A Parlor Game

Everyone is familiar with the ancestral guessing games wherein somebody leaves the room, etc. But it is seldom that the world is favored by an account of such a game played by so illustrious persons as Arthur James Balfour and Professor Gilbert Murray, famed Greek scholar. Yet such a game took place last week in London. After dinner, Professor Murray was invited to leave the drawing room. The other guests saw to it that he went completely through the next room, 36 ft. long, and into the empty dining room beyond, where the servants were clearing off the table. Lord Balfour, who remained in the drawing room, then whispered to the other guests: "I am thinking of Robert Walpole talking Latin to George III."

Someone let out an halloo for Professor Murray. He came in and guessed: "I don't think I shall get it exactly. Dr. Johnson met George III in the King's library, but I am sure he is talking Latin to him, which he would not do. I don't think I shall get it right. Wait, I have nearly got it. Eighteenth century, somebody talking Latin to a King." He had to try it again. The idea was "Queen Victoria's remark 'I'll be good' when she learned of her succession to the throne."

Mr. Murray "guessed": "It was something in a book. No, it is in a picture. It is news coming to Queen Victoria. She is to be Queen." Another attempt. The subject was "the murder of Thomas Becket." Mr. Murray was recalled for a third time: "It is somebody being murdered in a church. My first thought is that it has something to do with Bolshevists, but it isn't Russian. I should think it is Thomas Becket."

Thereupon the learned Earl of Balfour leaned back in his chair and declared : "No extension of our knowledge of sight and hearing is going to throw the smallest light on these strange phenomena."

All this might have been an ordinary parlor game with two star performers. But no indeed, it was not. It took place at a meeting of the Psychical Research Society in a private residence. The "strange phenomena" to which Lord Balfour referred purported to be no mere trick, but thought transference or telepathy.