ye a nerve impression, but she does not think of the foot. This nerve
impression, as we saw, works on the subconscious mind, or on the
brain, and the idea of seven then arises in her conscious mind like a
picture which she can see.

Such a system of signs, completely unknown to those who give them and
to her who receives them, cannot have been built up in a short while.
But we heard how it originated. At first Beulah recognized the queen
in the hands of her sister and mother, when they were playing "Old
Maid." There are many who have so much power to recognize the small
signs. But when they began to make experiments with cards, probably
definite family habits developed; there was much occasion to treat
each card individually, to link some involuntary movement with the
face cards and some with each suite, and slowly to carry this system
over to letters. They all agree that Beulah recognizes some frequent
letters much more easily than the rare letters. What the observers
have now found was the result of two years' training with mother and
sister. Yet all this became possible only because Beulah evidently has
this unusual, supernormal sensitiveness together with this abnormal
power to receive the signs without their coming at once to
consciousness. Her mental makeup in this respect constantly reminds
the psychologist of the traits of a hysteric woman.

We have to add only one important point. Some startling results have
surely been gained by another method. The same sensitiveness which
makes Beulah able to receive signs which others do not notice,
evidently makes her able to catch words spoken in a low voice within a
certain distance, while she is not consciously giving her attention to
them. She picks up bits of conversation which she overhears and which
settle in her subconscious mind, until they later come to her
consciousness in a way for which she cannot account. All were startled
when at the end of our first day together I took a bill in my closed
hand and asked her what I had there, and she at once replied a
"ten-dollar bill," while they all agreed that the child had never seen
a ten-dollar bill before. This result surprised the minister and the
judge greatly, and only later did I remember that I had whispered to
the judge in the next room, with the door open, that I should ask her
to tell the figures on a ten-dollar bill. In the same way the greatest
sensation must be explained, which the experiments before my arr