The Sorry Tale: A Story of the Time of Christ (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Sorry Tale: A Story of the Time of ChristThe story of the invisible author of The Sorry Tale was told in the book entitled Patience Worth: a Psychic Mystery, It seems sufficient here to present a brief statement of the facts in relation to that phenomenal personality. She came to Mrs. John H. Curran, of St. Louis, Missouri, one evening in the summer of 1913, as Mrs. Curran sat with a ouija board on her knees, and introduced herself as Patience Worth, with the declaration that she had lived long ago and now had come again. From that time she has poured out a continuous stream of communications, conversational or literary, including hundreds of poems, numerous parables and allegories, several short stories, a drama, and two novels. All of her compositions are distinguished by the archaic form of her language, which is, however, not the same in any two of her larger works, there being important dialectal variations that make each one quite different from the others in this particular, and the archaic quality as well as the dialectal form varies as much in her minor productions and in her conversations. Yet upon all of them is the impress of a single creative personality. Each and every one of them bears the imprint of Patience Worth.Mrs. Curran, through whom all of this matter has come, is a young woman of normal disposition and temperament, intelligent and vivacious. She receives the communications with the aid of the mechanical device known as the ouija board as a recording instrument. There is no trance or any abnormal mental state. She sits down with the ouija board as she might sit down to a typewriter, and the receipt of the communications begins with no more ceremony than a typist would observe. Mrs. Curran has had no experience in literary composition and has made no study of literature, ancient or modern. Nor, it may be added, has she made any study of the history, the religions, or the social customs of the period of this s...