the Middle Ages, and, I assume, long previously. What an unnecessary air
of discovery! The certainty that someone in trance in Manchester can
tell you what is going on in London, or in Pekin, was not, of course,
left to the acumen of an office in Fleet Street; and the society, in
establishing the fact beyond doubt for the general public, has not gone
one step toward explaining it. They have, in fact, revealed nothing that
many of us did not, with absolute assurance, know before.

'But talking of poor Miss Wilson, I say that her powers were
_remarkable_, because, though not exceptional in _genre_, they were so
special in quantity,--so "constant," and "far-reaching." I believe it to
be a fact that, _in general_, the powers of trance manifest themselves
more particularly with regard to space, as distinct from time: the
spirit roams in the present--it travels over a plain--it does not
_usually_ attract the interest of observers by great ascents, or by
great descents. I fancy that is so. But Miss Wilson's gift was special
to this extent, that she travelled in every direction, and easily in all
but one, north and south, up and down, in the past, the present, and the
future.

This I discovered, not at once, but gradually. She would emit a stream
of sounds in the trance state--I can hardly call it _speech_, so
murmurous, yet guttural, was the utterance, mixed with puffy
breath-sounds at the languid lips. This state was accompanied by an
intense contraction of the pupils, absence of the knee-jerk,
considerable rigor, and a rapt and arrant expression. I got into the
habit of sitting long hours at her bed-side, quite fascinated by her,
trying to catch the import of that opiate and visionary language which
came puffing and fluttering in deliberate monotone from her lips.
Gradually, in the course of months, my ear learned to detect the words;