there been introduced.  The lady’s face, however, he could not clearly visualise, and Miss Angus reported nothing but a view of an empty ball-room, with polished floor and many lights.  The gentleman made another effort, and remembered his partner with some distinctness.  Miss Angus then described another room, not a ball-room, comfortably furnished, in which a girl with brown hair drawn back from her forehead, and attired in a high-necked white blouse, was reading, or writing letters, under a bright light in an unshaded glass globe.  The description of the features, figure, and height tallied with Mr. ——­’s recollection; but he had never seen this Geraldine of an hour except in ball dress.  He and Miss Angus noted the time by their watches (it was 10.30), and Mr. ——­ said that on the first opportunity he would ask the young lady how she had been dressed and how employed at that hour on December 21.  On December 22 he met her at another dance, and her reply corroborated the crystal picture.  She had been writing letters, in a high-necked white blouse, under an incandescent gas lamp with an unshaded glass globe.  She was entirely unknown to Miss Angus, and had only been seen once by Mr. ——.  Mr. ——­ and the lady of the crystal picture corroborated all this in writing.

I now suggested an experiment to Miss Angus, which, after all, was clearly not of a nature to establish a ‘test’ for sceptics.  The inquirer was to write down, and inclose in an envelope, a statement of his thoughts; Miss Angus was to do the same with her description of the picture seen by her; and these documents were to be sent to me, without communication between the inquirer and the crystal-gazer.  Of course, this could in no way prove absence of collusion, as the two parties might arrange privately beforehand what the vision was to be.

Indeed, nobody is apt to be convinced, or shaken, unless he is himself the inquirer and a stranger to the seeress, as the people in these experiments were.  Evidence interesting to them—­and, in a secondary degree, to others who know them—­can thus be procured; but strangers are left to the same choice of doubts as in all reports of psychological experiences, ‘chromatic audition,’ views of coloured numerals, and the other topics illustrated by Mr. Galton’s interesting researches.

In this affair of the envelopes the inquirer was a Mr. Pembroke, who had just made Miss Angus’s acquaintance, and was but a sojourner in the land.  He wrote, before knowing what Miss Angus had seen in the ball: 

’VII.—­On Sunday, January 23, 1898, whilst Miss Angus was looking in the crystal ball, I was thinking of my brother, who was, I believe, at that time, somewhere between Sabathu (Punjab, India) and Egypt.  I was anxious to know what stage of his journey he had reached.’

Miss Angus saw, and wrote, before telling Mr. Pembroke: 

’A long and very white road, with tall trees at one side; on the other, a river or lake of greyish water.  Blue sky, with a crimson sunset.  A great black ship is anchored near, and on the deck I see a man lying, apparently very ill.  He is a powerful-looking man, fair, and very much bronzed.  Seven or eight Englishmen, in very light clothes, are standing on the road beside the boat.