to me, in relation to my book The Tyranny
of the Dark, that for two years (beginning when she was about
seventeen) these powers of darkness made her life a hell. It won't do to
be hasty in condemning the mediums wholesale. There are many decent
people who are possessed by strange forces, but are shy of confessing
their abnormalities. Ask your family physician. He will tell you that he
always has at least one patient who is troubled by occult powers."
"Medical men call it 'hysteria,'" said Harris.
"Which doesn't explain anything," I answered. "Many apparently
healthy people possess the more elementary of these powers--often
without knowing it."
"We are all telepathic in some degree," declared Brierly.
"Perhaps all the so-called messages from the dead come from living
minds," I suggested--"I mean the minds of those about us. Dr. Reed, a
friend of mine, once arranged to go with a patient to have a test sitting
with a very celebrated psychic who claimed to be able to read sealed
letters. Just before the appointed day, Reed's patient died suddenly of
heart-disease, leaving a sealed letter on his desk. The doctor, fully alive

to the singular opportunity, put the