“Something seemed to wake me up,” he said, “and I had a peculiar impulse to feel under the pillow. It was just as if I knew I would find the letter there.”
The circumstances seemed as remarkable to me as it did to him. It might be coincidence, but I determined to make a further test.
A series of experiments convinced me that I could, to a very slight degree, impress my thoughts and will upon Louis, especially when he was tired or on the borderland of sleep. Occasionally I was able to control the direction of his thoughts as he wrote home to Velma.
On one occasion, he was describing for her a funny little French woman who visited the hospital with a basket that always was filled with cigarettes and candy.
“Last time” [he wrote], “she brought with her a boy whom she called....”
He paused, with pencil upraised, trying to recall the name.
A moment later, he looked down at the page and stared with astonishment. The words, “She called him Maurice,” had been added below the unfinished line.
“I must be going daffy,” he muttered. “I’d swear I didn’t write that.”
Behind him, I stood rubbing my hands in triumph. It was my first successful effort to guide the pencil while his thoughts strayed elsewhere.
Another time, he wrote to Velma: