This is not so easy a task. It is beset on every side with difficulties, and the experimenter is liable to mistakes on every hand.

I shall cite ray own experience, and then quote other cases.

My first attempt in experimental telepathy was a ludicrous failure. I shall give the case in full.

E. was a young man, twenty-eight years of age. He was hypnotized for the cure of writer's cramp. The method of Mesmer (by passes) was used. While in the mesmeric state he voluntarily told me what I did when I went into an adjoining room. He said I poured some medicine from a bottle into a glass and drank it. He complained that it tasted bitter to him. The medicine was bitter.

I, standing behind him, took a pencil in my left hand and made motions in the air with it describing the figures 8, 5, 2, 6. He told me correctly the figures described without turning his head. I noticed incidentally that my sleeve rustled as I made the movements. This was prevented and again different figures described. He failed utterly.

A slight screen was surreptitiously interposed so as to prevent him from seeing me, and my sleeve was allowed purposely to rustle. Again bo described correctly the figures made.

The experiment was tried six times, and whenever he could hear the movements of my arm, he could correctly tell what was being done with it.

I asked him to guess at a certain word in my mind. I selected the German word"haupt-mann," and concentrated my attention upon it, standing four feet away from him. He made several ineffectual attempts.

He then asked to be allowed to touch my hand, and said that he thought he could spell it for me.

This was allowed, and holding my hand lightly in his, he began at the beginning of the alphabet and stopped at "h." In this way he went through all the letters and spelled out the word correctly.

He was then asked to try another, and held my hand as before. I selected a simple English word, "cap." He began the alphabet as before, and I misled him by moving the muscles in my hand very slightly upon the wrong letters and he spelled out the letters d-r-h-i-o, which of course had no meaning.

I again gave him my hand and thought of "cap"and "stick." I allowed my muscles to move slightly upon the correct letters and he correctly spelled cap, but did not get at the word stick at all, which was associated in my mind with the word cap.

A word of caution here is necessary.

It will be noticed that I allowed the young man to proceed in his own way, and did not impose scientific test conditions upon his method of procedure.

In studying phenomena it is best to allow the hynotized subject to proceed as he pleases, and if possible make the tests without his knowledge, for in this way suspicion will not in any way act as an embarrassment to him.

Twenty-eight similar experiments were tried, and in each of them it was proved beyond a doubt that his results were due to muscle-reading alone.

All the faculties of a hypnotized subject in the lighter stages of hypnosis are wonderfully acute, probably the result of concentrated attention, and they will often perceive a very slight occurrence which ordinarily would not be noticed.

The slightest movements of the muscles may give them a hint, when it would not be noticed by a man in his normal condition.

When the young man told me, as he did at first, without my solicitation, correctly, that the medicine poured into the glass and drank by me was bitter, he may have temporarily experienced telepathically the taste of the medicine. He may have shrewdly guessed at it.

My second case was that of a girl suffering with hysterical tremor. She was hypnotized for the cure of it. She complained one day while hypnotized that her mouth tasted of spice. It occurred to me, as I had been chewing some spice, that it might be a telepathic phenomenon. I said nothing, and the next time she was hypnotized I surreptitiously put a tablet of quinine in my mouth. She immediately asked for water, and said that her mouth was very bitter. The water was given her, and a screen was placed between her and me. I then put cayenne pepper into my mouth, and she began to cry and said some one had put pepper into the water given her.

As the water was handed her by another person who did not even know that I had pepper about my person, the experiment was conclusive.

I put a rather large amount of pepper into my mouth and it burned me severely, and the girl cried and was becoming so hysterical that I calmed her by suggestion and awoke her.

The burning in her mouth vanished at once, but not so in mine.

Nineteen experiments were tried with this girl. Of the nineteen, six were conclusive, four were doubtful, and the other nine were failures.

Similar experiments have been tried by me with thirty-six different hypnotic subjects. They were all under thirty years of age. The average of experiments with the thirty-six subjects was eight for each subject. Of the 288 experiments, 69 were entirely successful. They embraced experiments in the transference of numbers, words, names of objects, taste, smell, etc. One experiment tried by me is well worth relating.

One of my subjects while hypnotized was told to remain perfectly still for five minutes and to relate to me at the end of this time any sensation he might experience. I passed into another room and closed the door and locked it; went into a closet in the room and closed the door after me; took down from the shelf, first a linen sheet, then a pasteboard bos, then a toy engine, owned by a child in the house. I went back to my subject and asked him what experiences he had had.

He said I seemed to go into another room and from thence into a dark closet. I wanted something off the shelf, but did not know what. I took down from the shelf a piece of smooth cloth, a long, square, pasteboard box, and a tin engine. These were all the sensations he had experienced. I asked him if he saw the articles with his eyes which I removed from the shelf. He answered that the closet was dark and that he only felt them with his hands. I asked him how he knew that the engine was tin. He said, "By the sound of it." As my hands touched it I heard the wheels rattle. Now the only sound made by me while in the closet was simply the rattling of the wheels of the toy as I took it off the shelf. This could not possibly have been heard as the subject was distant from me two large rooms, and there were two closed doors between us, and the noise was very slight indeed. Neither could the subject have judged where I went, as I had on light slippers which made no noise.