< Aerostatic Performancer in Batavia (continued from page 11-9) >
to relate a thing which surpasses all belief, and which I should never venture to describe had it not been witnessed by thousands before my own eyes. One of the gang took a cord, and grasping one end in his hand slung the other up into the air with such force that its extremity was beyond the reach of our sight. He then immediately climbed up the cord with indescribable swiftness, and got so high that we could no longer see him. I stood full of astonishment, not conceiving what was to come of this, when lo! a leg came tumbling down out of the air. One of the conjuring company instantly snatched it up and threw it into an open basket standing by. A moment later a hand came down, and immediately on that another leg. And in short all the members of the body came thus successively tumbling from the air, and were cast together into the basket. The last fragment we saw tumble down was the head, and no sooner had it touched the ground, than he who had snatched up all the limbs and put them together into the basket, turned them all out again topsy-turvy. Then straightway we saw with these eyes all those limbs creep together again, and in short, form a man, who at once could stand and go just as before without showing the least damage! Never in my life was I so astonished as when I beheld this wonderful performance, and I doubted now no longer that these misguided men did it by the help of the Devil.” A quaint old wood-cut accompanies this account showing the man ascending the cord and the dismembered limbs falling down.
These narratives, so closely tallying in details, were written by men at long intervals of time and place, the later writer certainly knowing nothing of the older.
The Emperor Jehanger in his Memoirs also describes similar wonders performed in his presence, and after close scrutiny pronounces them inexplicable. The power for these more astounding manifestations seems for the last century or more to have become extinct or dormant in the East. Enough however has been adduced to justify the presumption that there are powers latent in humanity unfathomed by the College of Surgeons or the Royal Society.
31st December, 1880.
<Untitled> (Mb. J. G. Coates has done more...)
Mb. J. G. Coates has done more than anybody to promote a knowledge of mesmerism in Scotland, during the past two or three years.
Dr. Slade, after several years travelling round the world, and narrowly escaping an English prison, has settled down again in New York, rejoined by Mr. Simmons.
A Public Need
From information received by us from many different quarters, it is clear that those Spiritualists who seek for peace and harmony in the movement would be glad of some reading-room and meeting-place open daily in London, but not connected with strife and aggression, and limited in its action to the purposes for which public libraries are ordinarily established.
The existence of such a centre under a few competent managers, and devoted only to the objects stated above, would not merely be a most welcome gathering-point for those who desire peace, but would save very considerable expenditure annually to the movement. For instance, if Miss Burke were to be offered the post of secretary, thereby preventing the lamentable loss of her public services to Spiritualism, the total annual expenditure for all purposes would be but £170, including the use for one year, for a trivial sum, of an already established library. With but £80 or £90 in hand, a start might be made.
If readers of these pages who are willing to support such an establishment by donations or by becoming members will write to us, their letters shall be handed over to some of those already known to feel the want of such a centre, and who are not connected with The Spiritualist newspaper. To promote harmony the suggested establishment should not be connected with any existing undertaking, and have no ends to promote but those which everybody admits to be good.
Spiritualism and Theosophy
The room of the ghosts was a large chamber, occupying the whole upper floor of a two-storey wing of the house. It was perhaps twenty feet wide by forty long—I speak from memory. Below were two rooms—a kitchen and a pantry. The kitchen chimney was in the gable-end, of course, and passed through the seance room to the roof. It projected into the room two feet, and at the right, between it and the side of the house, was a plastered closet with a door next to the chimney. A window, two feet square, had been cut in the outer wall of the closet to admit air. Running across this end of the large room was a narrow platform, raised about 18 inches from the floor, with a step to mount by at the extreme left, and a hand rail or baluster <... continues on page 11-11 >
Editor's notes
Sources
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London Spiritualist, No. 437, January 7, 1881, p. 10