Word: planters
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...ground in a sculpturesque attitude of repose. Except for his long-nailed right hand cupped over the top of a cloth-draped pole, there apparently was nothing to keep him from falling. Yet he maintained the horizontal for a good four minutes, according to a South India tea planter named P. T. Plunkett, who wrote an enthralled account of the seance to the Illustrated London News. Common theories that the trick is done by crowd suggestion had to be scrapped. Even the ablest exponent of Yoga cannot hypnotize a camera...
...When Planter Plunkett was invited to a seance in the walled compound of his friend Pat Dove, he took along a camera and films. Long before Mr. Plunkett saw the Yogi, he could hear the monotonous roll of tom-toms. Coolies working in the adjacent field heard it too, and more than a hundred of them crept into the 80-by-80 ft. inclosure. Subbayah Pullavar, a gaunt, wiry Yogi, told Mr. Plunkett he had been "levitating" for 20 years, that his family had been doing it for hundreds. Mr. Plunkett was impressed by Subbayah's "long hair hanging...
...Wrote Planter Plunkett: "The accompanying pictures tell the story of what happened, and I need only mention what steps we took to see that there were no illusions. . . . We . . . photographed every position of the performer and from every angle. . . . I held a long stick, and from outside the circle passed the end of it over and under and around Subbayah's body. . . . I can vouch for the fact that he had no support whatsoever except for resting one hand lightly on top of the cloth-covered stick. He remained horizontal in the air for about four minutes. The tent...
Lucian Fletcher was born in 1824 at Lynchburg, Va., where he passed a harum-scarum life which came to its first climax when he became involved in a disgraceful shooting scrape. To save his skin, his father, a well-to do planter, packed Son Lucian off over the Blue Ridge into what is now West Virginia. And to care for this handsome but troublesome son, Planter Fletcher sent along two slaves, Arch and Mary...
...Bontemps can sketch convincing characters, to use an overworked expression. His negroes are authentic, and so are his "planter" aristocrats. Ben, the loyal old slave, who betrays the insurgents; Melody, the mulatto mistress of the white rascals; Juba, the slave girl who is in love with the hero; Mr. Moseley Sheppard, Ben's master; Pharaoh, the other traitor--all these characters remain fixed in the memory some time after one has finished reading the book. Gabriel, the hero, who had pondered on the exploits of Toussainat L'Ouverture, the Haitian patriot, is not so forceful as a better novelist would...