M. C. arrived in Rothesay for the first time about four hours

previously to taking her seat upon the platform, in the New Public Halls. It was neither possible nor probable she could have obtained the information she possessed by other than psychic means. The clairvoyant was mesmerised and blindfolded before the audience. After some experiments in objective clairvoyance were given, such as describing a watch, telling the time, and the number, by having the watch held silently over her forehead, she gave several experiments in travelling clairvoyance. Many visitors in the hall--for Rothesay is a well known and fashionable seaside resort--sent up requests to the platform, and desired the clairvoyante should visit their homes in Kent, Cornwall, Island of Jersey, in the Isle of Man, Glasgow, and other places. Her visits and descriptions were in all instances extremely satisfactory. How far thought-transference and objective clairvoyance commingled and entered into her descriptions it would be difficult to say, but the results were simply marvellous. Test case, by the late Dr. Maddever, M.D., M.R.C.S., and Dr. John Maddever, his son. These medical gentlemen resided in Rothesay, and were present in the hall. Dr. Maddever desired me to send the clairvoyante into a certain room in his house and that she should describe it. All the directions the clairvoyante obtained were, “to go out of the hall, down the front steps; when out turn to the right and proceed onward till she came to an iron-railed gate, on which was a small brass plate, bearing the name of ‘Dr. Maddever,’ she was to open the gate, go up to the hall-door, enter, pass the first door to the left, and turn round a passage to the left and enter the first door to which she came, and describe what she saw.” Sitting still upon the platform in silence for a minute or two, she suddenly exclaimed:--“I am at the gate--at the door--now in the hall--I have found the room, and I am now inside, and stand with my back to the door.” She then proceeded to describe the room, the book-cases which surrounded it, their peculiar structure; the mantel-piece, the form of the clock, the time, and the appearance of the ornaments. The table in the centre of the room, its form, the colour and style of the cloth upon it, books, albums, and papers thereon, the flower vase support in the window, and a number of other particulars. At the conclusion Dr. Maddever arose in the audience and said:--“Ladies and gentlemen, Professor Coates is a stranger to me, I only know of him by report. The young lady on the platform I do not know. I have not seen either till this evening, and they have never been in my house. The experiment we have had is most remarkable, and should be of deep and profound interest to all. The young lady has described the room, as far as I can remember, most correctly--in fact very much better than I could have done myself.” This statement was received with applause. After one or two instances of travelling clairvoyance, a young gentleman rose in the body of the hall and desired I should send the sensitive to a house or villa not far from the juncture of Marine Place and Ardbeg Road. The directions given to the clairvoyante were briefly to the effect, she was to leave the place, on reaching the front street she was to turn to her left and keep on past the Post Office, Esplanade, past the Skeoch Woods, etc., till she came to the house. She nodded her head in compliance, and presently announced she “had found the house.” Then she shivered and appeared to draw back, and said “I won’t go in.” Some persons in the audience laughed, and one (I think it was the young gentleman who asked that she might be sent) said: “The whole thing is a swindle.” Now, considering there was not a single flaw in the experiments that night, surprise after surprise being given, and the audience had risen in enthusiasm, this opinion was not favourably received. I asked the gentleman “to have patience.” I had no doubt but we would know soon enough the reasons. “Whatever they were I would try and ascertain them.” With much hesitancy she declared that “the house was not one any respectable female would enter, and she would not.” When I repeated this statement to the audience, there was what the newspapers call “sensation.” The sensation was intensified when one of the Rothesay Magistrates, Bailie Molloy, the then senior Bailie of the Royal Burgh, declared “the young woman was right, perfectly right, this was a house which had been inadvertently let to persons of ill-fame, and he, for one, had recently had the facts of the case placed before him, and he was most anxious that these people should be put out, and they would be, as soon as the proper steps could be taken.” The young gentleman retired somewhat discomfited, and the excitement produced by these and other experiments brought crowded houses during my professional stay. When my “mesmeric exposition” was concluded, the two medical gentlemen referred to, were good enough to introduce themselves, and invited me to call next day to see the room. I accepted the invitation during the following day and saw how truly correct and vivid her description had been. In the first experiment the sensitive described the state of the doctor’s library, pointing out what had not been recollected by either of the medical men, and I believe the other case comes under the heading of direct and objective clairvoyance. Dr. Maddever’s house was about a quarter of a mile, and the other house about a mile and a half from the hall. The persistent and reliable clairvoyance evinced by this sensitive was induced. She was a mesmeric subject, and when such subjects are properly treated they make the very best clairvoyants. PSYCHIC VISION POSSESSED BY THE PHYSICALLY BLIND. Mrs. Croad resided at Redland, Bristol. My attention was called to her case about fifteen years ago by Dr. J. G. Davey, of Bristol. Unfortunately circumstances at the time prevented a personal visit and report. Her psychic gifts and wonderful supersensitivity have been amply testified to, by most reliable witnesses, such as Dr. Davey, Hy. G. Atkinson, F.G.S., and others. Clairvoyance in Mrs. Croad’s case was and is (for I believe the lady is still living) a singular admixture of subtle sense transference so well known to mesmerists of the old school, and spontaneous psychic vision. Thought-transference and indirect clairvoyance, more or less induced, by intense voluntary concentration. Mrs. Croad is deaf, dumb, and paralysed, and stone blind. She can see and hear, read with powers “denied to ordinary mortals,” and discern pictures and writings in the dark. She is aware of her daughter’s thoughts when the latter touches her, and becomes at once acquainted with what her daughter wishes to communicate. She possesses supersensitivity of touch, and discerns colour by their degrees of heat, roughness or smoothness. She can also identify photographs and pictures in the same way. From time to time she has exhibited the highest phases of clairvoyance. Reports have been made in this case by medical experts in the _Journal of Psychological Medicine_, and other magazines and journals several years ago. The most recent was contributed by the Rev. Taliesin Dans, The Cottage, Claptons, to _The Review of Reviews_ in January, 1891. THE SPIRITUALISTIC AND PRACTICAL CHARACTER OF CLAIRVOYANCE might be further illustrated by the well known case of Miss Eliza Hamilton, who became paralysed in her limbs and right arm, through severe injury to the spine. She had been in hospital for four months, on her return home frequently passed into the trance state, and on awakening described various people and places she had visited, and objects seen. These descriptions have been invariably verified subsequently. “She also at times,” says her physician, “speaks of having been in the company of persons with whom she was acquainted in this world, but who have passed away; and she tells her friends that they have become more beautiful, and have cut off their infirmities with which they were afflicted while here. She often describes events which _are about to happen_, and these are always fulfilled exactly as she predicts.” “Her father,” says Mr. Hudson Tuttle, “read in her presence a letter he had received from a friend in Leeds, speaking of the loss of his daughter, about whose fate he was very unhappy, as she had disappeared nearly a month before, and left no trace. Eliza went into the trance state, and cried out, ‘Rejoice! I have found the lost girl! She is happy in the angel world.’ She said the girl had fallen into the dark water where dyers washed their cloths; that her friends could not have found her had they sought her there, _but_ now the body had floated a few miles, and would be found in the River Aire. The body was found as described. “Now, knowing that her eyes were closed, that she could not hear, that her bodily senses were in profound lethargy, how are we to account for the intensity and keenness of sight? Her mental powers were exceedingly exalted, and scarcely a question could be asked her but she correctly answered. “In this case the independence of the mind of the physical body are shown in every instance of clairvoyance, is proven beyond cavil or doubt. If it is demonstrated that the mind sees without the aid of eyes, hears when the ears are deaf, feels when the nerves of sensation are at rest, it follows that it is independent of these outward avenues, and has other channels of communication with the external world essentially its own.” CLAIRVOYANCE FROM DISEASE. Miss Mollie Fancher, of Brooklyn Heights, fell off a tramway car when eighteen years of age, experienced very severe injuries to head and spine, her body being dragged a distance, through her dress catching on the step of the car. She became paralysed, lost all her senses, except touch. She gradually recovered hearing, taste, and ability to talk in time. She was also blind for nine years. Drs. Speir and Ormiston were her physicians, men of skill and marked probity. These, with a veritable host of medical men--ministers of the Gospel, educationists and specialists--have borne testimony to her remarkable endowments, from which we take two extracts. Mr. Charles Ewart, Principal of the Brooklyn Heights Seminary, where she was under special care, writes:-- “For many days together she has been to all appearances dead. The slightest pulse could not be detected; there was no evidence of respiration. Her limbs were as cold as ice, and had there not been some warmth about her heart, she would have been buried. When I first saw her she had but one sense--that of touch. By running her fingers over the printed page, she could read with equal facility in light or darkness. The most delicate work is done by her in the night.... Her power of clairvoyance, or second sight, is marvellously developed. _Distance imposes no barriers_, without the slightest error she dictates the contents of sealed letters which have never been in her hands. She discriminates in darkness the most delicate shades of colour. She writes with extraordinary rapidity.” Mr. Henry M. Parkhurst, the astronomer (residing at 173 Gates Avenue, Brooklyn, N.Y.), writes:-- “From the waste-basket of a New York gentleman acquaintance he fished an unimportant business letter, without reading it, tore it into ribbons, and tore the ribbons into squares. He shook the pieces well together, put them into an envelope, and sealed it. This he subsequently handed to Miss Fancher. The blind girl took the envelope in her hand, and passed her hand over it several times, called for paper and pencil, and wrote it verbatim. The seal of the letter had not been broken. Mr. Parkhurst himself opened it, pasted the contents together, and compared the two. Miss Fancher’s was a literal copy of the original.” MESMERIC CLAIRVOYANCE AND SPIRITUALISM. “A few evenings ago I called upon Mr. and Mrs. Loomis, 2 Vernon Place, Bloomsbury, and after we had chatted for a short time in the drawing-room with the door closed and nobody else present, I asked if they would try a mesmeric experiment for me. They willingly agreed, and Mr. Loomis, by passes, threw his wife into a mesmeric state, as he often does, and an intelligence, which claimed to be the spirit of her mother, spoke through her lips. Until this moment I had said nothing to any living soul about the nature of my contemplated experiment, but I then asked the unseen intelligence if it could then and there go to the house of Mrs. Macdougall Gregory, 21 Green Street, Grosvenor Square, London, and move a heavy physical object in her presence. The reply was, I do not know, I will try. About three minutes afterwards, at 8.40 p.m., the intelligence said that Mrs. Gregory was in her drawing-room with a friend, and added, ‘I have made Mrs. Gregory feel a prickly sensation in her arm from the elbow down to the hand, as if some person had squeezed the arm, and she has spoken about it to her friend.’ “I took a note in writing of this statement at the time it was made. A few minutes later I left Mr. and Mrs. Loomis, and without telling them my intention to do so, went straight to the house of Mrs. Gregory about a mile and a half off. I had selected Mrs. Gregory for this experiment because she is not afraid to publish her name in connection with psychic truths, and her word carries weight, especially in Scotland, where she and her family are well-known. She is the widow of Professor Gregory, of Edinburgh University, and is a lineal descendant of the Lord of the Isles. I then for the first time told Mrs. Gregory of the experiment. She replied that between half-past eight and nine o’clock that evening she was playing the piano, and suddenly turned round to her friend, Miss Yauewicz, of Upper Norwood, saying, ‘I don’t know what is the matter with me, I feel quite stupid, and have such a pain in my right arm that I cannot go on playing.’ Miss Yauewicz, who was no believer in spiritualism or any of the marvels of psychology, felt a lively interest when she was informed of the experiment. She told me that she clearly remembered Mrs. Gregory’s statement that she could not go on playing because of the pain in her right arm.”[C] Mrs. Loomis was a remarkable clairvoyante, whom I accidently became acquainted with in Liverpool many years ago, shortly after her arrival from America. I introduced the lady and her husband, Mr. Daniel Loomis, to Mr. Harrison, then editor of _The Spiritualist_. The Guion steamer, _Idaho_, in which they came from New York, was wrecked off the Irish Coast, and all they possessed in this world was lost with the vessel. Mrs. Loomis predicted the disaster, where it was likely to take place; that all hands would be saved, but all they had lost. Upon the arrival of the officers of the vessel in Liverpool, they presented Mrs. Loomis, at the Bee Hotel, John Street, Liverpool, with a basket of flowers, purse, and testimonial, in recognition of her gift, and heroic conduct during and after the disaster. I may add I knew Mr. Harrison as a most careful investigator and a man of scientific tastes and ability. I select the following case of a mesmeric sensitive controlled by a disembodied spirit, from the writings of Mr. Epes Sargent, author of “Planchette on the Despair of Science,” etc., as appropriately illustrative of this form of clairvoyance:-- “One of the daughters of my valued correspondent, the late William Howett, was a mesmeric sensitive. Howett told Professor W. D. Gunning, whose words (slightly abridged) I here use, that, on one occasion his daughter, being entranced, wrote a communication signed with the name of her brother, supposed to be in Australia. The import was, that he had been drowned a few days before in a lake. Dates and details were given. The parents could only wait, as there was no trans-oceanic telegraph. Months passed, and at last a letter came from a nephew in Melbourne, bearing the tidings that their son had been drowned on such a day, in such a lake, under such and such circumstances. Date, place, and all the essential details were the same as those given months before through the daughter. Mr. Howett believed that the freed spirit of his son influenced the sister to write; and I know of no explanation more rational that this.” CLAIRVOYANCE DUE TO SPIRITUAL CONTROL. Such cases as the above are the most difficult of all to prove. What I contend for is, if it is demonstrated we can control a fellow-being, throw him or her into a trance state--in which the phenomena of the psychic state are evolved--and seeing such state is induced largely by the control of spirit over spirit in the body, why may not a disembodied spirit control, direct, or influence a suitable sensitive or medium in the body? If not, why not? There is abundant evidence of such controls. Seeing objects concealed in boxes and letters, or reading books and mottoes, etc., appears to some clairvoyants to be more difficult than diagnosing disease, or seeing objects at a distance. The why and wherefore seems at first difficult to explain. The deliberate concealment of objects for the purpose of testing clairvoyance is often the result of a spirit of virulent suspicion, disbelief, and what is worse, _an earnest desire for failure_, so that the parties may rejoice on the discomfiture of the clairvoyants. With such people failure is a source of pleasure. Nevertheless, seeming impossibilities have been triumphed over. Long lost wills have been found, and places of the accidental or intentional hiding discovered. In more than one case deliberate fraud has been exposed, and the guilty parties brought to acknowledge the truth of the sensitive’s revelations. THE FUGITIVE NATURE OF CLAIRVOYANCE. “The chief feature,” said Alexis Didier, “of the somnambulistic lucidity is its variability. While the conjurer or juggler, at all moments in the day and before all spectators, will invariably succeed, the somnambulist, endowed with the marvellous power of clairvoyance, will not be lucid with all interviewers and at all moments of the day; for the faculty of lucidity being a crisis painful and abnormal, there may be atmospheric influences or invincible antipathies at work opposing its production, and which seem to paralyse all supersensual manifestation. Intuition, clairvoyance, lucidity, are faculties which the somnambulist gets from the nature of his temperament, and which are rarely developed in force.” Further, he adds, “the somnambulistic lucidity varies in a way to make one despair; success is continually followed by failure; in a word, error succeeds a truth; but when one analyses the causes of this no right-minded person will bring up the charge of Charlatanism, since the faculty is subject to influences independent of the will and the consciousness of the clairvoyant.” Alexis Didier, like his brother Adolphe, was a natural clairvoyant, and excelled in direct and objective clairvoyance, phases of the most striking and convincing character. Clairvoyance can be cultivated by the aid of mesmerism and by the introspection process. By the first, the sensitive can be materially assisted by the experience and help of the operator. By the second, something like natural clairvoyance can be induced. Either processes are more or less suitable to subdue the activity of the senses, and give greater range to the psychic powers. General instructions are of little use. Personal advice is best. The operator then knows with whom he has to do, their special temperament and character, what are the best processes to adopt to cultivate their gift, and how far such sensitives and students are themselves likely to be suitable for clairvoyant experiments. I have found the “Mirror Disc” useful in inducing favourable conditions in the normal state for the development of clairvoyance, and recommend its use.