Part 2
Again I put the question “Do you hear me?”
Nothing at first transpired; but, on repeating the question several times, my brain became aware of the power of thought working in the dead skull, and this thought-voice gradually became coherent, until I could actually detect the vibration of certain words being formed, which were, however, not sufficiently distinct for me to understand.
My brain was quickly tired with the intense strain of sustained thought, and, lying down on the couch, I fell fast asleep, to dream of the land of the Pharaohs.
In my dream I seemed to hear people speaking to each other, and to see them going about their usual avocations. I appeared in my dream to be inside the shop of an Eastern hairdresser, where an Egyptian fop was having his hair curled and dressed for some evening function, possibly a ball or supper. The hairdresser and his young patron appeared to be cracking jokes in their native tongue, of which I could not understand a word, but still I laughed at their jokes as heartily as if I fathomed every quip they uttered. At length I laughed so loudly in my sleep at one of the barber’s witticisms, that I awoke to find tears of merriment streaming from my eyes.
My dream had solved part of the problem!
Of course the thought-words I had read, by means of the wire round my head, were in the _Egyptian_ tongue, hence the reason for my not understanding them.
Here was a dilemma!
However, I did not give up my mummy; for, although I could neither ask intelligible questions nor receive answers that I could understand, I obtained Egyptian _thoughts_ whenever I had a mind.
I kept the royal corpse for the allotted month, and then returned it in its deal case, with a letter of thanks to my friend in Gordon Square.
A dead subject was all very well, but a _dead language_ was beyond me.
So far my success was very encouraging. I had learnt, among other things, that the soul, or brain-ether, still tenants the skull after the substance of the brain is entirely dissipated--provided it has not been removed from the cavity before decay set in.
With strong hopes of better success, I now resolved to obtain an English skull and try my skill upon it.
During my peregrinations in the South of England the following week, I found myself in the neighbourhood of X---- Cathedral, and strolling, almost unthinkingly, into its grand interior, admired its decorations and memorials. It was late in the day, and as in the gathering gloaming I wandered round the solemn building, I found myself gazing upon some curious painted coffins containing the remains of certain of our Saxon kings. Gazing upon them I became fascinated, for they suggested another step towards the realization of my grand scheme.
As I stood before these sepulchres of the long dead, I am sorry to say the longing came into my mind to possess a skull from one of the decorated coffins; and presently the longing became so intense, that, like some villainous body-snatcher, I hid myself behind a stack of chairs in the nave, remaining there seated comfortably on a hassock till the great bell tolled forth the noon of night, when, coming forth from my hiding-place, I effected my ghoulish purpose, and secreted under my cape the cranium of a Saxon monarch.
The weary hours of the night lagged in their monotonous round, for I dared not sleep, fearing I might not awaken before the opening of the south door for the eight o’clock service; but my vigil was ended at last by the arrival of a gaping old man, who came to ring the bell calling early worshippers to the holy fane. The entry of several persons to the building gave me an opportunity of walking quickly out without attracting attention, but I can scarcely describe my feelings of shame, nor is there perhaps any need of doing so. Necessity, the noble mother of invention, had made a very criminal of me; but whatever loathing I had for myself was condoned by the fact, that what I was doing was for the sake of mankind at large; and although I had purloined the principal part of a royal personage, I could not look upon it as a theft, but merely as a loan from one who had no further use for his ancient head.
A few hours brought me again to the mighty metropolis, and I quickly set to work with my elaborate apparatus, but, alas! only to be the victim of another disappointment.
Although I could obtain certain mental sounds (if I may so term them), and could, by the aid of my thought-reading power, understand that words were being thought by the brain-ether in the monarch’s cranium, yet, unfortunately, to fathom their meaning was beyond me.
Pure Saxon was a language with which I was totally unacquainted!
Here was another stupid mistake of mine, of precisely the same nature as the one I made in my first experiment.
What could I do?
Very little.
I copied down, phonetically, a number of the words which the monarch was _thinking_, and showed them to a professor of Anglo-Saxon, but all he could do was to translate some of them into modern English, so giving a series of words without any sequence or connection whatever.
Angry with myself, and angry with the skull simply for being Saxon, and therefore not understandable, I took it in my hand, and, in my disappointment and rage, should doubtless have shattered it into fragments against the wall, but for the sudden ringing of my door bell, warning me of the arrival of a gentleman with whom I had an appointment.
When the interview was over my anger had ceased also, and that afternoon, with the skull in a bag, I took train for X----, and repaired to my stack of chairs in the cathedral. I hid myself again, like a felon, till the doors were closed, then restoring the skull uninjured to its resting-place, crept back to my hassock seat, and awaited the dawning.
I fell asleep, and I suppose snored, for, to my astonishment, I was awakened next morning by the verger, who, not believing my cock-and-bull story of having been shut in the cathedral while absorbed in the contemplation of the ancient structure and its interesting relics, haled me before a magistrate.
It was with difficulty I proved my identity, and doing so cost me all the loose cash I had about me in telegraphing to my friends, before the worthy magistrate would release me, although I had been twice searched to see if anything of value was secreted about my person.
Oh, science! what miseries thou hast for ages brought upon thy noblest sons! What sorrows; what disappointments; what troubles and trials, and alas, what terms of vile durance! I, being one of thy sons, have shared all these evils, though perhaps in a minor degree!
My failures, however, were not unmitigated: I had established the fact that brain-ether and brain-thought were present in skulls, whatever their nationality, and to whatever period they might belong; my failures were attributable principally to my lack of linguistic knowledge, a lack that might easily be remedied.
My business now became to seek a skull of a more modern period. I applied at a number of likely places, and at last was successful in obtaining a fine, large specimen, which had a clean and refined appearance. I paid but a small sum for it, and carried it home to my study in triumph. Surely at last I was on the road to the development of my pet project.
After dinner, all being quiet, I commenced experiments upon the skull, and having placed my apparatus in order, I asked my usual question:
“Who are you?”
“Sidney Smith,” came the reply.
Good gracious, I thought, can this be the great wit?
“You do not mean to say,” I asked, “that you are the great Sidney Smith?”
“I reckon you have just hit the right nail on the head,” was the immediate thought-reply.
What a piece of luck.
“Well, Mr. Smith, such men as you the world sees but too rarely; your name is still a household word among us, being constantly quoted as that of the brightest star of wit of your day.”
“Whip you mean?” came from the skull.
“No; I said _wit_; a jocular person, you know.”
“I ain’t no wit nor jocular person,” was the response, “not as I knows what ‘jocular’ is exactly, but if it is anything to do with a jockey it’s nothing to do with me, for I stood six feet four, and weighed seventeen stone. If you calls me a ‘whip’ instead of a ‘wit,’ there you are right, for I drove the York and Manchester coach for over twenty years.”
I found my subject very garrulous, very thick-headed, and very quarrelsome--a man of high stature but low breeding; one who knew nothing of any subjects but those of a horsey nature. One day our conversation became so warm, and such a string of bad language flooded the fellow’s brain-ether, that I had to disconnect my battery. I left the cranium for some days, thinking that the man’s temper would have cooled down, for I supposed that when I disconnected the electric wires the current of thought ceased; but when I applied the wires to my head, I found that the old store of abuse was still at work in the brain-ether of my giant subject, and the end of the matter was, that I smashed the beautiful skull into a thousand fragments against my study wall, thus dissipating the soul or brain-ether into space.
I did not regret the occurrence, for the fellow was most vituperative and impertinent whenever I wished to know anything of his family secrets or earthly career.
Still, when I think of it, I have a deal for which to thank that giant skull. It was during the fortnight that I possessed it that I, to a great extent, perfected my apparatus for Soul-Reading, Brain-Ether-Reviewing, Etherealized-Human-Record-Deciphering, or whatever men may term my discovery, for I have not yet invented a title for it myself.
I therefore thank that broken vase of humanity, though being broken, I cannot convey my thanks as I would wish, for there is no brain-ether left to convey it to.
Alas, poor giant!
Hundreds of skulls have come under my apparatus for examination during the past decade, and I possess facts that would make many great English families quake; facts asserted by ancestors’ souls--_and souls cannot lie_--of how titles and estates have been wrongfully obtained, and rightful heirs darkly put aside to favour other candidates.
I know of facts, suppressed in history, which, were I to reveal their dark catalogue of murders, conspiracies and political intrigues, would put a fresh interpretation upon the records of our country. But of what avail would the disclosure be to our present generation? The heart of man in the nineteenth century is, what it has been in all ages, “desperately wicked.”
On the other hand, it has been my good fortune to converse with kings and ambassadors, with men of learning, poets, statesmen, with artists and men of science, even with the great Isaac Newton himself, and am now in the position of being the best-informed man, upon past history and events, of any person in the world. Men say there is but a thin partition between a savant and a madman. I know better; I may be the former, but between me and madness a vast gap yawns, although my friends will have their little jibe at me. Great men ever had their traducers, and I, naturally, am no exception.
Of all those with whom I have chatted--and by my experiments I can converse with the spirit or soul of _any_ person, provided I have the skull to which I can attach my apparatus--there has not been one equal in intellectual capacity to Sir Isaac Newton, a most steady, solid man of scientific sense.
Now Newton’s idea of the brain and my own precisely coincide, and if I give _my_ notion upon the subject I give his also. Here it is.
The brain is an elaborate storehouse of knowledge of every kind. It contains a record of _all_ one has learned during one’s lifetime; I say _all_, because if a person has learned a thing and forgotten it, it must not be supposed that that thing has vanished from the brain; not so; it is faithfully recorded in the brain substance, though the mental faculties may not be strong enough to _reproduce_ the particular thing or theme when wanted.
Not only is everything once learnt retained by the brain, but it also contains a record of every _action_ of one’s life. All these actions and events are stored away in minute cells to the number of hundreds of thousands, and yet to the human eye they are not as visible as a pin’s point; in fact, they have no dimensions whatever.
Now, supposing this theory to be correct, can we not see (and I say it with great reverence) how easy the task of the Recording Angel must be; can we not imagine the celestial one reading the record of a man’s brain as easily as we poor mundane mortals can scan a book?
Are not many biblical texts elucidated by this theory; for instance, Ecclesiastes xii. 14; Matthew xii. 37; and Hebrews iv. 13?
But then the theory of the brain-ether, or the soul as some call it, goes further. I am of opinion that the soul is not _spirit_ but _matter_; matter of such infinitely minute particles as to be perfectly invisible to even the most powerful microscope yet made.
Let me explain my meaning more fully.
Just as there are differences in the bulk and solidity of various materials, so is there a vast difference in the tangibility, if I may so term it, of various bodies and substances.
Take a cubic foot of steel--matter beyond all doubt--and of what closely-compacted solidity and enormous density! Then take a cubic foot of smoke, that again is matter, but what immeasurable difference in density, tangibility, and even visibility there is in the two substances!
Then go a step further, and imagine a cubic foot of gas: it is invisible, intangible, and possesses but little density, yet it is _matter_, it is not spirit.
Now, seeing the vast difference between various matters, can we not believe that the brain, instead of being soul or spirit, may still be matter of such a rare and subtle quality that there is even more difference between it and gas, than between gas and a solid lump of steel or granite?
If you can follow that suggestion you have my theory; but having spoken of my theory I go no farther. Of what my apparatus consists I have merely hinted, not mentioning one or two of its principal conditions. My secret is of such vast importance that it would go a great way to revolutionize science, history, and even religion, and I dare not divulge it to the world at large. The more I think over the matter, the more convinced I am that my experiments have so lifted the veil of death, that I have stepped within the bounds of things which should be unknown to man.
I have passed the Rubicon of the supernatural!
I tremble at my own temerity.
I have now but one Gordian knot to sever. Shall my secret die with me, and so save the civilized world much anxiety, or shall I divulge it to a small coterie of the world’s greatest philosophers, and allow them to work upon and improve my ideas, so that they may benefit mankind, without revealing the secret power, which in profane hands would prove but a curse?
For the present the secret shall remain _mine alone_, but what I may decide to do with it in the future, who knows?
* * * * *
It is not every day that one has an opportunity of receiving a millionaire as a guest, and to have the privilege of hypnotizing one is a still rarer thing, yet both these experiences have been mine at one and the same time, and I will relate how it happened.
I was staying for a few days on the Cornish coast, and had drawn my van far on to the beach, by the side of a rivulet which, coming down from low neighbouring hills, murmured and tumbled along its rocky bed until it lost itself in the immeasurable sea.
My van was placed near some rocky cliffs, in such a position as to be snug and secluded, and yet so as to retain a view up the lovely valley through which the little river sparkled and foamed. I selected the spot because of its quietude and beauty; I do not care for the annoyance of children, or the obtrusive curiosity of their elders, when they can easily be avoided by a little forethought.
Once or twice I noticed a tall, middle-aged gentleman roaming quietly among the rocks and pools left by the low tide, and on one occasion passed the seal of day with him in a casual manner; but, as he seemed to be of a retiring disposition, I did not attempt to force my company upon him, and passed on.
One day I sat on a rock observing a wonderful storm-clouded sky; I watched the great, massive, vapour clouds rolling in from the west, growing blacker and denser each minute. I noticed the hush of the air and the subsidence of the wind, and so did the little birds, for they flew twittering overhead to hide themselves from the approaching storm. Then from the clouds burst the vivid zig-zags of lightning, and the accompanying roar of crashing thunder, gradually coming nearer and nearer, more frequent and louder. Presently, with a sudden blast, the wind came hurtling down with startling force and fury, licking up the sand and shingle as it drove along; and behind it came the rain, first a few sparse drops, then a full downpour, and finally a rushing torrent.
This drove me into the welcome shelter of my van; but although I securely closed the door it could not keep, from my startled ears, the thunder crashes, as they reverberated and rolled among the stupendous granite cliffs of the coast. My van shook, and my eyes were blinded by several intense flashes of the discharged electric element, which lighted up the wet rocks and the wind-swept pools with a luridly grand but awful effect.
The cliffs appeared as if they were being shattered and tumbled piecemeal to the shingle below, when an unmistakable tap, tap, tap rattled upon my door, and I fancied I heard a voice, but the crashing and roaring noises around me were so great that I paused before opening the door for a repetition of the sound. Indeed my nerves were strung up to such an intense pitch that, when the taps were repeated in a louder manner, I felt afraid to open, for fear of letting in some weird spirit of the storm.
Nervous, however, as I felt, I arose, and at the door, craving my van’s humble shelter, was the silent gentleman I had spoken to a day or two previously. I welcomed him in, but he was already wet to the skin. That did not at all matter; I had plenty of dry clothes, which fitted him like his own--both his and my inches being more than those allotted to the average mortal.
In an hour the storm was over, the sun once more shone brilliantly over the heaving waters, while the larks rose warbling in the air, carolling their hymn of praise for the return of the welcome sunshine.
My guest accepted my invitation to stay and dine with me, and I found him a very pleasant companion. He helped me to prepare and cook the meal, and in the interval we played cribbage, smoked, and chatted.
He had come down to Cornwall, he informed me, to escape from his friends and mankind in general, for, having inherited some money, he was worried and pestered on all sides by impecunious persons and institutions; and to come to a place where he was unknown was his only means of obtaining a little peace, “far from the madding crowd.”
Of course I brought hypnotism upon the _tapis_ during dinner, and after the meal was discussed, he requested me to try my hand upon him, which of course I gladly did, with the result of obtaining from him the following story of “Two Ruined Towers.”
I must here point out that, though while in a hypnotic trance I can cause my patient to tell me a story, yet when at its conclusion I awaken him, he does not remember a word of what he has divulged, and I do not on all occasions enlighten him; for, as I am at times the recipient of most remarkable family secrets, crimes, and misdeeds, I dare not commit to print a tithe of what is related to me.
II.
TWO RUINED TOWERS.
When about three-and-twenty years of age I had the misfortune to lose my father, an event which altered the whole course of my life, and nearly unhinged my mind. My father was an artist of some repute, and as I also loved the work, I had an ardent wish to follow in his footsteps.
At seventeen I left school, and immediately commenced my artistic studies under my father. I also became a student at the ---- Art School, at which, when I was about twenty years of age, I had the good fortune to gain a travelling scholarship of £100 a year for two years. The first summer I spent in the British Isles, eking out my scholarship money with the help of a small allowance from my good parent.
The winter I spent in my father’s studio, and in the following spring packed up my few belongings, and bidding my father farewell, travelled to various parts of the continent, making my way gradually south as the cold weather approached. Thus, roving about, I picked up a fair knowledge of two or three languages, and when my time of travel expired, found myself in Sicily, from whence, crossing over to Naples, I spent my last few pounds in procuring a passage home on a P. & O. steamer bound for dear old England.
On my arrival I lost no time in sending a telegram to my father, advising him that he might expect me on the following day. I kept my word, and arrived at the time I had mentioned, but, alas! I found my dear old father on a sick-bed, and was only just in time to bid him a long farewell, for he died two days after my return home.
The shock was so great to my nervous system that I too became ill, and for a long time was in grave danger, hovering between life and death, but, by careful nursing and skilful medical treatment, I eventually pulled through. My nerves were greatly shaken at the awful home-coming I had experienced, and the knowledge that I had not written to my father for three weeks previous to coming to England, so that he might know where to address me, preyed greatly upon my mind. I could not help thinking that, had my father been able to communicate with me, I might have returned sooner, and by so doing have possibly saved his life. I felt somehow guilty of a kind of moral parricide, and blamed myself for all that had happened.
It was more than I could bear to enter the studio; everything about the place served to call up memories of the past; even the trees around the old house seemed to whisper as I walked beneath them, “ingrate.”
I could not bear it.
I felt hysterical and delirious, talking and groaning in my sleep; and during the day roaming about the house like one distraught.
The doctor diagnosed the case at once, and told me plainly that I must choose one of two things--a lunatic asylum or foreign travel.
Feeling his opinion to be a sound one, I naturally chose the latter alternative.
Once more I packed up my impedimenta and crossed to Dieppe, from whence I wandered, without any decided route, across France into Switzerland, from thence making my way gradually southward into Italy.