The Tupelo journal. (Tupelo, Miss.) 1876-1924, 1906-09-28
MENTAL TELEGRAPH
BY ITS USE LOST PARTS OF MA.
CHINERY WERE FOUND.
Civil Engineer Has Remarkable Ex'
perience While Building Road in
lndia-Developed to Won
derful Degree.

MANY persons deride the idea of
mental telegraphy, but If they would
spend year or two in India, as l did,
Sand work shoulder to shoulder with
the educated East Indians they would
cease their soothing" said G. R. Scrug-
ham, organization manager for the
international policyholders' committee,
and one of the most prominent cleo
trio railway men in Ohio. 1T is won
derful to what a degree of perfection
those people over there have devel-
oped the faculty of wireless communl-
cation without the aid of any instru-
ment other than their sensitive brains.
They were using the wireless system
over there centuries before Marconl
and De Forest were born.
Let me give you an instance In
point, and it is only one OF many
which changed me from skeptic to
convert. Several years ago, when l
was in active work as civil engineer
with railroad construction as my spe-
cialty, / went to India to assist In
building line into the interior. We
came to a heading where the use OF
rock drills, of the tripod style you see
in use here in New York in making
excavations was absolutely necessary.
This had been foreseen in the surveys
made in advance of the construction
work, and we had ordered battery
of those steam drills. Finally we
worked right up to the place where
we needed them, and we could not do
much more effective work until we
got them.
Il was in the office one day, Tuning
and fretting about those drills and
wondering whether the steamship up
on which they should have arrived
had reached Calcutta and whether the
drills were in her cargo. l asked one
of my assistants if he had heard any
thing from Calcutta, which was many
miles away. He replied in the mega
tive He had not even received ad-
vices that the steamship had arrived.
l was turning away in discomfort
when one of the East Indians who had
been assigned by the government to
assist us, stepped forward. He was
educated highly and spoke English flu
emily.
Excuse me- he said, were you
asking if the steamship had arrived"
"'Yes-we are expecting several
steam drills on her and cannot do
much more work until we get them,
l replied.
"'She arrived this morning and the
drills have been unloaded from her,
said the East Indian. They are on the
pier now, but something seems to be
missing from them. Are they funny
looking things that stand on three
legs?
81 told him they were and showed
to him a picture of one of the drills.
He looked at it carefully and then re-
piled:
Eyes; they're what are in those
long packages on the pier, but that
part is missing from each of them
He indicated an essential part in
the body of the drill as that which
was missing from each. At first l was
inclined to regard what he said as
joke, but his seriousness impressed
me. l instructed the operator to wire
to Calcutta and ascertain what the
condition was. In a little while he
received a reply which corroborated
everything the East Indian had told
me, and, worst of all, that when the
cases were opened it was discovered
RI T11icC;no That n1oanf
long delay, because the drills were
worthless without the missing parts.
In my dilemma l called the East In
dian to me and said:
"'Can you tell me whether those
missing parts were shipped with the
drills?'
Without hesitation he replied:
Eyes; but they have not been
taken from the ship
"'Where are they?' I inquired.
"'They are away down in the hold,
beneath a lot of heavy bales which are
going to be taken to another port, he
said, with perfectly serious face.
Il summoned the telegraph opera
tor and instructed him to wire our
representative in Calcutta what the
East Indian had told me. With that
information 1 gave instructions that
the bales in the hold should be re-
moved and the missing drill parts got
from beneath them. Within three
hours | received return message
that my orders had been carried out
and that the missing parts had been
found exactly where the East Indian
said they were concealed. In few
days thereafter the drills reached us
and were put at work cutting into the
rock in the heading. After that expert
ence, and others like it, do you won
der that l believe in mental telegraphy
as it is practiced in India by the edu-
Gated East Indians?"