I did not mention this appearance of Julia when writing to Mr Stead on my return--I was so anxiously hoping that she might have tried to impress the fact of having appeared to me, upon his consciousness, as a test; but he said nothing about it in his first letters. So I let the matter alone for a time, determining to tell him some day, but much disappointed by the usual failure in getting corroborative evidence.
A week later, however, at the end of a long letter on other subjects, I put this short P. S. in a casual way to him:
"Did Julia ever tell you that she had appeared to me in New York?"
In answering my letter he replied--also in a P. S.:
"By-the-by, to answer your last query--yes. Julia told me weeks ago that she had appeared to you in New York, _but that she could not give you her age on that occasion, because she was not accustomed to speaking through the embodiment_."
Now in sending the list of questions and answers to Mr Stead I had merely marked against the answer as to her age, "_twenty-three_," that doubtless it was an error, _but I had never hinted to him that I had asked her to correct the error in New York, or that she had been unable to speak on that occasion_.
This again was a good bit of independent evidence.
I will now give a description of Mr Knapton Thompson"s interview with his daughter, on the same evening that Julia appeared to me. I have already said that the magnet which drew Mr Thompson to these _seances_ was the opportunity given to him of meeting and talking to a daughter who had pa.s.sed away some years previously.
On this special evening the daughter materialised as usual, and came out from the cabinet. As Mr Thompson was sitting next to me at the time, I could distinctly hear Mrs Gray whisper to him:
"Would you not like to take your daughter into the other room, Mr Thompson? It is rather crowded here to-night. You would be quieter in there."
Mr Thompson got up at once, and greeted the materialised form, and they disappeared through the folding doors to the reception-room. Other matters of interest were occurring, and I had quite forgotten the absence of Mr Thompson in the dimly lighted room (in those days the light was always dim _at first_), until I found he was again occupying the seat next to my own. I had not noticed his return, and asked him at once "what he had done with his daughter." A good half hour must have elapsed between his disappearance and return. He said, quite simply and as a matter of course: "Oh, she did not care to come back into this crowded room. We had half-an-hour"s chat, and then she de-materialised in the other room, and I returned alone."
I can only repeat that Mr Knapton Thompson was a shrewd, practical Yorkshireman, and a very successful man of business, as was proved by the orders he received in America for the stoves he had invented.
He was certainly under the impression that he could be trusted to recognise his own daughter when allowed the privilege of half-an-hour"s conversation with her, _tete-a-tete_ in a private room.
I cannot end this chapter without saying something about Keely of Philadelphia and his intuitional genius.
I had hoped to have the opportunity of meeting this wonderful man during my last stay in Philadelphia, U.S.A. (March 1897), but was disappointed in this expectation. Therefore, on the outer plane, my connection with Keely never went beyond a single interview with his wife; but this is a record of personal intuitions as well as of personal events, and I know no one with regard to whom my intuitions--absolutely lacking in any physical ground of proof, or even mental ground of comprehension--have been stronger or more obstinate.
At the time of my first visit to America, so far back as 1885, I had not the faintest conception of Keely"s work, or what he claimed to have discovered or to be on the track of discovering. I never heard his name mentioned without being told at the same time that he was either a silly madman or a conscious impostor, and as I came with an entirely unprejudiced mind (for I had never heard of Keely before landing in America), it would have been natural to accept this universal opinion.
Yet something stronger than reason was always silently contradicting these a.s.sertions, when made in my presence. Friends and acquaintances alike in those days laughed at Keely"s claims, and denounced his boasted discovery as pure imposture.
""Tisn"t! "Tisn"t! "Tisn"t!" that persistent little voice kept whispering in my ear all the time, like a naughty, obstinate child who contradicts from sheer ignorance--or was it a spiritual intuition? Time alone can answer that question; anyway, I kept my ideas to myself, for they had no foundation in fact at the time of which I speak.
In 1897 the position for me was altered. A sensible and dependable friend of mine--a well-known banker in Philadelphia--described to me his experiences and those of other prominent citizens during a demonstration of Mr Keely"s powers; and the old insistent voice that spoke to my ignorance before, spoke now to some glimmering understanding of the claim put forth. This claim--even then jeered at by the world at large--had to wait shivering in the cold another nine years, before Mr Frederic Soddy clothed it in respectable scientific garb by speaking publicly of the possibilities in the future connected with atomic disintegration and consequent liberation of energy.
But the yelping curs of Calumny that pursued Keely during his lifetime are still upon the dead man"s tracks.
"_His_ methods were fraud and imposture, anyway"; "His wires were tubes containing compressed air," and so forth. The M.F.H. of this pack of hounds was the son of a lady whose name will always be honourably mentioned with that of Keely as one of his most generous supporters.
The initial misfortune in the whole matter was the forming and starting of the Keely Motor Company to utilise the discovery, which should first have been placed under the protection of Science.
Ignorant and impatient shareholders thought only of their own material advantages and dividends. They were Keely"s first enemies, with their sensational and premature advertis.e.m.e.nts of results and "_200 horse-power engines ready to patent, etc._," whilst the poor man was still struggling with his tremendous problem--_i.e. to control_ the force that he had discovered.
He attempted this first by confining it, but it blew everything to atoms, and his own fingers off into the bargain!
Occultists--including Madame Blavatsky--always declared this latent atomic energy was a _fact_, but that Keely would never be allowed to demonstrate it, for the world was not yet prepared for such a tremendous dynamic force to be let loose upon it, and that the most serious abuses and disasters would follow, if once he succeeded in bringing his discovery into practical working order.
They said it would be one of two things: either Keely"s experiments in this direction would continue to fail in the crucial point necessary, _or_ that if he succeeded it would be his own death warrant, lest any mischief should accrue from his making his methods public.
In view of these p.r.o.nouncements, the succeeding events in Keely"s career are interesting.
_The Times_ (U.S.A.) of 6th March 1898 contained the following announcement, under Keely"s own signature:--
After twenty-five years" labour I have solved the problem of harnessing the ether (which elsewhere he says is only the _medium_ of the force he discovered) and adapting it to commercial uses. I have finished experimenting.--My work is now completed.
(Signed) JOHN W. KEELY.
_On 18th November of this same year he died._
Within two months, his generous friend and patron, Mrs Blomfield Moore, followed him to another sphere. Keely"s final discovery of the means of "harnessing the ether," as he calls it, was through holding it _in rotation_ instead of in confinement.
I am allowed to quote an extract from a private letter with regard to this statement.
"This instrument ruptures the luminous envelopes of the hydrogen corpuscles, liberating the mysterious substance, which is put into such high rotation that it forms its own wall of confinement at 420,000 revolutions per second, as calculated. Independent of this rotation in the tube, where it is projected, it could be no more held in suspension than a ray of sunshine could be held in a darkened room."
I have been given to understand that a faithful account of everything that has occurred in connection with Keely"s discovery has been compiled, and will be published "_when the time comes for the truth to be made known_."
It is, of course, possible that this disclosure may be antic.i.p.ated by the arrival of another "crank and impostor" of the Keely type. Let us trust he may arise from _within_ and not from without, scientific circles, and thus avoid his martyrdom!
Meanwhile it may be interesting to quote from a published letter of Lascelles-Scott, the Government physicist from Forest Gate, who visited Keely"s workshop in the interests of Science, and who was allowed to cut and bring away with him pieces of the wire Keely was using. (Said to be _tubes_ by the wiseacres!)
The following is the essential portion of Mr Lascelles-Scott"s letter. I only omit courteous expressions of grat.i.tude to the editor and "to the inst.i.tutions and individuals alike" of the "beautiful city of Philadelphia" where he was able to carry out his investigations.
Letter from Mr Lascelles-Scott to the Editor of _The Public Ledger_, Philadelphia.
The only corrections of sufficient importance, to the general sense of my observations at the Franklin Inst.i.tute last Wednesday night, to call for notice in your otherwise admirable report, are the following:--
Although my observations were only put forward as "preliminary,"
inasmuch as I have not yet _completed_ the outlined programme I had in view, no words actually used by me justified the expression that "_I had formed no very definite opinions_."
On the contrary, I stated more than once the very _definite opinion that Mr Keely has demonstrated to me, in a way which is absolutely unquestionable, the existence of a force hitherto unknown_. (The italics are mine.--E. K. B.)
The conditions under which the experiments were carried out (as I distinctly stated) _were such as to preclude the possibility of the results obtained being due to any ordinary source of power, evident or concealed_.
Moreover, I satisfied myself that the rotation of the "vibrodyne" was neither due to, nor accompanied by, any traces of electricity or magnetism. So far my opinion is and was expressed as being of the most definite kind possible.
... I stated, and the statement was greeted by the audience with great and prolonged applause, that, after a little adjustment of the "Sympathetic Transmitter," it was found that by the sounding of one of the small English tuning forks I had brought with me from the other side of the Atlantic, upon the said "Transmitter," I could myself start the vibrodyne, and cause it to revolve rapidly, without Mr Keely"s intervention, and I exhibited to the meeting, the fork actually used by me.--Thanking you in antic.i.p.ation, etc., I am, sir, yours obediently, W. LASCELLES-SCOTT.
One would have supposed that this testimony, in addition to that of other scientists and practical electricians, would have sufficed to disintegrate Atomic Stupidity and Calumny, and liberate the forces of Humility and Sane Investigation.
But prejudiced Ignorance dies hard!
To end my chapter on a pleasanter note than this, I will quote from a private letter which I have been privileged to read, the beautiful words in which Keely describes his own achievements.