Among the exoteric doings of the human race were the following:
Gilbert Murray. To the Society for Psychical Research in London, one Mrs. Henry Sedgwick read a paper on thought transference in which she reviewed the results of 259 experiments conducted over a period of years.
Of the number of cases on which Mrs. Sedgwick touched none was more interesting than that of a white-haired, stooping man whose name is renowned as an eminent Greek scholar and an active partisan of the League of Nations-Professor Sir Gilbert Murray. The Professor, as is well known, is actively interested in the occult. Ten years ago, he en- deavored to explain telepathic phenomena as being due to a sixth sense, a view in which Mrs. Sedgwick concurred.
It was in support of this argument that she cited Sir Gilbert's uncanny proficiency in thought reading. She believed that in most cases neither sight, sound, smell, taste nor touch had any influence in the remarkable experiments conducted.
The plan was to send Sir Gilbert out of the room and out of earshot, while a given person voiced a thought in the presence of a number of people. In one instance his son, Basil, said: "I'm thinking of the sinking of the Titanic and one of the bandsmen playing Nearer, My God, to Thee to nearly the end, and then he dived off and sat on his cello until he was picked up by a boat."
Then Sir Gilbert came back into the room and said: "This is something awful—big shipwreck. I suppose it is the Lusitania. No it's not the Lusitania. It's a thing that ran into an iceberg—the Titanic, and a singing of hymns. I feel as if somebody was crashing a fiddle or a cello, or breaking up a musical instrument. People are being picked up out of the water and saved."
Margery. Margery is Mrs. Le Roi G. Crandon, wife of a Boston physician and a medium of hitherto unquestioned standing. About a year ago, she entered into competition for the $2,500 prize which The Scientific American (monthly magazine, once, in its palmier days, a weekly) was offering.
A Committee of Psychic Phenomena investigated Margery. They in- vestigated her for nearly a whole year and then four of the five judges went on record that Margery had failed to produce any supernormal phenomena. Apparently, as long as Margery was in control of the situ- ation "things happened," but as soon as she lost control nothing happened. So Margery is not to get the prize.
Houdini. In imitation of the Gilbert Murray feats Harry Houdini,— American wizard, gave a private performance in his Manhattan home.
He left his guests in a sitting room and ascended three floors to his bedroom—once he stripped naked—closed the door in the presence of a witness who stood guard while down below three thought tests were writ- ten out and whispered around. The wizard descended. Walter Lippmann, editorial writer on the New York World, thought of "Lord Curzon in the Foreign Office last January." Houdini failed to receive the thought.
Bernard M. Baruch, financier, thought: "Don't give up the ship." Houdini, after a struggle, got "a sense of heaving water and a ship."