The Ogden standard. [volume], December 11, 1915, 4 P.M. CITY EDITION, MAGAZINE SECTION, Image 17

About The Ogden standard. [volume] (Ogden City, Utah) 1913-1920

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I i magazine section i THE OGDEM STANDARD 1 I
1 ' . H ;
I OGDEN, UTAH, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1915. " ' HH
A , ' L H
v , I 1 1 1 1 I 111
' J lr
: !
; ' Tho oulja board Is coming back
; : tnto favor and has been taken up
I quit extensively by society women
v In New York, Boston, Chicago, St.
Louis and various parts of the coun
try. ) Perhaps tho most remarkable le-
Iccnt experiences with it arc those of
Mrs, John Curran of St, Louis. Sho
has been in communication, she says,
with the spirit of Patience Worth, a
woman beliovcd to have existed in
lhe Colonial days and who not only
has sent philosophical axioms that
are characteristic of tho Puritans
but even has gone to tho extent of
sending outlines of plays and es
says and has gone extensively Into
the dictation of poetry. More than
300,000 words havo been received
from this supposed spirit in ihieo
years.
Patience Worth talks In a strange
; t English that is archaic and not
J 1 found in the best authors and yet
j may have at one time been the
tongue of Inhabitants of this coun
try. Long condemned by religious as
the direct agency of satan and by
i skeptics as the toy of the supcrsti-
tlous, the ouija board is being ro
f stored to its own former popularity
I through the curiosity of society wo
men. In many parts of the country oo
clety women are devoting their timo
to "communicating" with spirits in
tho other world.
Many sti'ango results of such com
munications are reported and a ao
t clety woman is unhappy indeed if
she hasn't at least one good spirit
i in tho world of mystery who is al
B) ways ready to send a message at her
m, control's pleasure.
Ill Even in staid St. Louis where so-
lit! cIety women arc supposed to bo
! 1$ very conservative, tho ouija board
il has been, restored to favor whilo
HA
-
in New York and In various
cities of the east it is quite the
"rage."
In St Louis Mrs. John H. Curran
has gotten into touch with one Pa
tience Worth of Spiritland and has
transcribed more than 300,000 words
thiough the ouija board, all of which
will be published at some future
date.
Patience Worth is believed from
her peculiar choice of words and
phraseology to be a Colonial dame,
who has been wandering about In
space for a long time, burning to
send her messages back to the mun
dane sphere yet finding no source of
communication until Mrs. Curran
bought a ouija board and com
menced taking messages.
THROUGH
CURIOSITY.
The board Avas purchased through
curiosity. There is something fas
cinating about the tales told of tho
little board, whether they be- true
or false. It is known that a num
ber of people have asked the board
to tell them in what land their dead
iclativcs liugercd and were shocked
considerable- when the naughty Utile
hoard spelled out a word starling
A ith an H and ending with an L.
Many have thought that the words
written bv the board were the result
of the mental influences oC the per
son opeiating it. while others have
credited it with supernatural pow
ers. In tho use of tho board at the Cur
ran home, Mrs. Curran always is one
of two whose "hands are on the
board. The latter is arranged on
two wheels and has a pencil at the
end. As the vibration of the fingers
of tho holders develops the pencil
moves over a sheet of paper and
prints numerals o'r letters of the al
phabet, While Mrs. Curran operates tho
board her husband transcribes tho
message as sho reads it to him.
The "Patience Worth" matter be
gan to be transcribed in June, 1913.
Since that time Mrs. Curran has
made public as the products of Pa
tience Worth a six-act play entitled
"Red Wing." a novel called "Tclka"
and numerous verses, essays and
bits of philosiphy.
The quaint language of these writ
ings has probably attracted more at
tention than their literary merit, tho
latter being a matter of some dis
cussion. They are in an antique
language, not the English of Chau
cer, Spenser or any other well-
known classic English writer, but
possibly more like the common
speech of the English people of an
early day.
It is known to travelers that an
antique, almost archaic, form of
English still Is spoken in remote
communities of England. Theie are
districts of England whose inhabi
tants have great difficulty in under
standing or in making themselves
understood by the coster-cockney
class.
Mrs. Curran, however, says sho
has no personal acquaintance with
such speech and that she has not
gone farther in her study of classic
English than other well read per
sons. The language used' by Patience
Worth, she explains, is as strange
to her as It is to others.
Mrs. Curran recently gave to the
Fapyrus Club of St. Louis some of
her messages from Patience Worth,
one of them being a special messago
that Patience had sent the club. It
read:
PATIENCE WORTH'S
MESSAGE.
Good Dames and SIrrahs At the
board thou hast sat and cat of
earth's grow. Aye, and now do ye
cat o' the grow thou knowest not the
looting place of. Yea, thou shalt
hark unto the woid o' MEN, and jet
they do to prate o' DAME. Ayca,
and methlnks 'tis a word aspoke'
amany, that be not the word that
hid 'pon the lung, lest the Dame be
offended I
Aye, then come thou and ait 'bout
the board, and thine cars shall hark
tmto the words o' me, and thou shalt
sec the cloth o' me the hands o' the
loves o' mc did to fashion out for
me. Ayea, I then shall sit me meek,
and thread mc up a bobbins full for
the next o' put.
Ayca, and 'tis frocked that I shall
to be, and nay dame shall see!
Awoe! Nay, this be a piddlc-put-tlng,
good folk!
Athin (within) thy heart shall set
the me o' me at thy go ahence. And
'tis nhope I be 'tis a loving wampth
'twill find. And so dost thou to
smile, 'tis Bweets and love 1 cast
thee. And doth thy heart to shut it
up, lo, then shall I to knock till thou
dost leave me in.
A night o' cheer. A heart o' love!
A God's wish o' loving 'pon thy day.
Anight! Anight!
HOW IT
BEGAN.
Mrs. Curran told her audience of
her first experiences with tho ouija
WW
w !
board and of the puzzling messages
received. Later sho used the'board
together with Mrs Emily Grant
Hutchings and began to receive
sentences which foimcd maxims and
philosophical paragrapbs. Then
came the announcement:
"Many moons ago I lived. Patience
Worth, my namo. If thou shalt live
then so shall I. I make my bread by
thy hearth"
The word "bread." Mrs. Currau
later learned, lefeired to the literary
products embodied in the messages.
Mrs. Curran said she would not at
tempt to say whelhcr Patience
Worth was a spirit, but spoko of ,ber
as a beautiful personality, which had
come to seem not a mystery but a
fellowship.
She said the messages came to her
in daylight as well as at night and
that there is no trance connected
with them.
"The words come in sort o a
rhythm," Mrs. Curran explained,
"and I record just what comes
whether I understand it or not."
Pnticuce has been tested by rnoro
than 200 persons and her messages
have never varied. A professor from
the University of Indiana visltod
Mrs. Cunan to investigate her com
munication with Patience Worth.
William Marion' Reedy, editor of
the Mirror, and Caspar Yost, editor
of a SL Louis newspaper, became ac
quainted with Patience Worth and
both declaic her genuine. Yost has
described her as a "spinster of un
certain age; a writer, but a poet by
preference. White the average spirit
stalks dismal and wailing lugubri
ously through the flnito world, Pa
tience comes with a laugh, Yost said.
She remarks. ''I be no sorrj' singer,"
and proves it by many witticisms.
EDITOR
DESCRIBES HER.
Reedy calls Patience's doctrines
Pantelstic.
' He describes her as follows: "She
fs a little woman, dressed In gtaj;
with a little bonnet, ribbons coming
down and tied under her chin. There
are lines in her face, not the re
written wrinkles of the smiles or
her youth, but the results of ex
perience Her eyes are biown liico
autumn leaves after a rain. She Is
-between 45 and 50 years old, spright
ly, dainty, delicate.
"Sho has stood beside the stock
ade helping a good man load a gun,
while he defends the settlement
against the savage horde of In
dians." Reedy said the theory was ad
vanced that she was filled in an In
dian massacre and this question was
askcu of her. Sho intimated that
something of this sort had happened
to her and she was asked if she had
not been taken captive oy the In
dians. "Nay, something worse," was her
reply.
'.'She speaks an English almost
pure and undefiled," Reedy said of
her "There is an absence from it
of all the derivatives of France and
Rome, and sho rarely uses a word
of more than two syllables. Her an
swers are- diredt and almost invari
ably in parables. She has respect
for her interlocutor's intelligence."
Reedy said sho is not another
Sappho, or George Elliott, or Mrs.
Humphrey ward nor a Sara Teas
dale,' but rather echoes of all of thct
poets. He said theie runs a consist
ent character through her works and
in two years she has not gotten "out
of chaiactcr." Sho never has used a
modern word or expression and he
illustrated the seeming significance
of this by pointing out how difficult
it would be for a man trained In
Irish or negro dialect to make a 30
minute talk without breaking out of
the character.
"She has nothing lo tell, in my
opinion, "Reedy said, "but she com
mands my admiration and reverence.
She tells nothing- that we have not
heard from tho old masters and
bards."
"What of the divinity of Christ?"
Kcody at one time asked her through
the ouijd board. She answered, "He
bought thee of his loving."
"What of love?" he asked. "Tho
love there is but tho o'er drip of lovo
here" came the respou&c of tho
board.
"Describe tho place where you
are?" sho was asked. "Think you
"Patience Worth," Mythical
Character, Startles Literary
World With Her Quaint I
English In Essays, Plays and H
Novels Noted Writers Are H
Puzzled Over the Output of H
This Woman Supposed to H
Have i Lived 300 Years Ago H
there Is bottom or top; this is a
walless country."
"Can you do anything you want
over there 7" The answer was:
"When you put the will you put the
limit."
"Put" in Patience's vocabulary re
sponds to the modern verb "to do."
"Patience may be a second person
ality of Mrs. Curran," -Reedy sato.
"but she teaches a lovo that is
greater than we can conceive and
that death is the keeper of unknown
redemption."
LITTLE COLONIAL
DAME.
Mrs. Emily Hutchings, who -was
one of the first to receive 'with Mrs.
Curran the messages from Patlenco
Worth, said the first glimmering or
the quaint personality of the little
Colonial dame came in the maxim:
"A busy saw gathereth no rust."
One of the sentiments expressed
by Patience Worth is: "A blighted
bud may hold a sweeter message
than the lovllest flower; for God
hath kissed her wounded heart and
left a promise there."
Of the seances, Mrs. Curran says:
"I sit with a friend, our hands up
on the board, which I havo come to
believe is nothing more than a con
centrator. There is no trance. Ev
erything is quiet with the exception
of Patience Worth. The only
definite part is that while I put my
thoughts awhither, as Patience
would Bay, and immediately the sto
ries, poems, plays., parables, or
whatever her work for the sitting IH
may be, is shown to mo in tiny pic- JH
lures, beautiful and distinct a3 IH
though my eyes saw them.
"The characters move and speak H
and my hands fly over the letters jH
much too fast for me to anticipate- H
even one word. J
"I cannot account for the langu- jH
age. The words seem to be spoken ilH
to me. though I cannot 'say 1 hear llH
them In the sense that we hear tho iH
voice that speaks aloud to us. The H
words come m sort of a rhythm. I lH
am not familiar with old Euglish jH
and yet even the conversations -are H
in this archaic tongue." jH
Psychologists recently havetakcn ,H
up a" study of Mrs. Curran and tho M
Mvstcrlous Patience Worth. Some jM
believe that Paticnco Worth is Mrs. jH
Curran's sub-conscious self. Others jH
have departed in doubt and without jH
expressing an opinion. iH
The ouija board has been con- JH
demned by various religious bodies, iH
but society is taking it up beside il
these prohibitions. The Catholic tl
church has condemned it as a super-
stitlous practice. H
Other religious bodies havo u- H
clarcd that the devil is in hc boaid H
and employs it to send his messages. H
Whatever the truth may be, so-
ciety has gone into the mystery of lH
tho board, not so much with the ob- iH
jeet of definitely deciding if it really jH
is the medium of communication H
with the other world but to,gratlfy H
society's chief attribute Curiosity. H