covery, which should first
have been placed under the protection of Science.

Ignorant and impatient shareholders thought only of their own material
advantages and dividends. They were Keely's first enemies, with their
sensational and premature advertisements of results and "_200
horse-power engines ready to patent, etc._," whilst the poor man was
still struggling with his tremendous problem--_i.e. to control_ the
force that he had discovered.

He attempted this first by confining it, but it blew everything to
atoms, and his own fingers off into the bargain!

Occultists--including Madame Blavatsky--always declared this latent
atomic energy was a _fact_, but that Keely would never be allowed to
demonstrate it, for the world was not yet prepared for such a tremendous
dynamic force to be let loose upon it, and that the most serious abuses
and disasters would follow, if once he succeeded in bringing his
discovery into practical working order.

They said it would be one of two things: either Keely's experiments in
this direction would continue to fail in the crucial point necessary,
_or_ that if he succeeded it would be his own death warrant, lest any
mischief should accrue from his making his methods public.

In view of these pronouncements, the succeeding events in Keely's career
are interesting.

_The Times_ (U.S.A.) of 6th March 1898 contained the following
announcement, under Keely's own signature:--

After twenty-five years' labour I have solved the problem of harnessing
the ether (which elsewhere he says is only the _medium_ of the force he
discovered) and adapting it to commercial uses. I have finished
experimenting.--My work is now completed.
(Signed) JOHN W. KEELY.

_On 18th November of this same year he died._

Within two months, his generous friend and patron, Mrs Blomfield Moore,
followed him to another sphere. Keely's final discovery of the means of
"harnessing the ether," as he calls it, was through holding it _in
rotation_ instead of in confinement.

I am allowed to quote an extract from a private letter with regard to
this statement.

"This instrument ruptures the luminous envelopes of the hydrogen
corpuscles, liberating the mysterious substance, which is put into such
high rotation that it forms its own wall of confinement at 420,000
revolutions per second, as calculated. Independent of this rotation in
the tube, where it is projected, it could be no