Jap Herron: A Novel Written from the Ouija Board

by Unknown

"Smoke up and cool off, old boy. Perhaps I should apologize. The last secretary I had used to wear an ice-soaked towel inside his head. The girls and old Mark together make a riffle. Well, we will slow up. In my ambition, I have been too eager. It is hard to explain how great a thing is the power to project my mentality through the clods of oblivion. I have so long sought for an opening. Be patient, please. I am not carping. I get Edwin's position. We will be easy with the new saddle, so the nag won't run away. I heard Edwin's suggestion, and it is a good one. We will go straight through the story, beginning where we left off to-night. That was what I intended to do, but that second chapter nipped me."

When next we met we had no thought of any other work than the revision of the story on which we had been working at frequent intervals for about two months. We never knew whether a session at the board would begin with a bit of personal conversation or a prolonged stretch of dictation. We held ourselves passive, ready to fall in with the humor or whim of our astonishingly human though still intangible guest. The beginning of that evening's work—it was the 6th of September—was almost too great an upheaval for me. The planchette fairly raced as it spelled the words:

"This story will have legitimate chapters. Nosy nopsis. Then ameisjapherron. Begin. Asevery well-bred story has a hero, and as the reseems better material in jap than in any other party to this story, we will dignify him."

I wanted to stop, but my husband insisted that I make no break in the impatient dictation. He had perceived that the first string of letters spelled the words, "No synopsis. The name is Jap Herron," but I could not see his copy, and to my mind the sentences spelled chaos. A little farther along I ventured an interruption, when we had transmitted the sentence, "The folks in Happy Hollow continued to say Magnesia long after she left its fragrant depths." I had just spelled out the name, Agnesia, and I was too deeply engrossed with the labor of following the letters to even attempt to understand the meaning. I turned to my husband and said:

"It probably didn't intend to stop on that letter M," whereat the planchette rebuked my stupidity thus: "Emily, they called her Magnesia."

After that, I contrived to get control of my nerves, and the rest of the dictation was not so difficult. When we had received the crisp final sentence, "And stay he did," the planchette went right on with this information, "This is the first copy of the first chapter. There will be 25 or more chapters. This is enough for this time, as the office force is a little weak. But results ... very good. We will finish the other story and dip into this at the next session. There will be better speed in this, for there will be no revision until it is finished. We will work hard and fast. Emily may meet folks she knows in this tale, for she knows a town with a river and a Happy Hollow. I did not intend to start another story so soon, but other influences are so strong that they may try to dominate the board. This will not tire you so much. You must be determined not to permit intruders. If they are recognized, you will not be free of them again. I am pushed aside. Leave the board when they appear. Good-bye."

The use of the name, Happy Hollow, forms a link with Hannibal; but if any of the characters in "Jap Herron" were drawn from life, they must have belonged to Mark Twain's generation and not to mine. Mark never seems to take into account the fact that he left Hannibal before I was born, and that there have been many changes in the old town. The character of Jacky Herron may have been suggested by a disreputable drunken fisherman whose experiences I have heard my father relate; but there is one little touch in that first chapter that must have come from Mark's own mind, since the underlying fact was not known to any of us until we read Walter Prichard Eaton's article on birds' nests, months later. When we transmitted that statement, "The father of the little Herrons was a kingfisher," none of us knew that the kingfisher's home nest is a filthy hole, close to the river bank. The application is too perfect to have been accidental.

Before another chapter of the story was transmitted, I went to spend a morning with Mrs. Hays. At the request of her son, we consented to allay his curiosity by a visible demonstration of the workings of the mysterious board, of which he had necessarily heard much. He hoped to receive some definite communication from his father, or the sister who had died in her girlhood; but this is what he recorded:

"Emily, I gave those synopses not for a guide but to prevent others from imposing their ideas and confusing you. It might be said that it made it easier for you, but that idea is wrong. It would be easier to write the story direct. You have learned that this was wise, because constant efforts have been made to break in and alter the stories. For this reason I gave you the synopses, so that you could not be deceived. Now I am going to trust you. I intended to advise you that it would be a more convincing psychic record, if you have nothing on which a subconscious mind might be said to be working. The synopsis was for your protection, and has no value to the record. At first you had such a conglomerate method of working that it was necessary. You did not recognize the difficulties that were likely to occur. You were apt to employ temporary help, so eliminate."

Just what was meant by "temporary help" is not apparent; but there was no opportunity to question him further, for at that moment we were interrupted by the arrival of another luncheon guest and the board was put aside. We devoted two sessions to the revision and finishing touches of the troublesome short story, and then we plunged into the transmission of "Jap Herron" in deadly earnest.