te fascinating material for his
dissection. But for the interests of society an entirely different
effort is, after all, more consequential. The psychologist has no
right to avoid the trouble of examining conspicuous cases which
superficially seem to endorse the fantastic theories of the mentally
untrained. Such an investigation is his share, as indeed mental
occurrences generally stand in the centre of the alleged wonderful
facts. From this feeling of social responsibility some years ago I
approached the hysterical trickster, Madame Palladino, who had so much
inflamed the mystical imagination of the country, and from this
interest in the social aspect I undertook again recently a research
into the mental powers of Beulah Miller, who was well on the way to
bewilder the whole nation and thus to stir up the always latent mystic
inclinations of the community. It is a typical specimen of those cases
which can easily upset the loosely reasoning public and do tremendous
harm to the mental unity of the social organism. It seems worth while
to illuminate it in full detail.

Indeed, since the days when Madame Eusapia Palladino stirred the whole
country with her marvellous mystic powers, no case of psychical
mystery has engaged the interest of the nation as that of little
Beulah Miller in Warren, Rhode Island, has done. The story of her
wonderful performances has become a favourite feature of the Sunday
papers, and the small New England town for the first time in its long
history has been in the limelight. The reporters have made their
pilgrimages, and every one has returned bewildered and amazed. Here at
last the truth of telepathy was proved. Sworn affidavits of reliable
persons removed the last doubts; and I myself, with my long training
as a scientist, had to confess, when for the first time I had spent a
few hours with Beulah Miller, that I was as deeply startled and
overcome with wonder as I was after the first night with Eusapia
Palladino. Yet what a contrast! There the elderly, stout Italian woman
at a midnight hour, in dimly lighted rooms, in disreputable New York
quarters, where the palmists and mediums live in their world of sham
psychology, sitting in a trance state at a table surrounded by
spiritualistic believers who had to pay their entrance fees; here a
little, naive, ten-year-old girl among her toys in the kitchen of her
parents' modest white cottage in a lovely country village! I never
felt a more uncanny, nerv