Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/237

Rh may become what is popularly called clairvoyant.

"Dr. Pierce, an instant ago you spoke—as an archæologist—of the exploded belief in witchcraft; but please do not forget that that belief was at one time widespread, almost universal. You speak now—as an educated man—with equal contempt of clairvoyance; but a half-hour's ride down Madison or Halsted Street, with an eye open to the signs in the second-story windows, will show you how widespread to-day is the belief in clairvoyance, since so many persons gain a living by it. If you ask me whether I believe in witchcraft and clairvoyance, I will tell you I do not believe one atom in any infernal power of one person over another; and so far as anyone's being able to read the future or reveal in the past matters which they have had no natural means of knowing, I do not believe in clairvoyance. But if you or I believed that any widespread popular conception such as witchcraft once was and clairvoyance is to-day, can exist without having somewhere a basis of fact, we should be holding a belief even more ridiculous than the negro's credulity!

"I am certain that no explanation of what happened in this house last Wednesday and since can be formed, except by recognizing in it one of those comparatively rare authentic cases from which the popular belief in witchcraft and clairvoyance has sprung; and I would rest the solution of this case on the ability of your ward, under the proper circumstances, to tell us who was in this room last Wednesday, and what