Fig. 21
Fig. 21a
9
A new method of experiment invented itself by accident; and makes perhaps the strangest story yet. There came a letter from a clergyman in South Africa, saying that he was sending me a copy of his wife’s novel dealing with South African life. I get many letters from strangers, and answer politely, and as a rule forget them quickly. Some time afterwards came two volumes, entitled, “Patricia, by Marcus Romondt,” and I did not associate them with the clergyman’s letter. I glanced at the preface, and saw that the work had something to do with the religious cults of the South African natives. I didn’t read more than twenty lines—just enough to classify the book as belonging in Craig’s department. Everything having to do with philosophy, psychology, religion and medicine is first read by her, and then fed back to me in her eager discourses. I took the volumes home and laid them on her table, saying, “This may interest you.” The remark attracted no special attention, for the reason that I bring her a book, or a magazine, or some clippings at least once a day. She did not touch these volumes, nor even glance at the title while I was in the room.
I went into the kitchen to get some lunch, and when it was ready I called, “Are you going to eat?” “Let me alone,” she said, “I am writing a story.” That also is a common experience. I ate my lunch in silence, and then came into the living room again, and there was Craig, absorbed in writing. Some time later she came to me, exclaiming, “Oh, I have had the most marvelous idea for a story! Something just flashed over me, something absolutely novel—I never heard anything like it. I have a whole synopsis. Do you want to hear it?” “No,” I said, “you had better go and eat”—for it was my job to try to keep her body on earth. “I can’t eat now,” she said, “I am too excited. I’ll read a while and get quiet.” So she went to her couch, and there was a minute or two of silence, and then an exclamation: “Come here!”
Craig had picked up one of the two volumes from South Africa, and was staring at it. “Look at this!” she said. “Look what I opened to!” I looked at a page in the middle of the book—she has the devilish habit of reading a book that way—and in the center of the page, in capital letters, I read the words: “THE BLACK MAGICIAN.” “What about it?” I said. “Did you ever hear of that idea?” asked Craig. I answered that I had, and she said, “Well, I never did. I thought it was my own. It is the theme of the ‘story’ I have just been writing. I have made a synopsis of a whole chapter in this book, and without ever having touched it!”
So Craig had a new set of experiments to try all by herself, without bothering her busy husband. She would go to one of my bookcases, with which she had hitherto had nothing to do, since her own books are kept in her own place. With her back to the bookcase, she would draw a book, and take it to her couch and lie down, placing the book upon her solar plexus, and taking every precaution to make sure that it never came into her line of vision. Most of the books, being new, were in their paper jackets, so there was no lettering that could be felt with her fingers. This, you note, is not a test of telepathy, for no human mind knew what particular book Craig’s hand had fallen upon. If she could tell anything about the contents of that book, it would appear to be clairvoyance, or what is known as “psychometry.”
My books are oddly varied in character. There are new novels, and works of history, biography, travel and economics. In addition, there are what I call “crank books”; the queerly assorted volumes which are destined by donors all over the world to convert me to vegetarianism, antivivisection, anarchism, Mormonism, Mohammedanism, infanticide, the abolition of money, or the doctrine that alopecia is caused by onanism. Believe me, the person who sets out to guess the contents of the books that come to me in the course of a month has his or her hands full!
But Craig was able to do it. She did it on so many occasions that she would sit and stare at me and exclaim, “Now what do you make of that?” She would insist that I sit and watch the process, so as to be able to state that she never had the book in her line of vision. In my presence she picked out a volume, and, keeping it hidden from both of us, she said, “I see a blue cover, with a rising sun and a bare landscape.” It happened to be a volume circulated by the followers of “Pastor Russell,” and as the preface tells me that 1,405,000 have been sold, it may be that you too have it in your library. The title is Deliverence, by J. F. Rutherford, and it has a blue cloth cover, with a gold design of a sun rising behind a mass of clouds and a globe.