I had given a glass ball to the wife of a friend, whose visions provedso startling and on one occasion so unholy that she ceased to makeexperiments. One day my friend's secretary, a young student andgolfer, took up the ball."I see a field I know very well," he said, "but there is a cow in itthat I never saw; brown, with white markings, and, this is odd inScotland, she has a bell hanging from her neck. I'll go and look atthe field."He went and found the cow as described, bell and all. {60b}In the spring of 1897 I gave a glass ball to a young lady, previouslya stranger to me, who was entirely unacquainted with crystal gazing,even by report. She had, however, not infrequent experience ofspontaneous visions, which were fulfilled, including a vision of theDerby (Persimmon's year), which enriched her friends. In using theball she, time after time, succeeded in seeing and correctlydescribing persons and places familiar to people for whom she"scried," but totally strange to herself. In one case she added adetail quite unknown to the person who consulted her, but which wasverified on inquiry. These experiments will probably be publishedelsewhere. Four people, out of the very small number who tried onthese occasions, saw fancy pictures in the ball: two were youngladies, one a man, and one a schoolboy. I must confess that, for thefirst time, I was impressed by the belief that the lady's veraciousvisions, however they are to be explained, could not possibly beaccounted for by chance coincidence. They were too many (I was awareof five in a few days), too minute, and too remote from the range ofingenious guessing. But "thought transference," tapping the mentalwires of another person, would have accounted for every case, with,perhaps, the exception of that in which an unknown detail was added.This confession will, undoubtedly, seem weakly credulous, but not tomake it would be unfair and unsportsmanlike. My statement, of course,especially without the details, is not evidence for other people.The following case is a much harder exercise in belief. It isnarrated by the Duc de Saint Simon. {62} The events were described toSaint Simon on the day after their occurrence by the Duc d'Orleans,then starting for Italy, in May, 1706. Saint Simon was very intimatewith the duke, and they corresponded by private cypher withoutsecretaries. Owing to the death of the king's son and grandson (notseen in the vision), Orleans became Regent when Louis XIV. died in1714. Saint Simon is a reluctant witness, and therefore all thebetter.
