MISCELLANEOUS NOTES

[The Theosophist, Vol. I, No. 7, April, 1880, pp. 169, 174]

It is a rather singular fact, which hitherto seems to have escaped the notice alike of Ireland’s friends and foes, and to have been left to the acute observation of Puck, to discover that many—if not all—of the sources of that country’s distress and troubles may be indexed under the letter P. Thus we have Poverty, Pigs, and Potatoes; Priests and Popery; Protestants, Peelers, and Population; Potheen, Politics, and Pugnacity; Patriotism, Parnell and St. Patrick, and finally Pat himself. Even to America their fatal P. follows the sons of Erin, but there turns up as the initial of the genial and laughter-loving—Puck.
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A most interesting and instructive letter has been addressed to the Society by a respectable physician in England, in which advice is asked for the treatment of a gentleman who, since attending some Spiritualistic “circles” to witness the strange phenomenon of “Materialization,” has been obsessed by an evil influence or “bad spirit,” despite his efforts to throw it off. The case is so important that it will be specially described in next month’s Theosophist.