e small men with great, I have myself cheated shamelessly. In
the early days of the Sanders Theater at Harvard, I once had charge of
a heart on the physiology of which Professor Newell Martin was giving a
popular lecture. This heart, which belonged to a turtle, supported an
index-straw which threw a moving shadow, greatly enlarged, upon the
screen, while the heart pulsated. When certain nerves were stimulated,
the lecturer said, the heart would act in certain ways which he
described. But the poor heart was too far gone and, although it
stopped duly when the nerve of arrest was excited, that was the final
end of its life's tether. Presiding over the performance, I was
terrified at the fiasco, and found myself suddenly acting like one of
those military geniuses who on the field of battle convert disaster
into victory. There was no time for deliberation; so, with my
forefinger under a part of the straw that cast no shadow, I found
myself impulsively and automatically imitating the rhythmical movements
which my colleague had prophesied the heart would undergo. I kept the
experiment from failing; and not only saved my colleague (and the
turtle) from a humiliation that but for my presence of mind would have
been their lot, but I established in the audience the true view of the
subject. The lecturer was stating this; and the misconduct of one
half-dead specimen of heart ought not to destroy the impression of his
words. "There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood," is a maxim
which I have heard ascribed to a former venerated President of Harvard.
The heart's failure would have been misunderstood by the audience and
given the lie to the lecturer. It was hard enough to make them
understand the subject anyhow; so that even now as I write in cool
blood I am tempted to think that I acted quite correctly. I was acting
for the _larger_ truth, at any rate, however automatically; and my
sense of this was probably what prevented the more pedantic and literal
part of my conscience from checking the action of my sympathetic
finger. To this day the memory of that critical emergency has made me
feel charitable towards all mediums who make phenomena come in one way
when they won't come easily in another. On the principles of the S. P.
R., my conduct on that one occasion ought to discredit everything I
ever do, everything, for example, I may write in this article,--a
manifestly unjust conclusion.

Fraud, conscious or unconsc