[27] As to the delusion of sound. Sound waves are deflected just as light waves are reflected by the intervention of a proper medium and under certain conditions it is a difficult thing to locate their source. Stuart Cumberland told me an interesting test to prove the inability of a blindfolded person to trace sound to its source. It is exceedingly simple; merely clicking two coins over the head of the blindfolded person.
[28] This refers to our contemplated tour of the world. When I first became acquainted with Ira Davenport in 1909 I found that he was very anxious to re-enter the entertainment field and we set about planning a tour of the world together. By combining his reputation and my knowledge and experience we would have been able to set the world agog. Under no circumstances, however, would we have claimed our performance Spiritualistic, but just a mystery entertainment.
[29] The start of the Liverpool riot can be laid indirectly to Ferguson. He protested the way the boys had been secured and without waiting for instructions or a word from the Brothers, whipped out a knife and cut the ropes. Ira told me that it was too bad that Ferguson did that for they never could have secured them so they could not have produced some manifestations.
[30] Ira told me that during the disturbance in Liverpool, John Hughes, Fenian head, offered him five hundred Irishmen to clean up any mob of Englishmen.
[31] Ira told me that he believed that their success so diminished the popularity of the theatre where Irving was playing that the stars were forced to resort to various schemes to counteract the dwindling receipts at the box office.
See [Appendix B] for Irving’s speech.
[32] The reader should not confuse this man Jacobs with Jacoby, the German escape-artist, a rope specialist who invented a number of rope tricks that are still well worth presenting.
[33] He wrote me a letter on July 5th, 1911, and was waiting to see me at the time of his death on the 8th. I was to leave New York on receipt of his letter but his daughter Zelie wired me of his passing away.
[34] When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was appearing in Australia in 1920 he met Bendigo Rymer, the grandson of J. S. Rymer, who had entertained Home lavishly. Bendigo showed Sir Arthur a number of letters from his grandfather which proved conclusively that Home had been guilty of taking advantage of the man’s friendship. Rymer had entertained Home in England and sent him to Rome with his son to study art. From Rome young Rymer wrote his father that as soon as Home had been able to elbow his way into society he totally ignored him though as host he was paying Home’s expenses. Finally Home ran away and lived with a titled English woman, shunning Rymer altogether.
Sir Arthur in his book, “The Wanderings of a Spiritualist,” says in reference to Home: “For weeks he lived at her villa, although the state of his health would suggest that it was rather as a patient than a lover.” In his introduction to Madame Home’s book Sir Arthur entirely forgives this rude action of Home and strongly defends his base ingratitude.