TABLE TALK.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1037, 15 January 1892, Page 22

TABLE TALK.

‘ Real Ghost Stories !’ Does it make you shudder ? It is the title of the Christinas Number of the Review of Reviews. But as if the title were not enough, it is supplemented by a solemn warning, under the heading ‘Caution to the Reader,’ made prominent by two black hands pointing imperatively. The reader has just taken up the book, and, of course, looked at the frontispiece, which is a very striking portrait of the late Mr Edmund Gurney, of the Psychical Research Society; a pale, handsome, idealist, with beautiful commanding features and a pair of marvellous prominent eyes, looking fixedly with a satisfied expression into the far distance, while his great masses of curling hair appear to be as if blown back from his' forehead by a mighty wind. The late Mr Gurney has evidently been in company with a real ghost, and is looking after it with the intention of roping it, and haling it before the Psychical Research Society to be dissected and examined. Just when the reader has got this idea fixed in his mind he turns over the page and comes to the Caution with the two black bauds pointing.

Of course, he reads eagerly. ‘ The narratives printed on these pages must not be read by any one of tender years, of morbid excitability, or of excessively nervous temperament.’ His flesh creeps ; but not enough to please Mr W. T. Stead, who has further written that ‘ the latest students of the subject concur in the solemn warning addressed in the sacred writings to those who have dealings with familiar spirits, or who expose themselves to the horrible consequences of possession.’ Here we are at last in the awful region of the supernatural with the condemnation of scriptural authority for our only consolation. What reader could resist the book though his flesh might creep like a wilderness of cockroaches ? But for fear lest there might be some hesitation still, Mr Steacl fires a third shot into you. ‘That as the latest possibilities of our complex personality are so imperfectly understood, all experimenting in hypnotism, spiritualism, &0., excepting in the most careful and reverent spirit, by the most levelheaded persons, had much better be avoided.’ Of course every reader who has advanced thus far shuddering must feel himself both reverent and level headed. Of course he plunges into the book straight away, with a great splash.

A very marvellous book it is, too, in its way ! Frontispiece ; Caution ; Preface ; Part I.; Part II.; Part 111. -.—Appendix —Of these the second Part carries all the honours for creepiness, and likewise occupies the most of the available space. The preface makes a startling claim on behalf of the study which the Psychical Research Society has taken up, and made so much of. The first part prepares the ground by writing up to the extremely suggestive title of ‘ the ghost thatdwellsin each of us.’ In this way 21 pages are covered with some very suggestive, and occasionally very hard reading. Part 111. is the gem of the work. It is called ‘ The Census of Hallucination.’ It has its own introduction, and is <iivided thereafter into eleven chapters. Of these each one is filled with a great collection of stories, every one more or less supernatural, all declared to be well authenticated ; some of ghosts of the dead, some of ghosts of the living, many in the nature of portents followed by deaths or catastrophes, others without any particular significance at all. Some are amusing, others blood-curdling ; the ghosts are frequently good-natured and impalpable, and sometimes they are . wicked to a degree only equalled by their extreme heavy handedness. Such a

farrago of stories of the unseen world has never been got together in a Christmas number since the world began. The Census paper is an invitation to all and sundry, go each reader to give his experiences of the unseen world, if any, with all necessary dates and particulars to facilitate the work of reference and examination. Then comes the Appendix, with close on a hundred more curious stories, culled from the most ancient history to our own time. Scattered abroad among the 104 pages of the volume —of closely printed double columns in the usual style of the Review of Reviews —are pictures of various persons whohave engagedin Psychic research, or indulged in the practice of the black art, or been witnesses of the indulgences of others, or who through their insane freaks have given to the Psychists the opportunity of studying important phenomena with important bearings on the unseen world. These pictures, of course, carry the interest up to something approaching fever heat.

The Preface’s main point ii a quotation from no less an authority than Dean Church. ‘ Science of late years has taught us that there is no waste product in nature. What we call waste is merely matter, the secret of which we have not yet discovered. We have not learnt the secret of Nature far enough to know how to utilise the resources she places at our disposal, and to profit by her gifts. The phenomena of apparitions belong at present to this category of waste, whose secret we have not yet mastered, and that secret may be the very key which we need to unlock the gate which now bars us from wide fields of knowledge.’ That opens a very wide horizon indeed. The preface shows its extent in very few words. It declares that no impartial man can read the vast number of narratives collected in the v oliyne without feeling that we have at least one hint or suggestion of quite incalculable possibilities in telepathy or thought transference. If there be, as many of these stories seem to suggest, a latent capacity in the human mind to communicate with other minds entirely regardless of the conditions of time and space, it is undeniable that this would be a fact of the very first magnitude.’ That is the crucial point of the whole business ; and from that point the leap to the conclusion is sensational. ‘lt is quite possible that the telegraph may be ,to telepathy what the stage coach is to the steam engine.’ In other words, it is passible when the new science is better understood, that men instead of sending their thoughts and (heir voices by wire will be able to annihilate space without the use of any helping wire or instrument of any kind. Tney may even present vivid pictures of themselves to persons ten thousand miles away, at a moment’s notice. Surely such a science (if it may be so called) is worthy of the closest and the most strict investigation. Thus we are launched on the high road which leads to the explanation by natural means of phenomena hitherto regarded by the common consent of mankind as supernatural, "Wo are invited to believe that all the Maliacmas of Theosophy claim to _ have done will, one day, be done in the most extraordinary way by ordinary people. Man is, in fact, on the threshold of a great unseen universe, whose existence the wonders of the mesmerists arid the practices of the hypnotists have enabled him hitherto to dimly suspect. It is the boldest plea ever put forward in any preface. But nothing is too bold for Mr W. T. Stead, who3e favourite theory is that he must conquer everything by the new journalism.

‘ The ghost that dwells in each of us,’ is the curious title of the first part—a brief necessary preliminary, it is. The theory in some quarters is that we are each haunted by a ‘spiritual presence,’ of whose existence we are fitfully and sometimes never conscious. ‘ Body, soul, and unconscious personality.’ There you have the three of us ; of each one of us. ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,’ is the leading case in fiction, but in real life, according to the stories collected in this volume, there are a vast number of such dualities. The Psychic people speak of them as the Conscious Personality, and the Unconscious Personality. It is the latter which sees all the wonderful things, and makes all the wonderful apparitions ; but generally it must be thrown into the hypnotic trance first in order to free it from of the Conscious personality. Insanity furnishes many cases, and also the state of mind on the borderland of the insane. Vast numbers of cases are recorded by the Psychic Society, of which many striking ones are quoted in these pages, to support the theory of the Unconscious Personality duly worked up with great art by Mr Stead into something resembling a new science. Amongst others we have "the case of an Irishman who had two personalities, one a Home Ruler and Fenian, the other an Orange man, who each had a most unpleasant habit of asserting themselves on gala days. On St. Patrick’s Day the Home Ruler would beat the common body, and on the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne the Orangeman would do the same. The owner of these two inconvenient personalities made it a rule that one should inhabit his left side, while the Other confined himself to liis right. But on the gala days in question he had to be put into a straight waistcoat by the attendants —I TV** 3

the inmate of a lunatic asylum?—so violent was the f -ction fighting that went on within and without. Then there is the story of a gentleman who lived two lives in different, cities, of course at different times, the curious feature of his existence being that, when in one city, he never knew anything about his career in the other, and did not remember even the name he went by there. A convenient condition this for a bigamist. An :ther was of a French woman who had two personalities of totally opposite kinds, x-espectively known by the names of Lucie and Adrienne, which were conscious of each other, and criticised each other severely, and refused for a long time to merge, until at last the weaker succumbed to the stronger, after which the survivors lived happily ever after. There was yet another who had three souls, each of which was remarkably hard on the unhappy common tenement of clay. The wonderful character of these stories is only equalled by the puerility of the theories of the physicians and others accounting for them.

Thus prepared with doubts as to ourselves and what or how many we are, we plunge into Part IL, the ‘Census of Hallucinations.’ ‘ Hallucination ’is not used in the ordinary sense, as a seeing of something which does not exist. The word is used—for want of a better, 1 presume—to express the sight or bearing of something which is not explicable by anyknown laws. A census was organised in connection with this Christmas number. 10,2L1 papers were returned filled up to the census taken before the number came out, and of these 11 ’36 per cent were returned as subject to hallucinations. ‘This,’ says Mr Stead, ‘represents a body of evidence not to be ignored. The office of the Revieiv of Reviews was more fortunate, I may mention, for of the 25 persons who were then accessible, only 12 had no plieno mena to report. This may be suggestive, but it is by the way. To return to the ‘ Census of Hallucinations,’ the nine chapters deal with the most striking of the stories received in the record of 11 36 per cent of people whohave seen and felt and heard things not explainable by any known laws. The people who tell these stories, we read, are real people, they can be subpeened, they are ready to corroborate their testimony on oath under crossexamination *if need be. Their testimony, we are told, may be insufficient to establish the truth of apparitions ; but it would certainly suffice to hang any prisoner that ever stood in the Old Bailey. The reason is that it is much easier to prove the perpetration of a murder than to demonstrate the apparition of a ghost, because, adds Mr Stead sententiouslyi the corpse remains, the ghost disappears.'

The eleven chapters devoted to the work of description are nearly all thrilling, and all remarkably full of interest. Here are some of the titles— 4 My hostess,’ ‘My housekeeper,’ ‘ Myself,’ ‘ Ghosts that keep promises,’ ‘ Ghosts of the Dead,’ ‘ Ghosts of the Dead with a practical object,’ ‘ Evil Spirits,’ ‘ Tangiole Ghosts.’ The first of these is devoted to the manifestations of the ‘ astral ’ body of the Theosopliists, here called the ‘Thought body.’ The most remarkable story is the story of ‘My Hostess,’ a lady Mr Stead went to stay with, who declared she had the faculty of sending her double to visit people at a distance, going through walls, windows and all obstacles. The curious part of her story is that she was corroborated on several occasions by the people she s>id she assisted in this peculiar way. This story reminds Mr Stead of /the celebrated book by Mr Gurney and others of the Psychical Research Society, called ‘ The Phantasms of the Living,’ in which many similar cases are detailed ; and he proceeds to quote some of them ; making remarkable reading indeed.

The chapter entitled ‘ My housekeeper ’ is devoted to ‘ Clairvoyance.’ ‘My housekeeper ’ while in Cornwall simply sees a house she is going to live in in Surrey, and describes it. The story is merely used as an introduction to a large number of similar stories culled from published work's. We read how William Howitt saw his brother’s house in Melbourne from London, how a lady in Edinburgh saw the death in Paris of the Duke of Orleans in the famous carriage accident ; how a gentleman saw in a dream the 'ship Strathmore cast away on the Crozets, where his son and other survivors were eventually found—a case of some interest in Wellington, this one ; how an Irish outrage was detected by clairvoyance ; how some bales of cotton were recovered that had been stowed in the wrong ship ; how Mr Burt saw a friend of his die ; and many other remarkable and) wonderful incidents. Clairvoyance,, we read, in ihe conclusion of these two chapters, is closely related to the phenomenon of the double, for the clairvoyant has the faculty of transporting himself to distant places, or of bringing the places within his range of sight. It is a secret which may hold on to the clue to the acquisition of great faculties, hitherto regarded as forbidden to mere mortals. There is a suggestive speculation about some witches who were condemned in the old days on their own confession of engaging in a witches’ dance with his satanic majesty while they were, as their husbands testified, snug in bed at home. Was it a case of wandering doubles ; who knows ?

‘Myself’ is the chapter on premonitions, what we call presentiments. Mr Stead tells us that he had a presentiment that he would, upon a certain date be the sole editor ot the Pall Mall Gazette. He told Mr Morley, who only laughed. Stead persevered until he became a nuisance to the whole office, proprietor included. Bab by the time appointed a sudden vacancy in the House of Commons took Mr Morley oil the scene, as predicted by Mr Stead, and that gentleman reigned in ms place. After this we have numerous stories, old and new, of presentiments and what came of them. The next chapter on < T hosts who keep promises made during life°is a hair raiser. After that the interest deepens, cases come tumbling on one another thick as leaves in Valiambrosa, the air is alive with ghosts, the sulphurous flames of Erebus gleam fitfully at times ; murders, suicides, sudden deaths, make the air uncanny. And so the book draws creepily to a weird arid wild end ; nob without unpleasant haunting ghosts that strike, and ligh , and lay oppressive hands on you, and net without narrow escapes of hunted men from their horrible clutches. We o-ot to the last chapter, entitled a Eartincr Word,’ and we find it unconsequentiai, rambling, silly ; just the kind of thino 1 to come from a man who has been” adrift among unlaid ghosts and croblins damned ; showing how absolutely the grandiloquent promises of the opening chapters h ive gone by the board. Mighty little science, a vast array of * tones, chiefly old ! We have not got an inch further on the threshold of the new world ; bub there wili be a huge sale of the book. ______

As a young man named Charles Thompson was workmg at a sawmill in the bush near Luvin about midday on Wednesday, he sustained a severe injury to his spine by lifting a heavy piece of timber. Ho was brought into Wellington by the late traiu at night, and removed to the Hospital, where lie received propor attention. He is at present progressing satisfactorily* 'The following are the details of the colonial revenue for the quarter ending 31sfc Decern bur Customs, £376,770; stamps, post and telegraph cash receipts, £LO,/0o ; property tax. £209,809 ; beer duty, £lo,8:H ; railways. £266.097 ; registration and other fees, £16,421; marine, £5208; miscellaneous revenue, £4931 ; territ >rial revenue, £15.567 ; total, £1,044,680 MessrsT. K. Macdonald and Co. (Ld.) held their first sale in their, new auction mart on Wednesday afternoon, when the following properties wore disposed of Section in Courtenay Place, with two two-story houses thereon (sold by order of the Deputy Official Assignee at Hawera, in ttie estate of J<*. Kirk), £560, Mr Nees ; cottage and land in Constable streot, £330, Mr Howartb, as agent; small allotment, with a frontage to a right of way off Abel Smith street, with stable thereon, £SO, Mr J. W. Evans.

""' There was a largs attendance at the Jewish Synagogue on Tuesday afternoon to witness the marriage cf Mr P. Nathan, of Melbourne, to Miss Jessie Levy, daughter of the late Mr Benjamin Levy, of this city, ana niece of Mr F. Cohen. The bride was attired in cream satin, with wax oraDge blossoms and duchess veil and laoo. Misses Cohen, Nathan, Hannah and Julia Levoi were the bridesmaids. The ceremouy was performed by the Rev H. Van Staveren, and at ics c inclusion the party drove to the residence of Mr F. Cohen, where the wedding breakfast was served.

Constable McKinnon, of the Upper Hutfc, telegraphed on Wednesday to Inspector Thomson, informing him that the wife of a settler at Mungaroa, named Mr Thomas Jamieson, died suddenly that morning. As she was without a medical attendant, an inquest will be held at the Upper Hutt, The total number of civil summonses issued in the Resident Magistrate’s Court during la3t year was 2939, agaiust 2625 issued in the year preceding. The total number heard was 1333, against 1254 m 1890; the amount sued for was £25,194 4s 9d, against £20,634 lls 3d in the previous year, and the total amount recovered was £12,985 7a 2d, ugainßt £1*,,241 18s lOd in 1890.

Mr L. W. McGlashan, who was recently in Wellington in connection with the larawera water boilor patent, has disposed of the New South Wales rights to a Sydney wliolesale firm for a substantial sum, Mr McGlashan, who is now m Auckland, says great interest was evinced in the patent in Sydney, and in one public teat, at which there were many business people and members of Parliament present, water was boiled in 23 seconds. This result astonished the assemblage considerably. The factory in Auckland is now working day and night to supply the New Zealand trade, and Mr McGlashan is about to commence a canvass of the whole of New Zealand. The invention has “caught on” wonderfully, It is with deep regret that we have to ® chrouicle the death of Mr W, H. Hardwick (organist and choirmaster of St Mark’s Church), which took place at hi 3 residence, 30, Cambridge terrace, at twenty minutes to Bon Wednesday. Mr Hardwiokarrivedinthe Colony about eight years ago, and took up his abode in Auckland, where he recoived the appointment of organist of St Matthew’s Church. Five years ago he obtained the appointment of organist ot St Mark s Church, and accordingly removed to this city, where lie has since resided. He ako filled the position of organist to the Grand Lodge of Freemasons of New Zealand. About ten months ago he was attacked with creeping paralysis, and although the best medical skill available was obtained, nothing could be done t. stay the effects of the disease. He leaves behind him his mother and four children, who were dependent upon him, Mr Hardwick was a man of very gonial temperament, and endeared himself to a largo circle of friends. The funeral takes place on Satur. day afternoon, at 3,15 o’clock.

The banks in Wellington join in declaring Friday, the 22nd inst. (Anniversary Day), as a special bank holiday, and they will all be closed on that day.

We are informed that the Government has requested tlie Secretary of State for tiie Colonies to furnish them with a list of the probable appointments to the Governorship of New Zealand, so that they, as representing the people at large, may have the opportunity of exercising some option in the matter.

A concert and danoe was held on e .ne3day in the Ngakauranga Hall, in aid of the fuud for the widow of the late James Giinblett, and attracted a full house. Ihe interior of the building was tastefully decorated, and a very attractive programme was gone through, comprising songs by Mrs Tavlor Mrs Snaddon. Miss Griffin. a,ld Messrs Liddell, Rigarlsford, and Master Brice; cornet solo by Mr Hutchenson Irish va and breakdown by Mr Lyons, Highland fiiua and seauntraus by Miss Woods, clog dance by Mr Delaw, while a couple of overtures were contributed by Messrs Hiatt (piano), Huteheuaon (cornet), and lay lor (flute). Mr Piatt played the aceompammenta for the songs, and Miss Finch the accompaniments for the danoe3. J-ho singiDg and step dancing were very good, and, on the motion of Mr H. Iyer, who presided, a vote of thanks was passed by acclamation to the performers. A dance followed, rofroshmentß being provided. Much credit is Hue to Mr Fern, the honorary secretary, for his gratuitous services m cou» nection with the concert.

Stevens and Gorton, auctioneers, notify the stock they will submit at auction at the Awahuri saleyards on Tuesday next, the lath 111 An illustrated advertisement of Little’s fluid sheep dip and powder sheep dip appears elsewhere in this issue. There has been a large increase in the sales lately, and the vendors claims that it is 50 per cent cheaper than any other dip. Those who desire cheap music should read the advertisement of Mr Broome, of London, which appears on another page. . Mack's Starch is one of the best of its Kind introduced to this colony and is selling rapid.-y Loan on ,l Mercantile Company will sell stud and flock rains and ewes at the Hutt Park, on Thursday, February 18th.