current science and current politics." He will leave no problems to be solved.

The Modest Modernist in education works rapidly. In the spare time of one semester he gathers experimental data proving conclusively that what intelligent people from the time of Plato down have been supposing to be true is absolutely without foundation. He goes to a pedagogical convention whose purpose is "to sum up and apply everything that is being developed with regard to any phase of the nature of childhood and youth and means and methods of education." He never thinks how droll it is that a similar convention will be held again next year.

The Modest Modernist is quite sure that he is doing a great deal. He is still more sure that he is going to do a great deal more before very long. He asks you if you had the advantages of any of these ideas when you went to school. You say, no, you'll have to confess that you didn't. The Modest Modernist looks grave. He expected as much. You can see that he is thinking that you are not really educated, or else that you are a mutation and don't count.

The Modest Modernist in education reminds us of Cubism, Futurism, Vorticism, Intimism, Synchromism, and whatever is to follow. "It now remains only for teachers to teach. The era of real education begins with the present day."

The rapid thinking of the Modest Modernist has been applied also to civics, morals, and religion. But the unpracticed, static mind must not undertake to comprehend all at once too many of the deep things of Modest Modernism. Of these matters, O Polycles, we shall speak at another time.

A

THAT PATIENCE WORTH BABY

YEAR ago in our "No. 9" we gave some account

of the strange experiences of Mrs. John H. Curran of St. Louis with the Ouija board. These up to that time have now become so generally known that we give but a brief summary of them, as introductory to some later ones.

In July, 1913, after Mrs. Curran and a friend had been occasionally playing with the Ouija board during a couple of weeks without eliciting anything of significance, suddenly from a clear sky came:

"Many moons ago, I lived. Again I come. Patience Worth my name.'

Apparently their hands left the board a moment in astonishment: for it continued:

"Wait. I would speak with thee. If thou shalt live, then so shall I. I make my bread by thy hearth. Good friends, let us be merrie. The time for work is past. Let the tabbie drowse and blink her wisdom to the fire log."

"How quaint that is!" one of the women exclaimed. "Good mother wisdom is too harsh for thee," said the board, "and thou shouldst love her only as a foster mother."

Thus began an intimate association with "Patience Worth" that still continues, and a series of communications that in vigor and literary quality are hardly paralleled in the scant imaginative literature quoted in the chronicles of Psychical Research, and in volume and structure entirely without precedent. The language is sometimes pretty close to that of the period (the middle of the seventeenth century) in which Patience professes to have had her mortal experience; and sometimes her speech is much later, even of our period, which corresponds with her claim of being conscious through all the intervening time. We use the personal pronoun only provisionally.

Her habitual language in conversation is of the early period, and shows great familiarity with the dress, household utensils, and ways of the time.

It was soon apparent that Mrs. Curran was the sole agent of transmission (?): for the communications came only when she was at the board, and it mattered not who else sat with her, but a second pair of hands seemed needed as a mechanical counterweight. During the first months Mrs. Curran and Mrs. Hutchings alone sat, but gradually the circle widened, and others assisted Mrs. Curran. Sometimes as many as five or six would sit with her in the course of an evening. At first her mother recorded most of the communications, but Mr. Curran gradually took her place.

Previous to our account of a year ago, these records had accumulated until they filled five volumes of large typewritten pages. Two of the volumes consisted of conversations, short poems, allegories and other minor matter; one contained a long medieval drama, Redwing; another, a mediæval tale, Telka; and one, the part then delivered of A Sorry Tale which relates in biblical language the biography of the impenitent thief on the cross. Very little of this matter is the frequent trash of involuntary writing. Nearly all of it is to be taken seriously as literature. Much of it is literature of a high order. Authorities are always shy, and wisely so, of publicly endorsing questionable matters: so we are not yet free to quote some authoritative confirmation of this opinion which has come to us. All this is in spite of the fact that previous to the appearance of Patience Worth, Mrs. Curran had shown no literary aptitudes or ambitions, and written nothing beyond letters, which, however, were better letters than people usually write.

For some time it has been the practice of the Currans to sit at the board three evenings a week, and to have friends in on at least one of them. The ostensible Patience has become quite familiar with some of these friends, and

continues to take the lead in the evenings' conversations. Telka has been finished, and The Sorry Tale has appeared to be nearing its close, and as an offset to its dominant gloom, A Merry Tale of Merry England in Patience's time has been begun and made some progress.

Both the stories have been delayed, however, by an Occurrence which has excited the liveliest interest in the growing circle of believers that "Patience" is what she professes to be, and given to many others a delightful opportunity for ridicule. Before that opportunity is unreservedly embraced, however, a few things seem to need accounting for.

We condense the Currans' record of their recent experience, not always bothering to distinguish their words from our own, but generally printing extracts in the small type, and our comments in the larger.

On Wednesday evening, August 16, 1916, the Currans started their usual tri-weekly sitting, expecting Patience to continue The Sorry Tale. Instead of doing that, however, she began by saying that she was going to tell them something "close, yea close." This intensely and skilfully emotional start of the experience may appear later as one of the things to be accounted for unless Patience and the subsequent proceedings are admitted to be what they purport.

She continued:

Ye see, I be a weaver of cloths. [Her usual metaphor for her activities with the Ouija board. Ed.] And this cloth be not for him who hath. Yea, and thee and thee and thee do have o' a full some measure. Look, look, a time a-later the purse shall fatten, and ye shall seek ye a one, a wee bit, one who hath not. Aye, this be close, close.

The Currans and their friends report that it dawned upon them at once that Patience wanted them to adopt a baby. If it did, they were so quick to seize Patience's meaning as to suggest the aid of a little telepathy,

or a feeling already alive in the heart of Mrs. Curran, who had been married several years without a child. But she declares that the idea had never entered her head, and was entirely alien to their domestic accommodations and habits. The idea being broached, however, whatever its source, progress was easy and rapid. In condensing the Currans' story, we shall naturally retain many of the expressions which imply their faith that the whole proceeding was what it purports to be. As they waited for farther instructions, Patience said:

Thou shalt deliver o' the goods o' me [proceeds of publishing her communications? Ed.] unto the hands o' this one, and shall speak its name "Patience Worth."

They were rather dumbfounded that she wanted to give it her own name, but agreed, and she went on:

Look, look ye, this one shall be a one that needeth sore, mind ye! And look ye, look ye. For all this wee hand plucketh from out thy heart, even so shall it be filled.

They say that they then began to realize that it was no joke, but the real thing; and as this was the first thing Patience had ever asked from them in return for all her goodness to them, they accepted the situation philosophically, and she went on with her instructions:

Ye shall whisper sweets unto this bit; e'en at in the sma' ear that heareth not the full wordin'.

Yea and unto this one thou shalt speak o' a fairie damie who ministereth; and o' Him who hath sent her.

They wondered at her wanting a girl instead of a boy, which is another thing to be accounted for: for it goes to preclude the desire originating with Mrs. Curran: she already had a stepdaughter, and women are apt to prefer boys, as she says she did. Patience answered:

"Ye see, a man laddie hath man's cunnin', but the damies, ah, I be aknowin'!"...

She then went on to lay the responsibility on all of the