. These phenomena were grouped together
under the somewhat unsuitable and none too well-constructed title of
"psychometry," which, to borrow Dr. Maxwell's excellent definition, is
"the faculty possessed by certain persons of placing themselves in
relation, either spontaneously or, for the most part, through the
intermediary of some object, with unknown and often very distant
things and people."

The existence of this faculty is no longer seriously denied by any one
who has given some little attention to metapsychics; and it is easily
verified by those who will take the necessary trouble, for its
possessors, though few in number, are not inaccessible. It has been
the subject of many experiments and of a few treatises, among which I
will name one by M. Duchatel, _Enquete sur des cas de psychometrie_,
and Dr. Osty's recent book, _Lucidite et intuition_, which is the most
complete and searching work that we have had upon this question until
now.

Psychometry is one of the most curious faculties of our
subconsciousness and doubtless contains the clue to many of those
manifestations which appear to proceed from another world. Let us see,
with the aid of a living example, how it is employed.

One of the best mediums of this class is a lady to whom I referred in
_The Unknown Guest_ as Mme. M. Her visitor gives her an object of some
kind that has belonged to or been touched or handled by the person
about whom he proposes to question her. Mme. M. operates in a state of
trance; but there are other celebrated psychometers who retain all
their normal consciousness, so that the hypnotic or somnambulistic
state is not, generally speaking, by any means indispensable when we
wish to arouse this extraordinary clairvoyance.

After placing the object, usually a letter, in the medium's hands, you
say to her:

"I wish you to put yourself in communication with the writer of this
letter," or "the owner of this article," as the case may be.

Forthwith the medium not only perceives the person in question, his
physical appearance, his character, his habits, his interests, his
state of health, but also, in a series of swift and changing visions
that follow one another like the pictures of a cinematograph, sees and
describes exactly that person's environment, the surrounding country,
the rooms in which he lives, the people who live with him and who wish
him well or ill, the mentality and the most secret and unexpected
intentions of all the