’Her father was at the time over fifty miles away, but we did not know exactly where, so I questioned her as follows:  “Can you find your father at the present moment?” At first she replied that she could not see him, but in a minute or two she said, “Oh, yes; now I can see him, Mr. Dobbie.”  “Where is he?” “Sitting at a large table in a large room, and there are a lot of people going in and out.”  “What is he doing?” “Writing a letter, and there is a book in front of him.”  “Whom is he writing to?” “To the newspaper.”  Here she paused and laughingly said, “Well, I declare, he is writing to the A B” (naming a newspaper).  “You said there was a book there.  Can you tell me what book it is?” “It has gilt letters on it.”  “Can you read them, or tell me the name of the author?” She read, or pronounced slowly, “W.L.W.” (giving the full surname of the author).  She answered several minor questions re the furniture in the room, and I then said to her, “Is it any effort or trouble to you to travel in this way?” “Yes, a little; I have to think.”

’I now stood behind her, holding a half-crown in my hand, and asked her if she could tell me what I had in my hand, to which she replied, “It is a shilling.”  It seemed as though she could see what was happening miles away easier than she could see what was going on in the room.

’Her father returned home nearly a week afterwards, and was perfectly astounded when told by his wife and family what he had been doing on that particular evening; and, although previous to that date he was a thorough sceptic as to clairvoyance, he frankly admitted that my clairvoyant was perfectly correct in every particular.  He also informed us that the book referred to was a new one, which he had purchased after he had left his home, so that there was no possibility of his daughter guessing that he had the book before him.  I may add that the letter in due course appeared in the paper; and I saw and handled the book.’

A number of cases of so-called ‘clairvoyance’ will be found in the ’Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research.’[22] As the authors of these essays remark, even after discounting, in each case, fraud, malobservation, and misreporting, the residue of cases can seldom justify either the savage theory of the wandering soul (which is not here seriously proposed) or Hegel’s theory that the fuehlende Seele is unconditioned by space.  For, if thought transference be a fact, the apparent clairvoyant may only be reading the mind of a person at a distance.  The results, however, when successful, would naturally suggest to the savage thinker the belief in the wandering soul, or corroborate it if it had already been suggested by the common phenomena of dreaming.