“And this is all very plausible,” said I. “Theories, if you please, at length, and, if possible, a full length illustration also.” “By which you mean a ghost-story, or something to that effect?” “Precisely: and, without presuming to dictate, if possible, first-hand.” “Oddly enough, I can supply that also,” said she. “So first I will tell you my general theory, and follow it by a story that seems to bear it out. It happened to me, and it happened here.” “I am sure it will fill the bill,” said I. She paused a moment while I lit a cigarette, and then began in her very clear, pleasant voice. She has the most lucid voice I know, and to me sitting there in the deep-dyed dusk, the words seemed the very incarnation of clarity, for they dropped into the still quiet of the darkness, undisturbed by impressions conveyed to other senses. * * * * * “We are only just beginning to conjecture,” she said, “how inextricable is the interweaving between mind, soul, life, call it what you will--and the purely material part of the created world. That such interweaving existed has, of course, been known for centuries; doctors, for instance, knew that a cheerful optimistic spirit on the part of their patients conduced towards recovery; that fear, the mere emotion, had a definite effect on the beat of the heart, that anger produced chemical changes in the blood, that anxiety led to indigestion, that under the influence of strong passion a man can do things which in his normal state he is physically incapable of performing. Here we have mind, in a simple and familiar manner, producing changes and effects in tissue, in that which is purely material. By an extension of this--though, indeed, it is scarcely an extension--we may expect to find that mind can have an effect, not only on what we call living tissue, but on dead things, on pieces of wood or stone. At least it is hard to see why that should not be so.” “Table-turning, for instance?” I asked.