Howard was also impressed. "I see Eusapia"s finish. She won"t do a thing. The influences will criss-cross. Bottazzi"s cabinet is her Waterloo."
"Observe that Bottazzi was not perverse. He met the psychic half-way by forming the usual chain about the table, placing Eusapia before the curtains of the little cabinet, which was a recess in the wall.
Bottazzi himself and his a.s.sistants had constructed this cabinet and placed everything in position before Eusapia entered the room at all, and throughout the sitting she was controlled by at least two of the investigators so that she could not so much as put a hand inside the curtains. She was very uneasy, as though finding the conditions hard.
Nevertheless, _even at this first sitting, everything movable in the cabinet was thrown about_. The table was violently shaken and the metronome set going. Bottazzi ends his first report by saying: "The seance yielded very small results, but this is always the case at first seances. Nevertheless, how many "_knowing_ people and _savans_" have formed a judgment on phenomena after seances such as this one?""
"That"s a slant at you, Miller," remarked Harris.
"Yes," I agreed, "it"s a slant at all commissions and committees who think they can jump in and settle this spiritistic controversy in the course of half an hour. Bottazzi, like Lombroso and Richet, was aware that he had entered upon a long road. He knew that a tired or worried medium was helpless. He called the same circle together for the 20th, willing to try patiently for developments. All came but Lombardi, whose place was taken by M. Jona, an engineer. The second sitting was a wonder. Warned by his first experience, Bottazzi nailed or screwed every movable thing fast to the walls of the cabinet. He was resolute to force "John," the supposed "guide," to touch the electric b.u.t.ton and press the ball of India-rubber that connected with a mercury manometer.
He intended to teach the spirit hand to register its actions on a revolving cylinder of smoked tin. He wanted graven records, so that no wiseacre like Harris, here, could say: "Oh, the thing never moved. You were all hypnotized!" In effect, he said: "They tell us that a cold wind blows from the cabinet. I will put a self-registering thermometer in the cabinet and see. They say tables weighing forty pounds have been lifted.
All I ask is that the bulb of a self-registering manometer be pressed.
They say a Morse telegraphic key has been sounded by spirit hands. Very well; I will arrange a connection so that every pressure of the key will be registered on a sheet of smoked paper, so that the fact of the sound of the key shall be recorded by an infallible instrument.""
"Did he get the records?" asked Harris.
"Wait and see!" commanded Cameron.
"These indicate the methods which Bottazzi and his a.s.sistants brought to bear on the medium. No more worship here, no awe, no hesitation, no superst.i.tion. Among other things, he put into the cabinet a small table weighing about fifteen pounds, and on top of it arranged a hair-brush, a hen"s feather, a bottle full of water, and a very thick gla.s.s. These articles and the table were the only objects that could be moved. His aim was to limit the spirit hands to a few movables--to see whether they could not be taught to do what was required of them. Well, _that little table came out of the cabinet of its own accord in a light that made it perfectly visible_, at the precise time when three of the inexorable professors were rigidly clasping the psychic. But that is not the most remarkable thing. The psychic"s feet were held by the engineer, and he observed that at _the exact moment when Paladino pushed against his knee the table moved_. "Each advance of the table corresponded," says Bottazzi, "with the most perfect synchronism, to the push of Eusapia"s legs against Jona"s knees"; in other words, she really executed movements identical with those that she would have made had she been pushing the table out of the cabinet with her _visible_ limbs."
As I paused for effect, Fowler said: "You say that as if you considered it very significant."
"I do. In my judgment, it is the most valuable fact developed by these most searching experiments. Flammarion noted this same significant relation between the movements of the psychic and the spirit hands, and so did Maxwell. Maxwell proved it by experiments on his own person, and now Bottazzi is proving it in a larger way. "A few moments later," he says, "a gla.s.s was flung from the cabinet by these invisible agencies, and this fling coincided exactly with a kick which Paladino gave to Jona, as if the same will governed both movements.""
Miller was thinking very hard. "That certainly is very strange," he said, "but I observed nothing of it in Mrs. Smiley"s case; on the contrary, it seemed to me that our strongest manifestations came when she was perfectly still."
"Hasten!" urged Fowler. "Come to the phantoms. I perceive his theory, but it will all be upset later by the materialized forms."
"On the contrary, Bottazzi declares the phantoms also conformed to this same law. He was determined upon educating "John King," and kept insisting that the invisible hands press the rubber ball, or lower the registry balance, or set the metronome going, and Eusapia repeatedly moaned: "_I can"t find_," "_I can"t see_," or "_I don"t know how_." Once she complained that the objects were _too far off--that she could not reach them!_--all of which sustained Bottazzi in his belief that these activities were absolutely under her psychic control, just as the synchronism of movements convinced him that she was "the physiologic factor in the case." All of this is very exciting to me, for I have had the same feeling with regard to the several mediums whose activities I have closely studied. Bottazzi says, with regard to the results of the first two sittings: "These first seances show that Eusapia needed to learn how to make these movements with which her invisible hands were unfamiliar, just as she would have had to learn to make them with her visible hands. You will all observe that he did not permit awe or superst.i.tious reverence for the medium or her phantoms to balk his experiments." A convinced spiritist who attended one of the seances was scandalized by the tone and character of the tests. These professors were continually bobbing up to see what was going on, disturbing conditions, stirring things up as with a spoon to see how it was all going on. They broke the chain of hands whenever they wanted to see what "the spirits" were doing. In other words, these scientists were students, not devotees. They were experimenting, not communing with the dead."
"Others have tried that," said Fowler. "But they succeeded in preventing any manifestations whatsoever."
"It didn"t work out so in this instance. Bottazzi says that during the first seance Professor Scarpa irritated Eusapia greatly by his impertinent curiosity, but Bottazzi himself quieted her by saying: "You see, dear Eusapia, we are not here only to admire the marvellous phenomena you are able to produce, but also, and chiefly, to observe and verify and criticise. We do not doubt you or suspect any fraud, but we want to see clearly, and to follow the development of the phenomena.
That is why M. Scarpa surveys the cabinet between the curtains, illuminating it occasionally with an electric pocket-lamp. Which do you prefer, pa.s.sive admiration, of which you must have had more than enough already, or the calm affirmation of physicists who are accustomed to extort from Nature secrets which she hides from physical eyes? "In this way," adds the master, "Eusapia"s irritation was softened; she rebelled no further, but yielded with docility to the sharp, attentive scrutiny of the observer, who finally declared himself beaten, not having been able to discover at any point a shadow of fraud.""
"Hurrah for Eusapia!" shouted Howard. "She must be a wonder!"
"A spiritist would say that her guides were insisting on the most rigid test. The account goes on to say that the psychic, when entranced, was not satisfied with the grasp of two of the spies; she frequently asked, in a faint voice, for a third or even a fourth hand in order that there could be no question of her freedom from connection with the phenomena.
As in the case of our own psychic, Mrs. Smiley co-operated to the utmost with us. She never refused to permit any test."
Miller here remarked: "I can"t but think that our control of Mrs. Smiley was complete, and yet I could not (under the conditions) a.s.sert that she was not the author of the acts we witnessed in my library. I cannot bring myself to entertain, even for an instant, the spirit hypothesis, but in Bottazzi"s theory I glimpse an alternative."
"Yes, Bottazzi plainly hints at his conclusions by saying: "_The invisible limbs_ of the psychic explored the cabinet." He repeats, "I am convinced that these _"mediumistic limbs" are capable of being taught unfamiliar duties_, like pressing an electric b.u.t.ton of squeezing a rubber ball," and this he proceeded patiently to exemplify. At the third sitting Madame Bottazzi was present (Lombardi and Jona being absent), and the "force" was much greater and more active than before, probably because of the psychic"s growing confidence. A small table floated in the air "_while we watched it in amazement_," he says. One levitation lasted long enough to count fifty. "We all had time to observe that the piece of furniture was quite isolated," he adds. Furthermore, a big black hand came from the curtain and touched Madame Bottazzi on the cheek, and frightened her from her place beside the medium."
"I can understand that," said Mrs. Cameron. "Think of being touched by even one"s own dead!"
"Professor de Amicis was not only touched on the arm but forcibly pulled, as if by an invisible hand. The curtain of the cabinet then enveloped him as if to embrace him, and he felt the contact of another face against his, and a mouth kissing him--"
The women cried out at the thought, but I hurried on to make Bottazzi"s point: "_"At the same time Eusapia"s lips moved as if to kiss, and she made the sound of kissing, which we all distinctly heard."_ Here again, you see, is that astounding synchronism which Maxwell and Morselli observed between the movement of objects and the contraction of the muscles in the medium"s arms and legs. Bottazzi pauses to generalize: "Whatever may be the mediumistic phenomena produced, there is almost always at the same time movement of one or several parts of the medium"s body.""
"What does he mean? Does he mean that Eusapia performed all these movements with her "astral hands"?" asked Mrs. Quigg.
"That is precisely his inference. "Mysterious hands," Bottazzi calls them."
"But how will he account for the difference in size between Eusapia"s hands and the _large black hand_ that she saw and felt?" asked Fowler.
"Bottazzi himself remarks upon this discrepancy. "To whom does this hand belong?" he asked--"this hand, a half a yard away from the medium"s head, seen while her visible hands are rigorously controlled by her two neighbors? Is it the hand of a monstrous long arm which liberates itself from the medium"s body, then dissolves, to afterward "materialize"
afresh? Is it something a.n.a.logous to the pteropod of an amoeba, which projects itself from the body, then retreats into it only to reappear in another place? Mystery!" But this is not the most grewsome sight; one of the professors, stealing a glance behind the medium, saw remnants of legs and arms lying about the cabinet."
"Horrible!" exclaimed Mrs. Cameron. "I"d rather believe in spirits. What does he mean to infer?"
"Apparently he would have us believe that materialization is a process due to the medium--or at least dependent on her will--and that these partially completed forms represent fragmentary impulses. But I"m not so much concerned just now with that as with the course of schooling through which he drove Eusapia. He stuck to his plan. He put into his cabinet each time certain sounders, markers, and lamps, which could be moved, ticked, or lighted only by hands in the cabinet, and he kept the same rigid control of his medium _outside_ the cabinet. For the most part she was in the light. By means of a series of lamps the seance-room could be lighted dimly or brightly at a touch, and, while many of the phenomena in the cabinet were being performed by "John," Eusapia"s hands could be plainly seen in the grasp of her inquisitors. After seeing a mandolin move and play of itself, after having the metronome set in motion, stopped, and set going again, after having the registrations he most desired, Bottazzi concludes his third sitting by saying: "An invisible hand or foot _must_ therefore have forced down the disk, _must_ have leaned on the membrane of the receiving-drum of my apparatus, because I a.s.sured myself next day that to obtain the highest lines registered the disk had to be pressed to the extreme point. This was no ordinary case of pushing or pulling. The mysterious hand had to push the disk, and push it in a certain way. _In short, the "spirit hand" was becoming educated to its task._""
Miller asked: "Did these performances take place, as in the case of Mrs.
Smiley, within the reach of her ordinary limbs?"
"Yes, many of them took place within a yard of her head; but some of them, and the most marvellous of them, not merely took place out of her reach, but under conditions of unexampled rigor. "Eusapia"s mediumistic limbs penetrated into the cabinet," says Bottazzi. "I begged my friends not to distract the medium"s attention by requests for touches, apparitions, etc., but to concentrate their desires and their wills on the things I asked for...." What he wanted her to do was very simple, but conclusive. He wished "the spirit hand" to press an electric b.u.t.ton and light a red lamp within the cabinet. The coil and the switch had been dragged out of the cabinet and thrown on the table. Bottazzi begged them all not to touch it. No one but Scarpa, Galeotti, and Bottazzi knew what it was for. "At a certain moment Eusapia took hold of the first finger of my right hand and squeezed it with her fingers. A ray of light from the interior of the cabinet lit up the room"--she had pressed the contact-breaker with her invisible fingers at the precise time when she had squeezed with her visible hand the forefinger of Bottazzi. She repeatedly did this. "If one of us, be it observed, had lit the lamp, she would have screamed with pain and indignation.""
"Was this the climax of his series? Is this _all_ he is willing to affirm?" queried Harris, with ironic inflection.
"Oh no, indeed. The greatest is yet to come. At the fourth sitting a new person, Professor Cardarelli, was introduced, and this new sitter disturbed conditions. Nevertheless, the inexplicable took place. Small twirling violet flames were seen to drift across the cabinet curtains, and hands and closed fists appeared over Paladino"s head. These have been photographed, by-the-way. Some of them were of ordinary size, and others at least three times larger than the psychic"s hand and fist.
These flames interest me very much, for I have seen them on several occasions, but could not believe in them, even though Crookes spoke of handling them. I must admit their objective reality now. It is absurd to suppose they were fraudulently produced in this laboratory.
"A stethoscope was taken from Cardarelli"s pocket and put together--a movement requiring the action of two hands. The noise of fingers running over the keys of a typewriter in the cabinet was plainly heard, although no writing came. At the fifth sitting the mandolin again moved as if alive (no one touching it), in a light that made all its movements observable; and as it did so _Eusapia"s hand_ (tightly controlled by Bottazzi) _made little movements as if to help the instrument to move_.
_Each movement, though it ended in the air, seemed to affect the mandolin._ Bottazzi says: "It would be necessary to have Paladino"s fingers in the palm of one"s hand, as I had that evening, in order to be convinced that the evolutions, tw.a.n.gings of the strings, etc., all synchronized with the very delicate movements of her fingers.... I cannot describe the sensation one experiences when seeing an inanimate object moved, not for a moment merely, but for many minutes in succession, by a mysterious force.""
"We observed no such synchronism," repeated Fowler. "We not only controlled Mrs. Smiley"s hands, but nailed her to her chair. In a way, our test was more rigid than those you are describing. Our results were not so dramatic, but they were produced under test conditions, and their significance is as great as that of Bottazzi"s lamp-lighting."
"But we did not have as much light on the medium, and, by-the-way, Miller, the spectral hands that I saw in your study, each larger than Mrs. Smiley"s hands, were as real to me as those Scarpa studied, and the books deposited on your table form as good a record, in their way, as the marks on his smoked-gla.s.s cylinder."
"Furthermore, we had writing," added Fowler. "All of which Bottazzi would explain by his theory of an "astral arm.""
"Yes, but he secured something still more marvellous. He obtained the print of human hands in clay and also on smoked gla.s.s. He demonstrated that the invisible limbs of the psychic cannot only move objects at a distance, _but that they can feel at a distance_. "Eusapia"s att.i.tude was that of a blindfolded person exploring s.p.a.ce with her hands to find a lost object!" he exclaims, at one point. "Eusapia opened my right hand, stretched out my three middle fingers, and, bending them on the table, tips downward, said, in a whisper: "How hard it is! What is it?"
I did not understand," says Bottazzi. "She continued: "There, on the chair." "It is the clay," I said, quickly; "will you make the impression of a face?" "No," she replied, "it is too hard; take it away."" Some one broke the chain to carry out her desire. He looked at the desk and saw the imprint of three fingers."
"What I would like to know at this point," Harris quickly interposed, "is this: were the fingermarks lined like Bottazzi"s or like the medium"s?"
"He does not say in this case, but, as I recall it, they found in other instances that the lines on the impressions made by Eusapia"s invisible fingers were precisely like those of her material fingers, and yet no mark of flour or lamp-black remained attaching to her hands. In one case a perfumed clay was used, and, although the impressions secured "resembled Eusapia"s face grown old," no scent of the wax could be detected on her cheeks. Bottazzi gives much s.p.a.ce to these "mediumistic explorations of the cabinet." He could follow these blind, mysterious gropings of the invisible Eusapia by closely controlling the real Eusapia. "Presently she asked: "What is that round object? I feel something round."" This was, in fact, the rubber ball which connected with a tube--the tube, in its turn, pa.s.sing through the wall into another room where it operated a manometer. She pressed this ball with her invisible limbs, and the column rose and registered the pressure.
This was entirely satisfactory to Bottazzi, who then says: "I desire again to affirm that with her invisible limbs Eusapia feels the forms of objects and their consistency, feels heat and cold, hardness and softness, dampness and dryness neither more nor less than if she were touching and feeling with the hands imprisoned in ours. She feels with other hands, but perceives with the same brain with which she uses to talk with us."
"The most astonishing physical phenomena came when the contact-breaker was thrown on the table, and Eusapia called out: "See how it moves!"
"_We all directed our gaze toward the small object_," says Bottazzi, "_and we saw that it oscillated and vibrated at an elevation of an inch or two above the surface of the table, as if seized with internal shivering--Eusapia"s hands, held by M. Galeotti and myself, being more than a foot from the contact-breaker_.""
My auditors were now in the thrall of Bottazzi"s story, and the silence was eloquent. At last Cameron said: "It certainly seems like a clear case of "astral." I begin to believe in our first sitting with Mrs.
Smiley. What do you want us to do--announce ourselves converted?"
"Certainly not," I replied. "We must not relax our vigilance, even though Bottazzi, Morselli, and their fellows seem to have proved the genuineness of the phenomena. At the same time, I admit it is a source of satisfaction to me to know that these Italian scientists, with conditions all their own, are willing to affirm that Eusapia "_feels with her invisible limbs_," and explores a cabinet while sitting under rigid control more than a yard away from the objects moved. My experiences point to this. How else could the cone be handled with such precision as was shown at your house, Miller? Lombroso observed that chairs and vases moved as if guided by hands and eyes, and that the psychic could see as well behind her as in front. Mrs. Smiley has always been able to direct me _exactly_ to the point where the cone or pencil had been flung. How can letters within closed slates be formed so beautifully and so precisely without some form of seeing?"
Fowler was ready with an answer: "At the final a.n.a.lysis all perception is due to some form of vibration. To be clairaudient is simply to be able to lay hold upon a different set of pulsations in the ether, and to be clairvoyant is to perceive directly without the aid of the eye, which is only a little camera, after all."
"All this is merely a kind of prelude," I resumed, "for Bottazzi apparently proved that the invisible hand of Eusapia"s invisible arm could not penetrate a cage of wire mesh that covered the telegraphic key in the cabinet. "How, then, can we consider it to be a spirit hand--an immaterial hand--when a wire-netting can stop it?" he very pertinently inquires."