DIRECT AND OBJECTIVE CLAIRVOYANCE—LOST GOODS RESTORED.
This instance of far vision is taken from “A Tangled Yarn,” page 173, “Leaves from Captain James Payn’s Log,” which was published recently by C. H. Kelly. As I knew Captain Hudson, of Swansea, personally, and heard from his own lips the following incident, I have much pleasure in introducing it here as a further illustration of the Cui bono of clairvoyance:—
“The Theodore got into Liverpool the same day as the Bland. She was a larger ship than ours but had a similar cargo. The day that I went to the owners to report ‘all right,’ I met with Captain Morton in a terrible stew because he was thirty bales of cotton short, a loss equal to the whole of his own wages and the mate’s into the bargain. He was so fretted over it that his wife in desperation recommended him to get the advice of a Captain Hudson, who had a young female friend clever as a clairvoyant. We were both sceptical in the matter of clairvoyance. At first Morton didn’t wish to meddle, he said, with ‘a parcel of modern witchcraft,’ and that sort of thing; but he at last yielded to his wife’s urgency and consented to go. There was first of all a half-crown fee to Captain Hudson, and then the way was clear for an interview with the young clairvoyant. I was present to ‘see fair.’ When the girl had been put into the clairvoyant state Morton was instructed to take her right hand in his right hand and ask her any questions he wished. The replies were in substance as follows:—She went back mentally to the port whence the Theodore had sailed, retracing with her hand as she in words also described the course of the ship from Liverpool across the Atlantic, through the West Indian group, etc., back to New Orleans. At length she said, ‘Yes, this is the place where the cotton was lost; it’s put on board a big black ship with a red mark round it.’ Then she began to trace with her hand and describe the homeward course of the vessel, but after re-crossing the Atlantic, instead of coming up the Irish Channel for Liverpool, she turned along the English Channel as though bound for the coast of France; and then stretching out her hand she exclaimed, ‘Oh, here’s the cotton; but what funny people they are; they don’t talk English.’ Captain Morton said at once, ‘I see; it’s the Brunswick, Captain Thomas,’ an American ship that lay alongside of him at New Orleans and was taking in her cargo of cotton while the Theodore was loading, and was bound for Havre de Grace. Captain Morton, satisfied with his clairvoyant’s information, went home and wrote immediately to Captain Thomas, inquiring for his lost cargo. In due course he got an answer that the cotton was certainly there, that it had been taken off the wharf in mistake, and that it was about to be sold for whomsoever it might concern; but that if he (Captain Morton) would remit a certain amount to cover freight and expenses the bales should be forwarded to him at once. He did so, and in due time received the cotton, subject only to the expenses of transit from Havre to Liverpool. Such are the facts; I do not profess to offer any explanation.”