Observations placeholder

Friar Herbert Thurston - The Physical Phenomenon of Mysticism

At the time when Dailey's book was in preparation (c. 1893) Mr. Sargent formed the impression that Mollie was regaining her natural sight. Judge Dailey did not agree. They were both conversing in the invalid's room, and the last named, as he tells us, took steps to prove to his friend that her vision was still altogether preternormal.

I immediately rose, and securely covered her eyes by placing a double handkerchief over them, and covering the lower part of her face as she lay upon her bed. There was not a movement any of us could make, or a thing which we could do, which she could not distinctly describe to us, with as much readiness as either of us could have done had the same been done before our eyes. . . .

She sees best and reads most readily when the room is so dark that others can scarcely see the print. The most hardened sceptics in these matters have been compelled to succumb when in the presence of Miss Fancher.

I should be the first to admit that such tests as that of the folded handkerchief just described afford a very inadequate guarantee against the practised impostor, but when we are dealing with a sufferer, bedridden for twenty-seven years, whose sincerity, patience, charity, and simple religious faith are commended by all her most intimate friends, the case seems to me to be very different from that of a professional medium who depends for a livelihood upon the impression he produces on his dupes.