"'... Without doubt the shell spoke the truth.... As you know, I left you soon after seven. After walking fifteen minutes I suddenly met Mr. M.... I was thinking about points in connection with the experiments we had been engaged in, and am afraid I did not follow his remarks very closely ... but he made some allusion to little dishes at a vegetarian restaurant somewhere, and immediately feeling an interest in the question whether he was a champion of the vegetarian cause, I interrupted him with "Are you a vegetarian then?" I believe these are the exact words I used. He will be sure to remember this, and must be questioned.'
"'June 23rd. [G. A. S. to X.]
"'I have to-day walked over the course which I took on June 11th, from [Miss X.'s house] to the spot where I met Mr. M. It took just eleven minutes. If I left you at 7.15, it was probably about 7.30, or a very few minutes later, that I put the query to Mr. M.'"
Mr. M. was away from home, and though at once applied to for corroboration, did not send a written statement till June 22nd, when he writes to Mr. Smith (after failing to recall the exact particulars of the previous conversation):—
"The main fact remains that you asked me, to the best of my belief—bearing on my strong praise of the cooking at the Oxford Street Café—whether 'I was a vegetarian.' That is the core of the whole matter, and that is sound."
From Mr. Smith's statement it would appear that the voice in the shell reproduced words actually spoken about three-quarters of an hour before. That is, as is very generally the case, the clairvoyante perceived, not the events actually happening at the moment, but events already passed and chronicled in the memories of those who took part in them. This fact, which seems to have been commonly overlooked by the earlier writers on the subject, is in itself a very strong argument for the telepathic explanation of clairvoyance. Knowledge of a contemporaneous scene might be conceived as due to independent vision on the part of the percipient; knowledge of what is already past can most readily be explained as derived from other minds.[147]
No. 106.—From DR. BACKMAN.
This explanation is very clearly indicated in the following case, quoted from the paper already referred to (Proc. S.P.R., vol. vii. p. 216). Dr. Backman, after describing how occasionally he asked his subject, while awake, to look in the crystal, writes:—
"I told the clairvoyant, Miss Olsen, to see in the crystal what Miss ——, who was present, had been doing the night before. After a few moments she said that she saw a meadow in the crystal, and in it a certain number (giving the number correctly) of ladies and gentlemen, who were dancing and drinking champagne. This seemed to her very improbable, because it was then November, a season that is not chosen in this country [Sweden] for picnics. She described minutely several other things which were not written down, but were quite correct, according to what Miss —— said later on."
In a letter dated December 19th, 1890, Dr. Backman adds:—
"Several persons were present. No notes were taken, but the story made so much sensation that it has not been forgotten. Miss —— supplemented the account to-day by reminding me that on looking into the crystal Miss Olsen first gave a perfect description of a lady with whom Miss —— had talked on meeting her in the street the day before; she described her face, her dress, etc., very accurately, and said besides that she had two gold rings on the fourth finger of her left hand (a sign of marriage). After that Miss Olsen suddenly began to laugh and said: 'Miss —— is in a merry company—they are dancing—the corks of the champagne bottles are jumping,' etc. Miss —— cannot remember that any wrong detail was given by Miss Olsen, except that she thinks the number of persons present was not correctly given."