I. - NEW YORK
A Stormy Voyage-Importance of the Work-A Sensational Interruption Excursion to Rochester-Rev. Vale Owen Mr. Ticknor's Mediumship-A Failure-A Girl Medium-My Wife's Great Audience-Jesuit Conjurer
As I write this I am rolling through the flat arable land of Ohio and Indiana. It is the end of April, there is no longer a trace of winter, but the leaves are hardly showing yet on the trees. The fields are full of brown 'pigs with numerous litters. Everywhere the farmers are ploughing.
The world is full of dull suffering and the chastening patience which bears it. If this were indeed the end of all, how grim would be the joke! Consider the case of these Ohio farmers, who are more lucky than most. You see their homesteads in the fields, bare and unattractive. The city is afar. Of walks or natural beauties there are none. A long winter of dullness leads up to a hardworking year, busy from early morning to late at night, and with so little to show for it that I am told the majority of the farms are deeply mortgaged; and yet these are kings among men compared with the average fate of their fellows. We do indeed deserve the compensation which we are to get.
I must look back from these later April days, and detail our experience from the day when the Olympic, after a stormy voyage, landed us on April 3rd upon the familiar wharf of New York. We were glad to be ashore, for the constant head winds, rising to a sharp gale, had made the journey unpleasant, and I had the further misfortune to have a heavy fall upon a wet deck early in our voyage which twisted my knee and laid me on my back for two days. Old dogs must not play with puppies. However, we were full of health and courage as the huge ship warped herself alongside, and Ave saw the faces of kind friends waiting for us ashore. One of them in his eagerness for results had brought down a medium for me to test, though what I was to do with her or how I was to begin was not clear. Finally, after the usual trouble, mitigated to some extent by official goodwill ("God's own country, but the devil's own custom-house"), we got clear and found ourselves in the palatial Biltmore Hotel, where we enjoyed the princely hospitality of Mr. Bowman, the proprietor. Jack Bowman, as he is familiarly called, is a very wonderful person, president of thirteen hotels, any one of which would swamp the energies of an ordinary man, centre of many other great enterprises, and yet a well-known sportsman and rider to hounds. The bond between .him and us was that he knew the truth of what I taught by his own personal experience.. Hence it was that his own private suite had been put at our disposal, with permission to leave my family there while I was working the cities which lie between New York and Chicago. It was an enormous convenience to me, for what was I to do with my little caravan, when often I would be only one day in a town and then speed on to the next one?
Need I introduce our little group? Some readers have perhaps shared our adventures in Australia. Others perhaps have read Our American Adventure, which records our first psychic descent upon this continent. My wife was always with me to uphold me, as zealous and as wonderful as ever. At close range she makes a far better missionary than I, with her great sympathetic heart and her intense human grip of the whole subject. The three children were there-Denis, Malcolm, and Billy. The latter, after much thought, had announced on her tenth birthday that she had decided after all to be a girl, and ceased to sign her notes to me "Your loving son." However, "Billy" sticks, and will, I suppose, continue to do so. Finally, we had Miss French with us, a competent lady, who assisted us when she was not the victim of the Atlantic. With so large a party and twenty pieces of baggage, it was indeed a comfort to get to our headquarters, and to be able deliberately to plan out the future and face any difficulties which might lie before us.
My conviction of the imperative importance of the work had increased, not lessened, with the years, and in spite of growing age I felt keener upon my mission than when I started it six years before. Fuller experience and deeper thought all confirmed me in my conclusions. I was convinced not only that God had sent a second revelation into the world which had been derided by mankind because it was not in the form that they expected, and because human fraud or folly occasionally defaced it, but it became more and more clear to me that this new message was in some respects as important as that which came 2,000 years ago. In ethics it could not be greater. The ethics of Christ seem to me final, though one could hardly imagine such a change of heart in the world as would ever allow them to be practised. They have suffered much, too, as it seems to me, by overstatement and exaggeration. Where one is asked to do what is clearly impossible, one loses heart and neglects what is possible. Thus to love your neighbour if he jostles you and treads on your toes is obviously impossible and could never have been meant by so eminently sane a teacher as Jesus. "Make the best of your neighbour," or "Be patient with your neighbour"-that is surely the most that He can really have meant. Or again, when He is so severe against the rich, surely there is a great deal lost of His real meaning. Riches in themselves are often the symbol of industry or self-denial the greatest of virtues. What was really meant was surely that the rich man had to recognize the responsibility of riches-that if he did not do so he would be called sharply to account for it. I think we could get down to the real practical things in the teaching of the Great Master if Ave would all agree to put a commonsense interpretation upon the things which are impractical or impossible. The conscientious objectors in the Great War were perfectly logical Christians, as Christianity is expounded; and yet if their view had prevailed, a great military despotism would have been reared upon the ruins of constitutional liberty. When one hears of the Christ hurling the money-changers out of the Temple-an act which led to His own death-one can see that His general laws were to be adapted to the occasion.
However, this is a digression. The point which I wished to make was that the new revelation is so important in that it brings definite knowledge, detailed knowledge, concerning our fate in the future. It is knowledge which man has a right to. Possibly he had it before, at some stage of his progress. I have often thought that the early Christians had it and lost it. But now, at any rate, we have it clear and it is our privilege to try to pass it on. I can more and more see that real Christianity is not a dogma or belief, but a habit of mind. If your mind is sweet and kindly, you are a Christian, whatever you may call yourself: and if it is not, no knowledge of texts or attendance in churches will make you one.
I had not originally intended to give any lectures in New York, as it seemed to me that after seven lectures the year before I had surely covered the ground already. My time is limited and the work unlimited, so that one does not wish to plough the same furrow twice. The financial side cannot, however, be entirely neglected, and in our new venture the travel expenses would be heavy and the distances great. It seemed reasonable, therefore, since we had to be in New York in any case, that I should do as my manager, Mr. Lee Keedick, advised and test whether there were still some who wished to hear further upon these matters.
I arrived on the Wednesday and spoke at Carnegie Hall on the Friday, giving my ordinary lecture, which is half philosophical and half photographic. There was scant time for preparation, but the Press, as usual, had used me very well, and the papers were most kindly in their welcome. The hall was about three-quarters full, and as it is a very large place I was quite satisfied with the result. My reception was very cordial, and the lecture and photographs were received with interest, until just at the end a rather unusual scene took place. It was at the moment when I showed Mrs. Dean's photograph of the cloud of faces around the Cenotaph upon the occasion of the two minutes' silence on November 11th, 1922 As the picture flashed upon the screen I was amazed at the distinctness of the faces, and I was conscious myself of a most remarkable nervous thrill, which was felt equally, I believe, by all the audience, and which in the dusk of the great hall produced a noticeable psychic atmosphere. There was a general movement and murmur with a sound of in ken breath as the picture showed up, and then a high female voice cried, "Don't you see them? Don't you see the Spirits?" Other voices at once broke out in vague clamour, and for a moment it seemed as if there would be a scene, so I intervened with a few steadying words. The lights were at once put up, as this was the last picture to be shown. It was then found that a lady in one of the front rows was in a deep trance. My wife and others attended to her when the hall had been cleared, and she gradually recovered. Her own account of what had occurred was most instructive, for if we may accept it, it was not her own voice at all which had called out to the audience. She declared that for some time she had been possessed when in trance by the deceased mother of some dead soldier who was most anxious to convey to other bereaved mothers what had become of their sons. It was this entity who had now taken possession of her, and through her had addressed the audience. This is a statement which we can by no means check, but what is quite certain is the very remarkable feeling which even sceptics experienced at the moment of the exhibition of the picture. I am usually...
