MUSCLE-READING EXTRAORDINARY. Stuart Cumberland's Experiments.—A Strange Scene. London, May 31.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 61, 2 August 1884, Page 5

MUSCLE-READING EXTRAORDINARY. Stuart Cumberland's Experiments.— A Strange Scene. London, May 31.

Mr Stuart Cumberland, the well-known "muscle-reader" whose experiments at Vienna created such a stir in spiritualistic circles, returned to London last week, and was at once invited by the enterprising editor of the "Pall Mail Gazette" to give some experiments before a company of representative savants and pressmen. The result exceeded the most sanguine expectations of the guests, the majority of whom arrived on the scene in the reciuisite condition of healthy scepticism. Almost the only out-and-out believer in the company was Colonel Olcott, of the Theosophical Society, but he took no part in the proceedings beyond that of a passive spectator. As Colonel Olcott wore on his finger a ring which Mdme. Blavatsky, by her occult power, had caused to grow in the middle of a rosebud, and carried in his pocket a portrait of a seer which the same remarkable woman had willed out of the "astral light" upon a piece of cardboard, Mr Stuart Cumberland's divinations naturally appeared to him somewhat insignificent. Less favoured spectators found them remarkable enough, for, as was observed by one of our guests, "Mr Cumberland does all that Mr Bishop ever professes to do, and makes no fuss about it." Among those present were representatives of American, Continental, London, and provincial press, Professor Ray Lankester, Professor Edmund W. Gosse, Mr Grant Allen, Dr Donkin, Mr and Mrs Ernest Hart, Mdme. de Novikoff, Mr Andrew Carnegie, Mr Oscar "Wilde, Mr W. Wilde, and several memb rs of the staff. Before describing the experiments, we may as well give a few extracts from our letters. One eminent scientist maintains that Mr Cumberland should be blindfolded with pads of cotton wool. Mr Edmund Gurney, a well-known authority upon all these matters, wrote to say that "this power of delicate music - reading is a far commoner faculty than is ordinarily supposed. I have seen friends of my own give decidedly more startling , exemplifications of it than those which have stood Mr Irving Bishop and Mr Stuart Cumberland in such good stead. Thewor^b j of it is [that the public go away with ] the idea that these performances are ■, 'thought-reading.''' To true thought- j reading, which takes place with \ out contact, and to the reality of w Inch Colonel Olcott bears emphatic testimony, j Mr Stuart Cumberland lays no claim. Mr < Maskelyne wrote to say that, in the absence j of trickery and collusion, he relies solely 1 upon muscular indications given by ] the subject. This thought - reading i is not at all difficult with practice. { Mr Labouchere wrote :— "/Thought-reading may easily be accounted for. It pimply 5 means that with certain persons an indica- ] tion of their thought may be obtained by ] — or rather through — the muscular action 1 of their hand. In order, however, to make 1 any use of these indications it is necessary 1 for the ' reader ' to be sharp and to fish for < indications. "What I mean is this. Suppose j you were speaking, you would probably 1 use some gesture, and the gesture would ] precede the word. So "when you think t •this is right,' or 'this is wrong,' just as i the words half form themselves in your 1 brain, or on your lips, so does the thought -\ produce muscular contraction in the ( hand." 1: Yesterday afternoon, about five o'clock, s everything was ready for Mr Cumberland's i experiments. One gentleman had two new -\ brand-new £5 notes, fresh* from the Bank, £ and sealed up in an envelope. But these a were not used, as Mr Cumberland became } too exhausted during the hour and a-half 1 that the sitting lasted. Lying on a shelf was 1 a bundle of cotton wool, with which it was c suggested that Mr Cumberland's sharp ears t should be stuffed and his piercing eyes j padded. Not only did a bold person make i this suggestion, but he actually aaked that j the subject should be cotton-woolled in the < game manner. Mr Cumberland, however, i objected to those suggestions as unnecessary 1 precautions, " although so far as lam con- 1 cerned I don't think it would make any j difference." " Now, Ido not profess," .said < Mr Cumberland, "to give any illustration^ j of the supernatural. I simply claim that it ] is possible to read persons' thoughts i under certain conditions — not abstract thoughts, mind you ; that is impos- i sible, absolutely impossible. If a person s will concentrate his or her mind entirely and ' earnestly on a given object, I claim that the s thought is conveyed to any person of sum- ] cient quickness of perception by the action J of the physical syssom, which, I maintain, i is the only channel through which thought 1 can possibly be conveyed. Of course there < is a percentage of failures. Some subjects ; are not sufficiently sensitive. Everything \ depends on the absolute concentration ot 1 the subject, and the absolute giving up of ■ oneself to the conditions of the experiment. " Some professors of the art pretend to the i power of thought- reading without contact, : but that Mr Cumberland says is quite impossible—a doctrine which Colonel Olcutc, who was present, denied in toto. Some thirty ladies and gentlemen composed the audience, all of whom were seated round the room. Mr Cumberland .stood at one end, braced himself up, looked round, . and opened the ball by asking Mr Oscar ; Wilde to be operated upon. Mr Wilde, however, shook his head, and declared he was not a good subject. Mr Cumberland looked round once more, and his eyes fell on the face of the chairman, who was quite ready. " A good subject," said Mr Cumberland. "Now, sir, please look round the room, anfl think of some object which is possible to get at. Don't try to resist any attempt to think of it, but surrender yourself entirely, concentrating all your thoughts upon the object." The chairman did as he was bid, q,nd apparently concentrated all his thoughts. Mr Cumberland's eyes having been bandaged with a white sjlk handkerchief, he took the subject's left hand into his own, put it on his forehead, and darted across the room, going first to a 6helf on which were a number of books and papers. Ife stopped shurt suddenly, darted back, made another circuit of the room, and halted suddenly before a gentleman standing "with his back to the mantelpiece, tore off the bandage, and pointed to the glasses of the well-known London cprrespondent of the " Neve Freie Presse." ♦'Right." said the subject. "Now, why did I take you to the book-shelves before going to the eyeglasses?" "Well," confessed he, "X must te}l you that I had first thought of the Gazetteer which caught my eye. The glasses were the second thought." This was over in a few seconds, thirty, perhaps, and was quite satisfactory. It may be worth noting that Mr Cumberland always deßires his subjeot to think of the direction or the route to the article thought of rather than the article itself, <} I now propose," said Mr Cumberland, "to discover the seat of pain in one of you. I ! wonder whether Mr Earned Hart would consent to go out of the room, to stick a pin in some part of his body, and to return with a pain manufactured and ready to be

discovered." Mr Hart declared that ins mission was to" relieve pain, not to produce it, and asked whether it was necessary to stick the pin far in — up to the head, for \. instance After a little pleasant trifling, Mr Carnegie, the famous American millionaire, and propriotor of English newspapers, declared, with a trace of melancholy 1 pleasure in his voice, that he had a pain . ready made, and should be only too happy to 3 place it at Mr Cumberland's disposal. 3 That is, if ho could find it. The musclol reader gladly assented, again resumed the white silk fillet, and stood up to Mr Car- > negie. Mr Cumberland's hands traversed 3 his subject from top to toe, running nerv ously down, and eventually stopping at 5 the finger. "The finger it is," said Mr ; Carnegie, as he took his seat amid applause. • After a short rest, up spoke the gallant * Cumberland again. "Professor RayLankester, you and I "are old friends. Will you be 1 my noxt subject ?" Professor Ray Lankes1 ter smiled and grimly said, " Well, you ' won't be successful with me, I know." "If you make up your mind that I shan't do anything, 1 admit that my experiment will bo usoless." "I will give you every chance," said tho Professor gaily. Mr Cumberland left the room, and a pin was fastened in tho lapel of Mr Aaron Watson's coat. Mr Cumberland was summoned, blindfolded, and took Mr Ray Lankester's hand, dragging him here, pulling him there, with much vigour. After a couple of minutes he evinced an affection for an easy-chair, which he thought contained the secreted pin. Kneeling down, he probed and poked unavailingly until at last it was evident that the muscular indications of the subject were not sufficiently violent. Mr Oscar Wilde, who had seen where the pin was hidden, then took Professor Ray Lankester's placo, and Mr Cumberland struck a bee-line and had the pin in no time at all. " Professor Ray Lankester's individuality is too great," said Mr Cumberland, resting after his labour, "If I don't do a thing immediately I can't do it at all." Mr Cumberland's pulse was not beating very fast, ho admitted. At one sitting in Vienna it reached 173 beats in the minute, when he fainted. A lady, "who was the next subject for Mr Cumberland's experiment, was asked to to think of some object in the room, and to gi\e it mentally to the audience. The thought-reader and the lady w ent round the circle deliberately and sedately. Suddenly they stopped, Mr Cumberland's hand was stretched forth, he seized a little vaso of rhododendrons from a number of others. "Right/ said his subject. "Now you have to give it to some one." lie groped round once or twice, and then handed it to ] a lady in the audience. "Right again," said his subject; "you have read my ] thoughts admirably." Mr Cumberland was then allowed to take i a respite, during which Mr O&car Wilde . discoursed in his free-and-easy way on art, < poetry, and culture. The confessedly modest decorations which were put up to hide the inkpots, the paste, and the scissor* , were, he said, unworthy of the darkest ( ages. The poet and apostle has a pleasant j way of being disappointed. There Mas -, something wrong with tho Atlantic, and , Niagara was not quite up to the mark. Now he was disappointed with the arrangement of a lew simple flowers of the field and £ a rather striking harmony in curtains which j were brought in for the occasion. How- . ever, a lecture on art from one so distin- \ guished and so eccentric as Mr Oscar Wilde is worth hearing. And above all, ( he is a candid critic. " Your decora- i tions," he said, "arc absurd. There is no system obeyed. One thought, like harmony in music, should pervade the c whole. Does it ? No. They show no soul. € Can you exist without a soul ? No soul, no r harmony, and no " "Sunflowers," { suggested some one. "No. A flower h is but an incident." In critical . vein Mr Wilde shook his shorn * and curling locks, and, fanning himself c with an expansive sage green silk pocket f handkerchief, proceeded to descent on the maps which hung I'ound the walls. "A < map should be a work of art, with azure t oceans limned on its surface, laden with j golden galleys, with poops of beaten gold and purple sails. Let each continent show its rugged mountains, its stretching plains. Look at those seething seas of green hued calico, seas of erysipelas, with big blobs for mainlands, and small r blobs for i&lands " And thus was I abuse showered upon those offending sheets. I Mr Wilde w aved his hand with an attitude of despair, and brushing off a lly from his , forehead with the sage green pocket-hand- t kerchief, he lowered his slim form gracefully into the bosom of a yielding couch. Strengthened by half an hour's repose, and cooled by ices, Mr Cumberland consented to try a much more diflicult feat, j "It has been suggested," he said, "that r something fhould be hidden out of the room. I think if the subject is sufficiently * favourable it would be as easy to find a pin Q in Regent's Park as here. Someoneofyou has thought of an object out of this room. I i don't know whether it is in the next room, or, indeed, in any room. So 1 am seeking for an unknown object altogether." Mr Grant Allen then agreed to act as the subject of the final experiment. He was taken out of the room, and an j object and a hiding-place were fixed upon. Mr Cumberland was told that the object was hidden without the precincts of the " Pall Mall Gazette " office, but he refused , to put on his hat, as it might possibly be in "l the way. This crucial trial of skill then began, after lie waa once more carefully ] blindfolded. Ho, of course, went straight j for the door, dragging Mr Grant Allen after i him. He turned the handle, and went down a short passage, followed by the more de- ■ voted spirits of the assembly. Down the , narrow steps the pair stumbled and into ' Northumberland-street, much to the as , tonishment of the passers-by. Hansoms, foot-pa&sengers, policemen, open-mouched waiters, stopped to look at the strange pro- , cession. The windows of Northumberlandstreet were shot up with a rattle, maids and matrons in all of them, wondering if | the hatless Mr Oscar Wilde was trying to effect the capture of a new pair of Siamese twins. Heedless of scorn, the Siamese twins went on until they came to No. 7, j Northumberland-street. Here they stopped. ; Mr Grant Allen afterwards explained that ■ he was wondering how they would get in, ' whether Mr Cumberland would ring the bell or knock at the door. Instantly Mr ' Cumberland responded to his thought by ringing the bell and knocking a,t the door. It was timidly opened by a servant who, seeing a blindfolded man followed by a small crowd, promptly shut the door in Iris face. The only other person in the secret stepped up to Mr Allen, and whispered to him, "Have you forgotten the house?" "Is this not it?" he replied, "I thought it was the third door down," "No, it is next door." The conversation passed in a whisper inaudible to Mr Cumberland. No nooner, however, had Mr Allen thought of No. 6 than Mr Cumberland dragged him up the street to the door. Upstairs they went, and straight into a i room, usually used as the reception room by the interviewing staff of the paper, on the first floor. Mr Cumberland at once went to a drawer in a writing-table, but '. closed it in a second, and came round . to an ottoman standing near the window. , He lifted the lid, put his hand down, and i brought out the hidden object, A curious i one enough, It was a dusty glass shade,

under which was a brownish substance not unlike in shape a goodly hunch from a goodly loaf. Lifting the glass shade off and examining it closely, its identity was revealed. It was a hunch of bread, an heirloom of the "Pall Mall Gazette." The " Amateur Casual " who slept a night in the casual ward of a workhouse received this piece of bread for his supper eighteen years ago. A famous article exposing the ways of casual wards was written, caused such a sensation throughout the civilised world as no single article had ever done before, and finally led to great reforms. The bread was not to be thrown away. It was set up on wire, covered with glass, and though a little hard, a trifle cobwebby, still finds a snug corner in the office whither it was brought from Lambeth workhouse some eighteen years ago. This concluded the experiments, much to everyone's satisfaction. Mr Stuart Cumberland is likely to appear on a public platform before long, but he will find it difficult to give more conclusive demonstrations of his abilitjr to " read thought " by the delicate muscular action of the hand.