s of this celebrated case,
but had not referred to it, so far as I can remember, for months or
years. I know of no train of thought which led me to speak of it on that
particular day. I had never alluded to it before in that company, nor
had I ever spoken of it with Mr. Rathbone.

I told this story over our teacups. Among the company at the table is a
young English girl. She seemed to be amused by the story. "Fancy!" she
said,--"how very very odd!" "It was a striking and curious coincidence,"
said the professor who was with us at the table. "As remarkable as
two teaspoons in one saucer," was the comment of a college youth who
happened to be one of the company. But the member of our circle whom the
reader will hereafter know as Number Seven, began stirring his tea in
a nervous sort of way, and I knew that he was getting ready to say
something about the case. An ingenious man he is, with a brain like a
tinder-box, its contents catching at any spark that is flying about. I
always like to hear what he says when his tinder brain has a spark fall
into it. It does not follow that because he is often wrong he may not
sometimes be right, for he is no fool. He treated my narrative very
seriously.

The reader need not be startled at the new terms he introduces. Indeed,
I am not quite sure that some thinking people will not adopt his view
of the matter, which seems to have a degree of plausibility as he states
and illustrates it.

"The impulse which led you to tell that story passed directly from the
letter, which came charged from the cells of the cerebral battery of
your correspondent. The distance at which the action took place [the
letter was left on a shelf twenty-four feet from the place where I was
sitting] shows this charge to have been of notable intensity.

"Brain action through space without material symbolism, such as speech,
expression, etc., is analogous to electrical induction. Charge the prime
conductor of an electrical machine, and a gold-leaf electrometer, far
off from it, will at once be disturbed. Electricity, as we all know, can
be stored and transported as if it were a measurable fluid.

"Your incident is a typical example of cerebral induction from a source
containing stored cerebricity. I use this word, not to be found in
my dictionaries, as expressing the brain-cell power corresponding to
electricity. Think how long it was before we had attained any real
conception of the laws that govern the wonderful