That here, too, there was an after-thought, or an after-picturation, which, by way of attempted explanation, "realized" a knife and blood on the floor, but overlooked other details that made this occurrence inexplicable in terms of ordinary murders— or that this woman had been stabbed in the heart, through unpunctured clothes, because it was, with the neglect of everything else, the wound in the heart that had been visualized.
The germ of this expression is in anybody's acceptance that a stigmatic girl can transfer a wound, as pictured in her mind, into appearance upon her body. The expression requires that there may be external, as well as personal, stigmatism.
It seems to me to be as nearly unquestionable as anything in human affairs goes, that there have been stigmatic girls. There may have been many cases of different kinds of personal stigmatism,
There are emotions that are as intense as religious excitation. One of them is terror.
The story of Isidor Fink is a story of a fear that preceded a murder. It could be that Fink's was a specific fear, of somebody whom he had harmed, and not a general fear of the hold-ups that, at the time, were so prevalent in New York City. According to Police Commissioner Mulrooney, it was impossible, in terms of ordinary human experience, to explain this closed-room murder
Or Isidor Fink, at work in his laundry— and his mind upon somebody whom he had injured— and that his fears of revenge were picturing an assassination of which he was the victim— that his physical body was seized upon by his own picturization of himself, as shot by an enemy.
Chapter 31
IN February, 1885, in an English prison, there was one of the dream-like occurrences that the materialists think are real. But every character concerned in it was fading away, so that now there is probably no survivor. From time to time repairs had to be made, because the walls of the prison were dissolving. By way of rusts, the iron bars were disappearing.
Upon February 23, 1885— as we say, in terms of our fanciful demarcations— just as if a 23rd of February, which is only relative to rhythms of sunshine, could be a real day— just as if one could say really where a January stops and a February begins— just as if one could really pick a period out of time, and say that there ever was really a year 1885—
Early in what is called a morning of what is so arbitrarily and fancifully called the 23rd of February, 1885, John Lee, in his cell, in the penitentiary, at Exeter, England, was waiting to be hanged.
In the yard of a prison of stone, with bars of iron, John Lee was led past a group of hard and motionless witnesses, to the scaffold. There were newspaper men present. Though they probably considered it professional to look as expressionless as stones, or bars of iron, there was nothing in Lee's case to be sentimental about. His crime had been commonplace and sordid. He was a laborer, who had lived with an old woman, who had a little property, and, hoping to get that, he had killed her. John Lee was led past a group, almost of minerals. It was a scene of the mechanism and solidity of legal procedure, as nearly real as mechanism and solidity can be.
Noose on his neck, and up on the scaffold they stood him on a trap door. The door was held in position by a bolt. When this bolt was drawn, the door fell—
John Lee, who hadn't a friend, and hadn't a dollar—
The Sheriff of Exeter, behind whom was Great Britain.
The Sheriff waved his hand. It represented Justice and Great Britain.
The bolt was drawn, but the trap door did not fall. John Lee stood with the noose around his neck.
It was embarrassing. He should be strangling. There is something of an etiquette in all things, and this was indecorum. They tinkered with the bolt. There was no difficulty, whatsoever, with the bolt: but when it was drawn, with John Lee standing on the trap door, the door would not fall.
Something unreasonable was happening. Just what is the procedure, in the case of somebody, who is standing erect, when he should be dangling? The Sheriff ordered John Lee back to his cell.
The people in this prison yard were not so stolid. They fluttered, and groups of them were talking it over. But there was no talk that could do John Lee any good. This was what is called stern reality. The Sheriff did not flutter. I have a note upon him, twenty years later: he was in trouble with a religious sect of which he was a member, because he ordered his beer by the barrel. He was as solid as beer and beef and the British Government.
The warders looked into the matter thoroughly— except that there wasn't anything to look into. Every time they drew back the bolt, with John Lee out of the way, the door fell, as it should fall. One of the warders stood in Lee's place, where, instead of placing the noose around his neck, he clung to the rope. The bolt was drawn, the door fell, as it should fall, and down dropped the warder, as he should drop.
There was a woman they could not push. A man they could not crucify. The man they could not drown. There was the man they could not imprison. The dog they could not lose.
John Lee was led back to the scaffold. The witnesses did not know whether to be awed or not. But, after all, it was just one of those things that nobody could explain, but that could not happen again—
Or that to a college professor it could not— to anybody educated in the first principles of mechanics and physics it could not— that, to anybody, not an untutored laboring man, but committed to unquestioning belief in everything that a professor of physics would say in maintaining that the trap door would have to fall—
The bolt was drawn.
The trap door would not fall.
John Lee stood unhangable.
That when, the first time, John Lee was led past these newspaper men, and town officials, and others who had been invited to the ceremony, any one of them could have overstepped any line that all were told to toe would have been little short of inconceivable. But a doctor, whose professional appearance was much faded, interceded. Others were shaky. The Sheriff said that John Lee had been sentenced to be hanged, and that John Lee would be hanged.
They had done everything thinkable. Any suggestions? Somebody suggested that rains might have swollen the wooden door, causing friction. There had been, in all tests, no friction: but, by way of taking every possible precaution, a warder planed the edges of the door. They experimented, and, every time, the door fell, as it should fall.
They stood him on the scaffold again.
The door would not fall.
This scene of an attempted execution dissolved, like a dream-picture. The newspaper men faded away, or burst away. The newspaper men ran out into the streets of Exeter. In the streets, they ran, shouting the news of the man who could not be hanged. The Sheriff, who had tried hard to be a real Sheriff, went to pieces. He'd do this about it, and then he'd do that about it, and then "Take him away!" He communicated with the Home Secretary. There was something about all this that so shook the Home Secretary that he authorized a delay.
The matter was debated in the House of Commons, where some of the members denounced a proposed defeat of justice by superstition. Nevertheless the execution was not attempted again. Lee's sentence was commuted to life-imprisonment, but he was released in December, 1907. His story was re-told in the newspapers of that time. I take from Lloyd's Weekly News (London) Jan. 5, 1908.
I have tried to think of a conventional explanation, in the case of John Lee. All attempts fail. He hadn't a dollar.
There may be some commonplace explanation that I have not thought of: but my notion is that the explanation that I have thought of will some day be considered as commonplace as are now regarded the impenetrable mysteries of electricity and radio-activity.
Chapter 32
IT'S the old controversy— the action of mind upon matter. But, in the philosophy of the hyphen, an uncrossable gap is disposed of, and the problem is rendered into thinkable terms, by asking whether mind-matter can act upon matter-mind.
I am beginning to see whence all my specialization, not much short of hypnotization, upon magic, as the job. Just why am I so bent upon cooping people into multicellular formations, and setting batteries of disciplined sorcerers at work, bewitching into useful revolutions all the motors of the world?
As to the job, and anything that is supposed to be not a job, there is only the state of job-recreation, or recreation-job. I have cut out of my own affairs very much of so-called recreation, simply because I feel that I cannot give to so-called enjoyments the labors that they exact. I'd often like to be happy, but I don't want to go through the equivalence of digging a ditch, or of breaking stones, to enjoy myself. I have seen, by other persons, very labored and painful efforts to be happy. So then I am so much concerned with the job, because, though it hyphenates, there isn't anything else.
Probably it will be some time before any college professor, of whatever we think we mean by importance, will admit that, by witchcraft, or by the development of what are now only wild talents, all the motors of this earth may be set going and kept at work. But "highest authority" no longer unitedly opposes the more or less remote possibility of such operations. See an interview, with Dr. Arthur H. Compton, Professor of Physics, at the University of Chicago, published in the New York Times, Jan. 3, 1932. Said Dr. Compton: "The new physics does not suggest a solution of the old question of how mind acts on matter. It does definitely, however, admit the possibility of such action, and suggests where the action may take effect."
I don't know that I am much more of a heretic, myself. In my stories, I have admitted possibilities, and I have made suggestions.
But the difference is that the professors will not be concrete, and I give instances. Dr. Compton's views are ripe with the interpretation that transportation systems, and the lighting of cities, and the operation of factories may someday be the outcome of what he calls the "action of mind on matter," or what I'd call mechanical witchcraft. But toyers with abstractions falter, the moment one says— "For instance?"
The fuel-less motor, which is by most persons considered a dream, or a swindle, associates most with the name of John Worrell Keely, though there have been other experimenters, or impostors, or magicians. The earliest fuel-less motor "crank" of whom I have record is John Murray Spear, back in the period of 1855, though of course various "cranks" of all ages can be linked with this swindle, dream, or most practical project. The latest, at this writing, is a young man, Lester J. Hendershot, of Pittsburgh, Pa. I take data from the New York Herald Tribune, Feb. 27-March 10, 1928. It was Henderson's statement that he had invented a motor that operated by deriving force from "this earth's magnetic field." Nobody knows what that means. But Hendershot was backed by Major Thomas Lanphier, U. S. Army, commandant of Selfridge Field, Detroit. It was said that at tests of Selfridge Field, a model of the "miracle motor" had invisibly generated power enough to light two 110-volt lamps, and that another had run a small sewing machine. Major Lanphier stated that he had helped to make one of these models, which were of simple construction, and that he was sure that there was nothing fraudulent about it.
This espousal by Major Lanphier array, considering that to orthodox scientists it was the equivalence of belief in miracles, seem extraordinary: but it seems to me that the attacks that were made upon Hendershot were more extraordinary— or significant. It would seem that, if a simple, little contrivance, weighing less than ten pounds, were a fraud, the mechanics of Selfridge Field, or anywhere else, could determine that in about a minute, especially if they had themselves made it, under directions. If the thing were a fraud, it would seem that it would have to be obviously a fraud. Who'd bother? But Dr. Frederick Hochstetter, head of the Hochstetter Research Laboratory, of Pittsburgh, went to New York about it. He hired a lecture room, or a "salon," of a New York hotel, telling reporters that he had come to expose a fraud, which would be capable of destroying faith in science for 1,000 years. If so, even to me this would not be desirable. I should like to see faith in science destroyed for 20 years, and then be restored for a while, and then be knocked flat again, and then revive— and so on, in a healthy alternation. Dr. Hochstetter exhibited models of the motor. They couldn't generate the light of a 1-volt firefly. They couldn't stitch a fairy's breeches. Dr. Hochstetter lectured upon what he called a fraud. But the motive for all this? Dr. Hochstetter explained that his only motive was that "pure science might shine forth untarnished."
It was traveling far, and going to trouble and expense to maintain the shine of a purity, the polish of which was threatened by no more than a youngster, of whom most of the world had never heard before. What I pick up is that there must have been an alarm that was no ordinary alarm, somewhere. I pick up that at tests, in Detroit, in Hendershot's presence, his motors worked; that, in New . York, not in his presence, his motors did not work.
Then came the denouement, by which most stories of exposed impostors end up, or are said to end up. Said Dr. Hochstetter— dramatically, I suppose, inasmuch as he was much worked up over all this— he had discovered that concealed in one of the motors was a carbon pencil battery.
Just about so, in the literature of Taboo, end almost all stories of doings that are "alarming." There is no chance for a come-back from the "exposed impostor." He is shown as sneaking off-stage, in confusion and defeat. But some readers are having a glimmer of what I mean by taking so much material from the newspapers. They get statements from "exposed impostors." They ridicule and belittle, and publish much that is one-sided, but they do give the chance for the come-back.
Came back Hendershot:
That Dr. Hochstetter was quite right in his accusation, but only insofar as it applied to an incident of several years before. In his early experiments Hendershot, having no assurance of the good faith of visitors, had stuck into his motor various devices "to lead them away from the real idea I was working on." But, in the tests at Selfridge Field there had been no such "leads," and there had been no means of concealments in motors that mechanics employed by Major Lanphier had made.
Two weeks later, Hendershot dropped out of the newspapers. Perhaps a manufacturer of ordinary motors bought him off. But he dropped out by way of a strange story. It is strange to me, because I recall the small claims that were made for the motor— alleged power not sufficient to harm anybody— only enough to run a sewing machine, or to light lamps with 220 volts. New York Herald Tribune, March 10, 1928— that Lester J. Hendershot, the Pittsburgh inventor of the "miracle motor," was a patient in the Emergency Hospital, Washington, D. C. It is said that, in the office of a patent attorney, he was demonstrating his "fuel-less motor," when a bolt estimated at 2,000 volts shot from it, and temporarily paralyzed him.
