ectricity in the air?

_Ans._--Storms are the disturbance of the equilibrium, and therefore can
be foretold when the atmospherical balance is understood.

_Ques._--Can you give information not in the minds of the operators?

_Ans._--Planchette is a tool, and does nothing of herself.

_Ques._--A tool in the hands of whom?

_Ans._--Of those who work her.[4]

Now if these various answers came from the minds of the "workers," we
were asking questions which we ourselves were answering, we will say,
unawares, out of the depths of our consciousness. As a seeker after
truth, therefore, I became as much involved as the dreamer spoken of by
Jeremy Taylor in one of his sermons. A man who implicitly believed in
dreams, he relates--in effect--dreamed one night that all dreams were
false. "If," reasoned he on awakening, "dreams are indeed false, then is
this one false; therefore they are true. But if, as I have always
supposed, they are true, then is this dream true; therefore they must be
false."

Planchette's oracular sayings became famous among the passengers who
thronged the room to hear its predictions and to ask questions. The trip
to which I refer was made in the early part of November, 1868, while the
Presidential election was in progress, and there was naturally great
curiosity on the part of the passengers to know how their several States
had voted.

Of the six States asked about, Planchette gave the majority in figures
for one candidate or the other. On comparing these figures subsequently
with the published returns, it was found that not one answer was
correct--_not a single answer was even approximately true_.

There was a certain shipmaster on board who had left his vessel in Rio
Janeiro, with directions to the mate to bring her to San Francisco, by
way of Cape Horn. The oracle was consulted as to the position of the
ship at that particular time. Without a moment's hesitation, the
latitude and longitude of the vessel were given, placing her somewhere
off Valparaiso (Chili). "That's just where _I_ put her!" cried the
master with an ejaculation of unfeigned surprise. On reaching San
Francisco shortly after, the vessel was discovered quietly tied up at
one of the wharves. I found too, on landing, that the prophecy, "You
will find important letters awaiting you from home," was not fulfilled,
neither in my case nor in that of the other "worker."

Now in the case of putting down the position of the merchant vessel,