Wild Talents (24 page)

In September, 1921, Mary Richardson gave performances, at the Olympic Music Hall, Liverpool. Easily lifted one moment—the next moment, six men—same six, maybe—could not move her. By touching a man, she knocked him flat. It is either that she traveled with a staff of thirteen comedians, whose stunt it was to form in a line pretending their utmost to push her, but seeming to fail comically, considering the size of her, or that she was a magician.

It is impossible to get anywhere by reasoning. This is because—as can be shown, monistically—there isn’t anywhere. Or it is impossible to get anywhere, because one can get everywhere. I can find equally good reasons for laughing, or for being serious, about all this. Holms tells that he was one of those in the audience, who, though not taking part, went up on the stage; and that he put his hand between Mrs. Richardson and the leader of the string of thirteen men, who were almost dislocating one another’s shoulder blades, pushing their hardest against her, and that he felt no pressure. So he was convinced not that she resisted pressure, but that pressure could not touch her.

Suppose it was that pressure could not touch her. Could blows harm her? Could bullets touch her? Did Robert Houdin have this power, when he faced an Arab firing squad, and is the story of the substituted blanks for bullets only just some more of what taboo is telling everywhere? One untouchable man could own the world—except that he’d have a weakness somewhere, or, in general, could be no more than the untouchable-touchable. But he could add to our bewilderments by making much history before being touched. Well, then, if there are magicians, why haven’t magicians seized upon political powers? I don’t know that they haven’t.

It may be the secret of fire-walking—or that wizards walk over red-hot stones, unharmed, because they do not touch the stones. However, for some readers, it is more comfortable to disbelieve that anybody ever has been a fire-walker. For an uncomfortable moment, read an account, in
Current Literature,
32-98—exhibition by a Hawaiian fire-walker at Honolulu, Jan. 19, 1901. The story is that this wizard walked on stones of “a fierce, red glow” with flames spouting from burning wood, underneath; walking back and forth four times.

There is a muscular strength of men, and it may be that sometimes appears a strength to which would apply the description “occult,” or “psychic.” In the
New York Herald Tribune,
Jan. 24, 1932, was reported the death of Mrs. Betsy Anna Talks, of 149 Fourteenth Road, Whitestone, Queens, N.Y.—who had often performed such feats as carrying a barrel of sugar weighing 400 pounds—had carried, under each arm, a sack of potatoes, whereas, in fields, usually two men lug one sack—had impatiently watched two men, clumsily moving a 550-pound barrel of salt, in a cart, and had taken it down for them.

There are “gospel truths,” and “irrefutable principles,” and “whatever goes up must come down,” and “men are strong and women are weak”—but somewhere there’s a woman who takes a barrel of salt away from two men. But we think in generalizations, and enact laws in generalizations, and “women are weak,” and, if I should look it up, I’d be not at all surprised to learn that Mrs. Talks was receiving alimony.

I now recall another series of my own experiences with what may be my own very wild talents. I took no notes upon the occurrences, because I had decided that note-taking would make me self-conscious. I do not now take this view. I was walking along West 42nd Street, N.Y.C, when the notion came to me that I could “see” what was in a show window, which, some distance ahead, was invisible to me. I said to myself: “Turkey tracks in red snow.” It should be noted that “red snow” was one of the phenomena of my interests at this time. I came to the window, and saw track-like lines of black fountain pens, grouped in fours, one behind, and the three others trifurcating from it, on a background of pink cardboard.

At last I was a wizard!

Another time, picking out a distant window, invisible to me—or occularly invisible to me—I said, “Ripple marks on a sandy beach.” It was a show window. Several men were removing exhibits from it and there was virtually nothing left except a yellow-plush floor covering. Decoratively, this covering had been ruffled, or given a wavy appearance.

Another time—“Robinson Crusoe and Friday’s footprints.” When I came to the place, I saw that it was a cobbler’s shop, and that, hanging in the window, was a string of shoe soles.

I’m sorry.

I should like to hear of somebody, who would manfully declare himself a wizard, and say—“Take it or leave it!” I can’t do this, because I too well remember other circumstances. Maybe it’s my timidity, but I now save myself from the resentment, or the mean envy, of readers, who say, of a distant store window, “popular novels,” and its pumpkins. My experiments kept up about a month. Say that I experimented about a thousand times. Out of a thousand attempts, I can record only three seemingly striking successes, though I recall some minor ones. Throughout this book, I have taken the stand that nobody can be always wrong, but it does seem to me that I approximated so highly that I am nothing short of a negative genius. Nevertheless, the first of these experiences impresses me. It came to me when, so far as I know, I was not thinking of anything of the kind, though subconsciously I was carrying much lore upon various psychic subjects.

These things may be done, but everybody who is interested has noticed the triviality and the casualness of them. They—such as telepathic experiences—come and go, and then when one tries to develop an ability, the successes aren’t enough to encourage anybody, except somebody who is determined to be encouraged.

Well, then, if wild talents come and go, and can’t be developed, or can’t be depended upon, even people who are disposed to accept that they exist, can’t see the good of them.

But accept that there are adepts: probably they had to go through long periods of apprenticeship, in which, though they deceived themselves by hugely overemphasizing successes, and forgetting failures, they could not impress any parlor, or speakeasy, audience. I have told of my experiments of about a month. It takes five years to learn the rudiments of writing a book, selling gents’ hosiery, or panhandling.

Everybody who can do anything got from the gods, or whatever, nothing but a wild thing. Read a book, or look at a picture. The composer has taken a wild talent that nobody else in the world believed in; a thing that came and went and flouted and deceived him; maybe starved him; almost ruined him—and has put that damn thing to work.

Upon Nov. 29, 1931, died a wild talent. It was wild of origin, but was of considerable development. See the
New York Herald Tribune,
Nov. 30, 1931. John D. Reese had died in his home in Youngstown, Ohio. Mr. Reese was a “healer.” He was not a “divine healer.” He means much to my expression that the religionists have been permitted to take unto themselves much that is not theirs exclusively. Once we heard only of “divine healers.” Now there are “healers.” It is something of a start of a divorcement that may develop enormously. Sometime I am going to loot the records of saints, for suggestions that may be of value to bright atheists, willing to study and experiment. “Reese had never studied medicine. The only instruction he had ever received was from an aged healer, in the mountains of Wales, when he was a boy. Physicians could not explain his art, and, after satisfying themselves that he was not a charlatan, would shrug, and say simply that he had ‘divine power.’ ” But Reese never described himself as a “divine healer,” and, though by methods no less divine than those of the Salvation Army and other religious organizations, he made a fortune out of his practices, he was associated with no church. He was about thirty years old when he became aware of his talent. One day, in the year 1887, a man in a rolling mill fell from a ladder, and was injured. It was “a severe spinal sprain,” according to a physician. “Mr. Reese stooped and ran his fingers up and down the man’s back. The man smiled, and while the physician and the mill hands gaped in wonder, he rose to his feet, and announced that he felt strong again, with not a trace of pain. He went back to work, and Mr. Reese’s reputation as a healer was spread abroad.”

Then there were thousands of cases of successful treatments. Hans Wagner, shortstop of the Pittsburgh Pirates, was carried from the baseball field one day: something in his back had snapped and it seemed that his career had ended. He was treated by Reese and within a few days was back shortstopping. When Lloyd George visited the United States after the War, he shook hands so many times that his hand was twisted out of shape. Winston Churchill, in a later visit, had what was said to be an automobile accident and said that he was compelled to hold his arm in a sling. But Lloyd George was so cordially greeted that he was maimed. “Doctors said that only months of rest and massage could restore the cramped muscles.” “Reese shook hands with the statesman, pressed gently, and then harder, disengaged their hands with a wrench, and Lloyd George’s hand was strong again.”

One of the most important particulars in this story of a talent, or of witchcraft, that was put to work, is that probably it was a case of a magician who was taught. Reese, when a boy, received instructions in therapeutic magic, and then, in the stresses of making a living, forgot, so far as went the knowledge of his active consciousness. But it seems that subconsciously a development was going on, and suddenly, when the man was thirty-two years of age, manifested.

My notion is that wild talents exist in the profusion of the weeds of the fields. Also my notion is that, were it not for the conventions of markets, many weeds could be developed into valuable, edible vegetables. The one great ambition of my life, for which I would abandon my typewriter at any time—well, not if I were joyously setting down some particularly nasty little swipe at priests or scientists—is to say to chairs and tables, “Fall in! Forward! March!” and have them obey me. I have tried this, as I don’t mind recording, because one can’t be of an enquiring and experimental nature, and also be very sensible. But a more unmilitary lot of furniture than mine, nobody has. Most likely, for these attempts, I’ll be hounded by pacifists. I should very much like to be a wizard, and be of great negative benefit to my fellow beings, by doing nothing for anybody. And I have had many experiences that lead me to think that almost everybody else not only would like to be a wizard, but at times thinks he is one. I think that he is right. It is monism that if anybody’s a wizard, everybody is, to some degree, a wizard.

One time—spring of 1931—my landlord received some chicks from the country, and put them in an enclosure at the end of the yard. They grew, and later I thought it interesting, listening to the first, uncertain attempts of two of them to crow. It was as interesting as is watching young, human males trying to take on grown-up ways. But then I thought of what was ahead, at four o’clock, or thereabouts, mornings. I’m a crank about sleeping, because at times I have put in much disagreeable time with insomnia. I worried about this, and I spoke about it.

There was not another sound from the two, little roosters.

At last!

Months went by. Confirmation. I was a wizard.

One day in October, the landlord’s son-in-law said to me: “There hasn’t been a sound from them since.”

I tried not to look self-conscious.

Said he: “Last May, one day, I was looking at them, and I said, in my own mind: ‘If we lose tenants on account of you, I’ll wring your necks.’ They never crowed again.”

Again it’s the Principle of Uncertainty, by which the path of a particle cannot be foretold, and by which there’s no knowing who stopped the roosters. Well, we’re both—or one of us is—very inferior in matters of magic, according to a story that is told of Madame Blavatsky. The little bird of a cuckoo clock annoyed her. Said she: “Damn that bird! Shut up!” The cuckoo never spoke again.

By the cultivation of wild talents, I do not mean only the learning of the secret of the man they could not drown, and having the advantage of that ability, at times of shipwreck—of the man they could not confine, so that enormous would be the relief from the messiahs of the legislatures, if nobody could be locked up for failure to keep track of all their laws—of the woman they could not touch, so that there could be no more automobile accidents—of myself and the roosters—though just here my landlord’s son-in-law will read scornfully—so that all radios can be stopped immediately after breakfast, and all tenors and sopranos forever—

Only the secret of burning mansions in England; appearances of wounds on bodies, or of pictures on hailstones; bodies on benches of a Harlem park; strange explosions, and forced landings of aeroplanes, and the case of Lizzie Borden—

Those are only specializations. If all are only different manifestations of one force, or radioactivity, transmediumization, or whatever, that is the subject for research and experiment that may develop—

New triumphs and new disasters; happiness and miseries—a new era, in which people will think back, with contempt, or with horror, at our times, unless they start to think a little more keenly of their own affairs.

In the presence of a poltergeist girl, who, so far as is now knowable, exerts no force, objects move.

But this is a book of no marvels.

In the presence of certain substances, which so far as is now knowable, exert no force, other substances move, or transmute into very different substances.

This is a common phenomenon, to which the chemists have given the name
catalysis.

All around are wild talents, and it occurs to nobody to try to cultivate them, except as expressions of personal feelings, or as freaks for which to charge admission. I conceive of powers and the uses of human powers that will someday transcend the stunts of music halls and séances and sideshows, as public utilities have passed beyond the toy stages of their origins. Sometimes I tend to thinking constructively—or batteries of witches teleported to Nicaragua, where speedily they cut a canal by dissolving trees and rocks—the tumults of floods, and then magic by which they cannot touch houses—cyclones that smash villages, and then cannot push feathers. But also I think that there is nothing in this subject that is more reasonable than is the Taboo that is preventing, or delaying, development. I mean that semi-enlightenment that so earnestly, and with such keen, one-sided foresight fought to suppress gunpowder and the printing press and the discovery of America. With the advantages of practical witchcraft would come criminal enormities. Of course they would be somewhat adapted to. But I’d not like to have it thought that I am only an altruist, or of the humble mental development of a Utopian, who advocates something, as a blessing, without awareness of it as also a curse. Every folly, futility, and source of corruption of today, if a change from affairs primordial, was at one time preached as cure and salvation by some messiah or another. One reason why I never pray for anything is that I’m afraid I might get it.