Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/342

326 of day and night." "'When I am sleepy,' he said, 'I go to bed.'" He asked his servant, the wife of his gardener, to make his bed and to put a large jug of water in his anteroom, all the attendance he required. He made his own coffee in his study, where the fire was never allowed to go out. He drank a great deal of coffee with a lot of sugar in it. (In experimental psychic research it has been found that coffee helps the "psi" ability.) When he was not invited out, his dinner consisted of nothing but a roll soaked in boiled milk, but in company he would eat freely and indulge moderately in a merry glass.

His dress in winter was a fur coat of reindeer skin, and in summer it was a dressing-gown, both well worn, but his outdoor clothes were neat though simple. "Still, it happened sometimes that, when he prepared to go out, and his people did not call attention to it, something would be forgotten or neglected in his dress; so that, for instance, he would put one buckle of gems and another of silver on his shoes." Robsahm saw this himself, he says, at his father's house where Swedenborg was asked to dine, and the occurrence "greatly amused several young girls."

And their amusement probably greatly amused Swedenborg, but when less naïve persons tried to ridicule him they often found the laugh turned on themselves. No less a dignitary than Archbishop Troilius, who was fond of playing "tresett" (a card game needing three people) and who had just lost one of his card partners, Erland Broman, met Swedenborg in a large gathering and asked him jocularly, "By the way, Assessor, tell us something about the spirit world. How does my friend Broman spend his time there?"

Swedenborg answered instantly, "I saw him but a few hours ago shuffling his cards in the company of the Evil One, and he was only waiting for your worship to make up a game of tresett." 4

Robsahm freely asked Swedenborg questions in regard to his psychic gifts, inquiring once whether other people could come into the same degree of spirituality. Swedenborg warned against trying, saying it was the direct road to insanity; indeed he often said it was nothing for ordinary people to experiment with; but he did not maintain he was the only person who had the gift of communicating with the other world. Once friends of his wrote to him about a boy who apparently was "psychic," could converse with spirits