She classifies her results as follows:—
(1) After-images or recrudescent memories coming up from the subconscious strata to which they had fallen.
(2) Objectivations, or the visualizing of ideas or images which already exist consciously or unconsciously in the mind.
(3) Visions possibly telepathic, or clairvoyant, implying acquirement of knowledge by supranormal means.
The following are some of Miss X.’s experiments:—
She had been occupying herself with accounts and opened a drawer to take out her banking book; accidentally her hand came in contact with the crystal she was in the habit of using, and she welcomed the suggestion of a change of occupation. Figures, however, were still uppermost, and the crystal showed her nothing but the combination 7694. Dismissing this as probably the number of the cab she had driven in that morning, or a chance combination of figures with which she had been occupied, she laid aside the crystal and took up her banking book, which certainly she had not seen for several months. Greatly to her surprise she found that 7694 was the number of her book, plainly indicated on the cover.
She declares that she would have utterly failed to recall the figures, and could not even have guessed the number of digits nor the value of the first figure.
Again:—Having carelessly destroyed a letter without preserving the address of her correspondent she tried in vain to recall it. She knew the county, and, searching on a map, she recognized the name of the town, one quite unfamiliar to her, but she had no clue to the house or street, till at length it occurred to her to test the value of the crystal as a means of recalling forgotten knowledge. A short inspection showed her the words, “H. House,” in gray letters on a white ground. Having nothing better to rely upon she risked posting the letter to the address so curiously supplied. A day or two brought an answer—on paper headed “H. House” in gray letters on a white ground.
One more illustration from Miss X., one of her earliest experiments, numbered 11, in her notebook. There came into the crystal a vision perplexing and wholly unexpected: a quaint old chair, an aged hand, a worn black coat-sleeve resting on the arm of the chair. It was slowly recognized as a recollection of a room in a country vicarage which she had not been in and had seldom thought of since she was a child of ten. But whence came the vision, and why to-day? The clue was found. That same day she had been reading Dante, a book which she had first learned to read and enjoy by the help of the aged vicar with the “worn black coat-sleeve” resting on the same quaint, oak chair-arm in that same corner of the study in the country vicarage.
Here are two cases from the same writer belonging to the third division of her classification, namely, where an explanation of the vision requires the introduction of a telepathic influence. On Monday, February 11th, she took up the crystal with the deliberate wish and intention of seeing a certain figure which occupied her thoughts at the time; but instead of the desired figure the field was preoccupied by a plain little nosegay of daffodils, such as might be formed by two or three fine flowers bunched together. This presented itself in several different positions notwithstanding her wish to be rid of it, so as to have the field clear for her desired picture. She concluded that the vision came in consequence of her having the day before seen the first daffodils of the season on a friend’s dinner-table. But the resemblance to these was not at all complete, as they were loosely arranged with ferns and ivy, whereas the crystal vision was a compact little bunch without foliage of any kind. On Thursday, February 14th, she very unexpectedly received as a “Valentine” a painting on a blue satin ground, of a bunch of daffodils corresponding exactly with her crystal vision. She also ascertained that on Monday the 11th, the artist had spent several hours in making studies of these flowers, arranged in different positions.