Memoirs of G.B.D.RORR 1901 - 1915 - File . 1914 Written : ?? Compass Harbor and Frenchmans Bay Compass Harbor, onto which the Oldfarm property here offered immediately descends to low water mark, is the outermost safe harborage for boats of lesser size on Mount Desert Island's eastern shore, with a clean, sandy bottom shelving to deep water. Opposite it, a mile away, rises the bold, cliffed mass of Round Porcupine, from which the Government's costly break- water extends to within six hundred feet of the Mount Desert Island shore, affording good and speedy passage from Compass Harbor into the larger harbor the break- water creates, where, sheltered also from the north by a range of islets, the Porcupines, the largest Government vessels, men-of-war and others, have lain in safe harborage, as occasion served, these many years. The main passage to this harbor lies past the opposite, eastern side of Round Porcupine and extends, with un- diminished depth, through Upper Frenchmans Bay to the former Government coaling station at Lamoine. Note: Nearly a dozen Dorr Memoirs are separately filed under" Road Development." that May have been collaborative-on MDI geology. The geology file also contains a 17-page essay- South of Round Porcupine, with its high-cliffed oceanfront of lava rock, the way lies direct and open across outer Frenchmans Bay to Winter Harbor, Schoodic Head and the Government-maintained Moose Island Radio Station. The directness of Frenchmans Bay to ports abroad is shown by our awakening early one summer morning in 1914 to see the great German passenger liner, the Crown Princess Cecilie, steaming in past Round Porcu- pine and coming to rest in the harbor, with her full complement of passengers and crew aboard. She had been on her way out to her home port on her regular passage from New York when, nearing the other side, some word reached her from Germany which sent her steaming back to America at full speed. The World War had broken out, and she sought the nearest port of safety, which was Frenchmans Bay. In anticipation of such an eventuality, her captain had complete and accurate charts of all our coastal waters, an American yachtsman who chanced to be aboard her and with whom the captain consulted over them told me later. (Signed) GEORGE B. DORR. 2130 The Summit of Champlain Mountain The summit of Newport Mountain -- now Champlain Mountain by the Government's renaming -- I obtained, together with the great cliff upon the eastern side, in gift from Mrs. William Bliss, step-mother of Robert Bliss and mother of Mildred Barnes, his wife. Mr. and Mrs. William Bliss came to Grindstone Neck at Winter Harbor to make a summer home there, in the later eighteenenineties, but after some seasons they decided they would rather live in the wider social atmosphere of Bar Harbor and bought the William Page property, extending from the shore opposite the great eastern cliff on Newport Mountain, across the meadow at the cliff foot and up the cliff to the mountain summit, an exceedingly important tract to preserve in public ownership. Mr. and Mrs. Bliss never built upon this property, but ultimately made an all the year round home in California and after that Mrs. Bliss, the actual purchaser of the property, came but seldom to the Island; he, never. 2. At the time they bought the land, I knew them pleasantly in a social way; they used to come over from Winter Harbor in their boat now and again and take their lunch with us at Oldfarm, for my mother was still living at that time. The meadow at the mountain foot was then a dense mass of alders, native willows, and rank marsh grasses, which, as the meadow dried in summer, became a serious fire-hazard to the whole stretch of woods along the shore. A fire, once starting there, with the strong south winds of summer, would sweep the shore toward Bar Harbor for a mile or more, without a chance of stopping it. One day when they were lunching with us, I spoke of this to Mr. Bliss and he said he would be glad to clear the meadow and put it into grass as I suggested and asked my advice about it. I told him that I would gladly take charge of the work on account of its importance to the shore if he would like me to; and he took my offer. From the top of the cliff on Champlain mountain, one looks directly down upon the meadow and I planned to clear no more than the level meadowland, making it 3. into a pasture-land such as I had often seen cattle grazing on among the mountains in the Tyrol. fillier Later that summer when work was underway, Dr. S. skitchelle Weir Mitchell of Philadelphia, an intimate friend at our house, came to me and said that Miss Beatrix Jones, who had been studying to become a landscape architect, had completed her studies and that it would be an opportunity for her if I would let her take charge B. on a professional basis the Bliss work on the meadow. To this I willingly agreed, Mr. and Mrs. Bliss Mextored consenting, and the carrying out of this project became the present Beatrix Farrand's first professional job. It did not work out as we had hoped, however, either for herself or for the parklands of the future, for, in the ambition of her new career, she undertook too much, clearing further than I had intended toward the mountain foot and involving her employers in an expenditure which led to the abrupt termination of the work when half done. Years after, when the Park was formed, this made it difficult for me to get the land I wanted along the mountain foot but the cliff that rises up beyond the meadow, where now the Precipice Path ascends, and the 4. summit heights above I obtained later, after patient waiting, from Mrs. Bliss at the time of her visit to Bar Harbor. Ultimately the meadow and the property opposite it upon the shore passed by inheritance to Robert Woods Bliss and his wife. He had held important posts in the diplomatic service and he and she together had done splendid service for relief at Paris during and after the World War. I knew them personally and they would gladly have given me what I wanted for the public at the mountain foot had they returned to Bar Harbor but they never came again. And presently the land was sold for investment, at the beginning of the depression, to Mr. A. Atwater Kent, the purchaser of other proper- ties along the shore. [6.B. DORR] Paper upon need of public reservations in the East, written with reference to conservation plans for Mount Desert Island. George B. Dorr. The question of Public Reservation is of par- amount importance in the eastern portion of our country where we have already got a dense population swiftly created and swiftly growing denser without apparent limit. Many reservations have been made in the thinly settled west, whose population - owing to the character of the country - must ever remain slight compared with the well watered, permanently fertile region from the Rocky Mountain foot-hills eastward, with its level lands, easy railroading and accessibility by river, lake and sea. We are passing into a new phase of human life where men are congregating in vast multitudes, for industrial purposes, for trade and intercourse; the population of the future must inevitably be many times the population of the present, and the need of con- serving now, while there is time, pleasant, wholesome breathing places for these coming multitudes is great, How great, we can with difficulty realize in our country yet so newly occupied and in a period so new of growth and vast industrial change, but what such open spaces in the form of Commons have meant to England in the past, the long struggle to prevent their enclosure by 2. the few shows strikingly, and what is lost by their absence is densely peopled regions of China where every rod of ground is given up to the material struggle for existence the accounts of all returning travelers tell. But it is not a question of breathing-spaces and physical well-being only; it goes far beyond that and is deeply concerned with the inner life of men. With Nature in its beauty and freedom shut out from so many lives in these industrial and city-dwelling times it is going to become -- has indeed become al- ready -- a matter of supreme importance to preserve in their openness, in their unspoiled beauty and the interest of their wild life, of their native trees and plants, their birds and animals, the places where the interest and human significance of these things is greatest, the places where the influence of Nature may be felt the most or where the life with which she has peopled the world, and man or chance has not destroyed, may be observed and studied in its fullest. The times are moving fast in the destruction of beautiful and interesting things The lost oppor- tunity of one year becomes the bitter regret of thoughtful people in a few years more. Valuable and in- teresting species of birds that were still familiar a 3. generation since and that might have added to the delight or wealth of the world forever have now become extinct Individuality honeless of resurrection as if we had only known of them in fossil forms Many a landscape and forest- land that should have remained forever unspoilt and public in the crowd- ed eastern regions of the future in this country have been ruined needlessly or locked up in private ownership In nothing is conservation needed more than in saving all that is economically possible of the pleasantness and freedom of nature in regions accessible, even by travel, to the vast, town-dwelling populations of the future; in preser- ing the features of scientific interest or landscape beauty that widen men's horizon or quicken their imagination. City parks and playgrounds; valuable and necessary as they are, cannot do this, nor can cultivated fields and motor-traversed roads. The bold hill-tops and mountain heights which the ancient Hebrews felt were God-inhabited; the clear springs in Syria over which the Greeks built temples through whose ruined stones the crystal water still comes gushing; the sacred groves of Italy and Druid oaks of northern Europe, tell a story of the deep influence of such things upon the hearts and lives of men, an influence we cannot afford to lose today 4. in our mechanism-shrunken, modern world of immeasurably growing population. By taking thought in season, little need be sacrificed to secure incalcuable benefits in nature's wilder near-by regions, in her grander land- scapes that lie within the reach of busy men; in re- freshing forests, not too limited; on picturesque and open downs beside the sea; or along the pleasant, wooded side of streams with unpolluted water. When coal becomes exhausted, water power or other form of energy will take its place, but nothing will ever compensate for natural beauty permanently ruined with- in the narrowing bounds of modern life. Life will always be a compromise of many interests, where each and every side must get and give. But life is also an organic whole, where, as in the old Roman fable of the stomach and the brain that won the people back from their revolt, each part must starve if the other be not fed; and if there be anything in the world, next to the opportunity to gain the necessities of life, to meet disease or find the means of education, that should be kept upen to the right use of all it is the wholesome freedom of nature and opportunity for contact with its many-sided in- terest and beauty in appropriate tracts. The day will ultimately come when to provide such will be felt to be one of the most essential duties of the state or 5. greatest privileges of wealthy citizens. For wiser and better gifts than these, to be public heritages forever, it were hard to find. Permanent as few others can be, they will only gain with time, in beauty often and in richness of association always. Changes in science or social organization, altered standards of artistic interest or change in chari- table method will not destroy their value. There are landscapes and tracts of land which for their beauty and exceptional interest - or their close relation to important centers -- should be inalienably public, forever free to all. Our metropolitan parks and reservations are a first step in this direction, as are the national parks out west, but with increasing private ownership and rapidly increasing population the movement is one that will need to go far eventually. The earth is our common heritage. It is both right and needful it should be kept widely free in the portions that the homes of men, industry and agriculture do not claim. Personal possession reaches out at widest but a little way, and passes quickly in the present day, gathering about itself little of that greater charm which time alone can give. If men of wealth would spend but a fraction of what they do for themselves alone, with brief résult, in 6. making the landscape about them beautiful for the benefit of all in permanent and simple ways, the result would be to give extraordinary interest - of of steadily accumulative kind - to every residential section of the land and it would tend, besides, to give all men living in or passing through it a sense of personal possession in the landscape instead of the now common one of injury at exclusion from it; and to give them, too, a freedom of wandering and a beauty by the way which even the wealthiest cannot get today. And with such gifts would also go the pleasant sense of sharing and the sense of permanence in things accomplished No monument could be a better one to leave behind, no memorial pleasanter -- whether for one's self or others - than gifts like these that make the earth a pleasanter, a more in- teresting or delightful place for other men to live in than it would else have been. In offering the Nation, through the Federal Government, the reservation it has formed upon Mount Besert Island our Association seeks not only to ensure to all the future freedom, the striking beauty and the various interest of the tract conveyed but to make the gift serve also as a statement of the follow- ing principles: (1) That great landscape, unique or 7. typical, belong of right to the people, who should gradually ROquire then in adequate and sufficient portions, and guard them as if precious heritage. (2) That the nation, states and individual citizens should cooperate together to conserve in every possi- ble way the beauty and various interest of the natural world; and that this is a duty not to be lost sight or or postponed in the presence of other passing needs but to be provided for with these. That this movement mist gros, no one who has thought upon the setter can doubt - the more- went for tablic parks and open spaces, near or far, not as playgrounds simply but as opportunities for nature in its may-sided interest and beauty to r min an influence in life; for places, too, where such features or wild life as way co-exist with man may be preserved sund where plant life, whether in forest growths or the infinite detail of flovering plants and lowly forms, may still remain a part of man's enviroment. The movement will gros, as all great movements do, because a great truth - man's need for nature - lies behind it. The essentially important thing is to save KHONE that opportunity we can for its expansion later. Xxx Dictaphone - transcribed October 15, 1941. I acquired the lands west of the Athletic Field and secured the Park Office site at the beginning of my work for a major group of Public Reservations with the thought clearly in view of such an approach to them as I am now offering the National Park which presently sprang out of my undertaking. The Athletic Field, the fundamental feature of the whole undertaking, I made safe for all time, ao long as Bar Harbor will endure, by giving it to the Town with restrictions against any building being placed upon it; the land west of it, held personally for a time, I placed in the hands of the Dorr Foundation, created for the express purpose of holding it, to insure its safety, independent of myself, as a n essential feature In the approach I planned to the Great Headow, central to my scheme of the Reservations. Those chosen to constitute the Foundation were people I felt would understand and be in sympathy with the spirtt of my work and the end I had in view, and it is that corporation, hot I, that controls it now and has the duty to see that my original plan for a beautiful and undisfigured entrance from the Town to the group of Public Reservations lands which I was gathering is worthy of the whole and of what it leads to. The tract of land which the Dorr Foundation corporation has reserved in its gift of the entrance to the Park, the Park has no need of or use for at the present time nor in the future so far as can be seen; all that the Park Service officials at Washington desire it for, as I understand it, is to make sure that no use will be made of it in the future alien to what I now propose for the unique character of the whole as an entrance to 2. theimportant National Park area. The members of the corporation and I with them, most gladly agree to blotting whatever can best secure this purpose without sacrificing the purpose for which the reservation was made, important also to the Park in my judgment and in theirs. This land did not enter into the question when bill for the taking over by the Government of the National Park headquarters site and its buildings was entered, not necessary to it, but was held in reserve with the intention of offering it to the Government later in free gift, when such plans as have now been adopted, plans with which I am more than content, had been worked out. All that I or the Foundation want is to make permanent so far as is humanly possible the opportunities secured. It has great opportunities and should be as enduring . intthe accomplishment, if rightly done, as the Park itself. I, can see now danger ahead in the Park-Foundation control, nor what I control myself which lies immediately beyond it. But beyond that, between it and the actual entrance on the Park there is a good bit to be done to make the opportunity that offers there secure and developed to its best and fullest. Dictaphone - transcribed October 15, 1941. I, happily, was not a member of the Bar Harbor Water Company's directors board, but stood apart as one interested from every angle in the better development of the Town. I could do what others could not without being open to the charge of acting for some special interest in seeking charge of the acquisition of further lands for the protection of the Bar Harbor Water Company. The water sheds of the lake was large and its lands were held by local owners whose prices would go up beyond all limit as soon as purchasing by the Water Company for protection of the lake began. But the matter was one of broad public concern, State concern, and I thought that by dwelling on that aspect of it I night be able to get a law passed by the State Legislature, which happily met in its biennial session the first of the coring year, and I set to work upon it with a will. We happily had at Seal Harbor, as a summer resident, Professor C 19092 William T. Sedgwick, author of the most authoritative work extant on public water supplies, and I at once enlisted his aid. Dr. Abbe, than whom no one in New York stood higher, I already had behind me and one by one I was able to present, when the January first meeting of the Legislature opened and #/1111/111 hearing came upon my bill, a most impressive array of testimony of high authority in favor of granting our water supplies on the Island condemnation rights for the protection of their waters purity. I also got a number of leading summer residents on the Island to attend the meeting and speak in favor of the Bill. They represented a great new industry of the State, summer residential life along its ocean-front, and they too carried weight. I sought the right for all the water supply companies upon the Island; I obtained it, in spite of local opposition, for Eagle Lake, Bar Harber's water supply, and Jordan Pond, that of Seal Harbor, the two most important of them all. Local ownership around the others, less important from the summer residential point of view, was too strong to do more, but it was enoughth It put the idea of the necessity of purity for our water supplies across and no further trouble has ensued. Having got this right, I naturally was asked by the Water Company to take charge of securing, so far as their reserve funds, which were consideraBle, would allow, their water sheds which I. agreed to do upon the sole condition that the lands secured should pass into the Public Reservations hands, to be held by our Trustees association, and not go to the Water Company, thus insuring, as I thought forever the purity of their supply. In this the Water Company secured a great advantage in its freedom from taxation which ownership under our Trustess of Public Reservations association gave, and it readily agreed. The same course was followed by the Seal Harbor Water Company so far as need was, and the two lakes lying back to back as it were with the Bubbles mountain ridge 2 Wed night, Feb, 8, Survey of the lot should be made, as above described, as the spring opening makes possible. Instructions from my executors should be drawn up in regard to this lot as early as winter permits. NoteL This also should be done in regard to the four lots, four separate lots I still own, opposite One, Pryob's Island where there is a spring to be and the wate: r carried across by pipe to Pryor's Riquests Igland Two, the land by Lurvey Spring; Three and four the two pieces which should be treated as a single one, though separate, at the head of Long Pond. I mean by head the southern end near the piping pumping station. of These I would like to have ultimately used independently, but with due regard for the Park, should it be possible. But if not and they are in one way or another these lands all are of value. My feeling is that the two at the head of Long Pond should dealt with as a unit for an ice fishing club, a rowing club on the eastorn shore of the eastern lot, east of the Pumping station and the one tract of land still left me on Echo Lkake at the head of the Lake between the App club and th boys club whose future needs to be worked out -- might very well go with these along with the entrance from the high road down and the continuation compicion Wednesday evening CT1 1 Note to get the proposed property lines and the sewage and cistern line drawn for the properties on the shore. And to get line against the Phelps property drawn out on paper from road to shore with the restrictions against building and for tall trees on the property obtained from David Ogden shown also throughout, from Main street to the shore. The pipe line against the Phelps line to its outflow on the shore needs also to be shown. The land I own on the Otter Creek road beyond the Gorge upon the west descending from the Otter Creek Road crossing the Brook and there extending to the woods nor thward needs also to be surveyed and shown. This whole property should be thoroughly studied, its possibilities looked into and the access to it studied. The spring on the Parkland where the old loggers lived should be looked into also for its possibilities. This property is interesting and unle SS right arrangements can be made for it, , it should he held and not given away. The tax upon at the present date cannot be but very light. A good ground survey not only of bounds but of woods and levels would help also. The footpaths and old woodroads as developed on the Park land north of it should not be opened hence through by land as at present owned and thruxxnot used at all, for riding or driving. This is to be watched out for and strictly held to. DICTATHONE. May 29th. CONTINUING DICTATION TO MRS. . STOVER. for 18406 sitter Another beba at this time with the same medium whom we will call z, was Prof. Newbold of the University of Pennsylvania. He was Prof. there of Greek but had recently been appointed when I knew him Dean of the University and feared, if his name appeared in connection psychical with research phenomena that it might discredit him at the University, so his name was kept out of the as were Societtes report, published in England, AXTA those also of the Perry family, so they had no hésitation on talking of the matter and coming squarely out in affirmation 22 of their aptitude conviction of the gunuity of the phenomena on a survival basis. Prof. Newbold came on from Philadelphia to make trial of the medium, and stayed with Dr. Hodgdon in his rooms on Charles Street Boston. What he got I do not know. He did not tell me and I did not ask, but it was to him absolutely (1901-02) convincing. This was later by some ten years than what Dr. Hodgdon waited in Boston to tell of us on our (1891-92) return from a winter on the Nile. And but for my mother's interest which kept me still in touch with Dr. Hodgkin's work of which he came in frequently to tell her, I had dropped out completely from pursuing as 2. the investigation. Then Dr. Hodgdon, active and athletic and a fellow member at the Tavern Club, fell dead suddenly while playing handball and Prof. James, then become president of the English psychical Research Society because of the importance they gave to the work being done in America and his own distinction, asked me as knowing something of the work and Dr. Hodgdon personally, to take charge of straightening things out till someone would be got over from England to do it. This I did, and it proved an exceedingly trying job/ Dr. Hodgdon, convinced by the evidence he had got, had taken the communications that came to him from the controls on the basis of reality and had given that impression to a widely scattered group of sitters for sittings believing, like himself, in the r eality of the communication and they had talked freely, as had Dr. Hodgdon also, of personal and private matters, $1111 trusting to Dr. Hodgdon's assurance that all would be kept strictly private. Dr. Hodgdon had also taken over for the Society the entire time of Mrs. z, the medium, limiting her sittings strictly in number that she might come fresh to her work and, which advaning the charge for sittings to the point sufficed for her and her family's support. This 3. gave sitters, paying on this basis for their sittings, a better right to have what they got, taken down by Dr. Hodgdon, who, when no one else, was present at the sitting, a further claim to an invidiability. But, looking at the matter from another angle, Dr. Hyslop of New York, carrying on independent investigations into the subjects, wished to be appointed in Dr. Hodgdon's place for the purpose of giving all the record whose privacy Dr. Hodgdon had assured, to the public as purely scientific material, which no one had a right to hold back. And because Prof. James would not support him in his claim, he threatened a public attack in the newspaper which would certainly have arcused interest in the subjectx And, to further complicate the situation, Dr. Hodgdon's secretary, employed by the English Society, who had helped him to transcribe the sittings had come in contact with the sitters personally, felt that she and no one else whould be placed in charge of the records. which, as the work had now been going on for years, had reached a formidable bulk. DR. Hodgdon's family in Australia was catered to by William James and I, of whom they knew through 4. larec. his long stays with us at Oldfarm, happily reported to them, was asked to become his executor and take charge of what was private in the records. In the meantime, the English P Research Soc. made me, at / James's suggestion, the Vice-president of the Society and put me in charge of their interest in Dr. Hodgdon's records. This, in view of the private nature of the material and the complication over what the rights of the society were and what those of the sitters and Dr. Hodgdon personally, I undertook only on condition that William James's oldest son,now grown to manhood, were made co-executive and took over personally as such Dr. Hodgdon's papers. This was done. The sittings, on which Mrs. Z depended for her support in accordance with her arrangement with Dr. Hodgdon, continued under my general direction, bringing me into personal contact with the sitters. In this way I came to know personally whose who had been given sittings by Dr. Hodgdon and made some interesting friends, some of the sitters coming for their occasional sittings, which they valued highly from as far away as Philadelphia and Chicago, all 5. concerned for XXXXXXXX/ intimate and personal reasons, far more than important to them than the gathering of scientific evidence, in their meetings with the controls. One of these was // Prof. Newbold of whom I have spoken, who told me of his earlier coming on AXXX/111 to stay with Dr. Hodgdon and make experiment of the medium -- an experiment, as I have said, that resulted in his complete conviction of reality in the communication. Prof. Newbold, though he did not tell me what he had got in his sittings when he stayed with Dr. Hodgdon that led him to conviction of reality in the communication, told me of one curious thing that happened on that visit. Mrs. Z, the medium, lived with her family in a house not in Boston but a neighboring town, which Dr . Hodgdon had rented for her and where the sittings were held. One went out by train. In the course of their first sitting on this occasion some non-sensical things were said by an includeng person- ality breaking Mon on the sitting, which vexed them at the time but amused them when they came to read the record of the sitting over the next morning before returning, again by train, for a second sitting. Having read the record over they had only just time to catch their 6. train, driving to the station. Prof. Newbold was staying with Dr. Hodgdon in his rooms on Charles St. and it was there the record was read over as they breakfasted. When they got to the medium's house, taking a train out, the same personality that had appeared before immediately turned up again and reproached Dr. Hodgdon for his laughter over what be - this personality w had said during the medium's trance the day before. There was no explanation for it along normal lines of compmnication. In some way the ### including control had become aware of what had taken place in Dr. Hodgdon's room immediately they left to catch their train, and there had been no one in # the room beside them. It seemed a clear case of swareness at a distance, of which indeed there are many well authenicated instances. The English secretary came and I turned Dr. Hodgdon's papers over to him to be carried over, sealed, to England and examined at England if anyone had time to study them ,liew they and & without which all is valueless Evidently, unless to the sitter. And I was struck by the freedom given 7. by the sitters to & control so doubtful and so little known. Now and again what seemed a real figure from the beyond was thrown upon the screen of the medium sub-normal consciousness, trance- conscious, and played a seemingly genuine part. In general, the controls were psychilogies shams, phases evidently of the medium's sub-conscious mind -- whatever mind can be that is sub-conscious. It was with a feeling of great relief that I committed the papers and the medium, both, to the care of the English secretary, Mr. Hiddmatton, who disappeared from my horizon. Frederick Myers died at this time and they if thought in England that/anyone could return to communicate it would be he who had taken so great a part in their investigation, and it was for this especially that they desired to have the medium out to England for studies thete. They made them during the following winter to no result. Then the medium was returned home and committed to my c are, a care I accepted for the possibility of discovery and I raised funds for further sittings under my direction, taking part in them myself and making opportunity for others. 8 The object of my investigation was to see if I could get something evidential from Frederick Myers who had stayed with us at Bar Harbor and I knew personally. But if they KAA failed in England, with all his old home association and personal frendships to draw upon, V I thought it idee to go out in quest of material along that line. And I took one of my own, original so far as I know. Myers had been a notable scholar in the classics and a poet. I sought something from him along that line and got some strangely interesting results, which I promptly dispatched to England as I got them, to be studied over there. I got references to classical mythology dwelling, as Myers would have done, on its poetic side, which were etraordinarily interest- ing and utterly beyond anything the medium, not a of person/Y/ more than the most ordinary education, could have possibly known about or imagined. Most of them contained material I at one timeor another had been conversant with myself, but happily as it chanced I had never read 01/ Ovid's Metamophases 9. and Dr. Verril of a noted Greek scholar, wife and daughter, the latter equally a scholar found as they thought references to these in what I got and which could not therefore have come out of my mind. On this and the imagination displayed, studying my records carefully there laid much stress. On one / Occasion I got curious results. The theory of Mrs. Z's trances was that those on the other side removed the spirit from what they called the machine, the body, and used it themselves for making communications. Then, the trance over, they returned the spirit to its body, it being for a brief time conscious apparently of what was said or done by those upon the other side, then suddenly, losing that, came in consciousness again. During this period the medium would talk, telling in a disconnected, whispered sought of way, what she saw and heard. When in full trance all animation seemed to have left the body save the right arm only, the hand being lifted up inquiringly as to question or to hear, then brought down onto the paper which lay before her and seizing a pencil would write. On one occasion, when Mrs. Z was in full trance I 10. said that I had a line of poetry - Greek poetry - which had been much to Dr. Eyer's, when he was upon this side, and wide m La posted in original Greekd without translating it in an address he gave which had been afterward published and I repeated the line taken from the commencement of Homer's Odyssey. The hand, as usual, went up inquiringly, then wrote asking me to repeat it, which I did a couple of times perhaps, always in the Greek and giving no indication of its source. The hand then wrote that they would take it to Er. Eyer's and ask him to answer it. When we next net, which would be on the second after, Hrs. Z only giving three sittings a week, that she might be fresh, Nothing was said referring At during her trance on the second day. But when the trance was over and the medium's spirit as controls explained her return to consciousness was back in her machine or bodybut conscious still of what KA went on upon the other side, she began to whisper, at first so low that I could not end 2 catch it, cytender to bring over but I did catch it and what she whispered smoke was "I save my soul and win my homeward way." Then connecting if as XXX corrected by some one on the other side, she 11. whispered, 'Saving' 'Mr . Myer's said, f a very curious correction showing exact scholarship, the being first word if/the pastpand not the present indicative. So the line was read with that low whispered trans- lation and the correction made. Nothing more was said in reference to it as the medium's conscious- ness seemed passed over into normal, nor was anything said concerning it at the next sitting two day's later yet, except that as the hand began to write, as she entered the trance, 'comrades homeward way' thus, without explanation, completing a correct rendering of Homer's line. The only explanation possible along normal lines being that the medium had memorized the lines when I repeated it, asking for translation and had gone to some Greek scholar and asked that it be translated, but then its translation would have been correct in the first instance and I could hardly imagine that two successive corrections could have been made in way they were in order to deceive me. Yet the possibility was there and it could not be taken as conslusive evidence, though strangely suggestive. 12. All together it was a most interesting experience, and so they found it in England on my report. When spring came, after various correspondence with Sir Oliver Lodge, Mrs. Sedgwick and others I returned Mrs. Z to England for a final study together with a substantial contribution I raised from a few friends who had been interested with me in the investi- gation to add to shotket fund raised over there to provide Ror her future and there my connection with the Society ended, William James passing over to the majority himself, soon after. Sir Oliver Lodge name out of it with full conviction of the Bible and genuine communication of which he got further evidence, he felt, when a son was killed in the World's War. But I left my investigation with suspended judgment; were it but possible to arrive at definite evidence of survival, no subject in the world can touch it in importancealtering our whole outlook upon life. N may 30, Dictaffore I had a curious experience in connection with that last winter's work on gather- ing material to send out to England on Frederick Myers. To tell it I must go back some years. The Bellemy Storers were friends of Theodore Roosevelt with men he knew socially in Washington and Roosevelt, liking to fill/diplomatic such posts that came under his disposal when he became President, made Mr. Storer the United States Minister to Austria. Mr. and Mrs. Storer were Catholics and established at Vienna pulled wires to get some appointment made of a Catholic to another post which, for some reason -- I forget the details -- it pleased Roosevelt so greatly that he made an open breach with the Storers, who had been his intimate friends before. Storer resigned and the whole matter got into newspapers with publication of letters from Roosevelt to Mrs. Storer, letter of an earlier date, in which he addressed her as 'Dear Maria', which attached itself as a name to the whole bunch of letters, giving the whole matter a rather rediculous turn. 71611 When the Storers got back to Washington, there was too much Roosevelt in the air to make it pleasant and they 2. came on to Boston and took an Apartment there till Roosevelt's time should be up. It was then that I met them. Mrs. Storer, though a strong Catholic, was interested also in the practical research work I was engaged upon, of which she knew, and one day I got a note from her asking me if I would not come and take a cup of tea and to meet a man named Raupert, sent out by the Catholic Church from England to have talks with the Catholic priests in America and common laymen, and make it clear to them that they must have nothing to do with psychical reserarch patters. I naturally went and had a t alk with