Mystic London Part 15

Where was Sibyl?

"She would be with us directly," the gentleman said, varying the proceedings by picking his teeth in the interim.

She _was_ with us in a minute, and never, I suppose, did picturesque antic.i.p.ations more suddenly collapse and come to grief than mine. I had pictured Sibyl a bright ethereal being, and the realization of my ideal weighed twelve stone, if an ounce. She was a big, fleshy, large-boned woman of an utterly uncertain age, not without considerable good-nature in her extensive features; but the pervading idea that you had when you looked at Sibyl was that there was _too much of her_. I could not help thinking of the husband who said he did not like a big wife: he preferred two small ones; and then again I fell into wonderment as to whether the man who was still engaged with his dental apparatus was Sibyl's husband or papa.

I told them I was anxious to test Sibyl's powers; and, with a few pa.s.ses from his fat dumpy hands, the man soon put her to sleep. It looked to me like an after-dinner nap, but I was told it was magnetic. It might have been. By the way, I had unmistakable evidence from my olfactory organ that Sibyl _had_ been eating onions.

I had provided myself with two locks of hair, as I had heard that "psychometry" was among Sibyl's qualifications. I handed her the first, and she immediately proceeded to describe a series of tableaux which appeared to pa.s.s through her mind. She kept handling the lock of hair, and said, "The person to whom this belongs is ill--weak," which was true enough, but might, I thought, be a shot. I should mention, however, that it was quite impossible Sibyl could know me. She had not even heard my name. She then described a bedroom, with some person--she could not see what person--lying in bed, and a lady in a blue dress bending over her.

This, again, I thought might flow out as a deduction from her premises of the hair belonging to an invalid. The blue dress was correct enough, but still so little special as to be a very possible coincidence. She then, however, startled me by saying, "I notice this, that on the table by the bedside, where the bottles of medicine are standing, milk has been spilt--a large quant.i.ty--and not wiped up." This was a trivial detail, not known to me at the time, but confirmed on subsequent inquiry.

She then pa.s.sed on to describe a second tableau, where the same person in the blue dress was in a room _all hung over with plates_, along with a gentleman whom she described very accurately. He was the occupant of the house where the patient lay, and, having a hobby for old china, had turned his dining-room into a sort of crockery shop by hanging it all over with the delf.

This was curious enough, though not very convincing. It seemed as though the influence of this person who had given me the hair was stronger than that of the hair itself. With the second lock of hair we failed utterly.

She said that also came from a sick person, but a person not sick with the same disease as the other. She was quite positive they came from different people, and asked me to feel the difference of texture. I am sorry, for Sibyl's sake, to say they both came from the same person, and were cut at the same time, though from different parts of the head, which made one look silkier than the other.

As a test of Sibyl's clairvoyance, this was not very satisfactory. She read the inscription on a card when her eyes were bandaged, pressing it to her forehead; but then olden experiences in the way of blindman's buff convince me that it is very difficult to say when a person is properly blinded.

Altogether, then, I never quite got over my previous disappointment at Sibyl's bulk. Had she been pretty and frizzle-headed like Miss Annie Eva Fay, or like Miss Showers or Miss Florence Cook, I might have been disposed to make more of her coincidences and to wink at her failures.

We _are_ so liable to be led away by our feelings in these matters.

Sibyl was large, had eaten onions, and would have been improved if she had brushed her hair, and so I am afraid I rather grudged the somewhat exorbitant fee which the fat-handed man--not Sibyl--took and pocketed in an interval of his dental pursuit, and I pa.s.sed out from that suburban lodging, none of us, I fancy, very well satisfied with one another. I have an idea I unconsciously expressed my inner feelings of disappointment with Sibyl and something stronger in reference to her male companion.

CHAPTER XLV.

SPIRITUALISTS AND CONJURERS.

"How it's done" is the question which, in the words of Dr. Lynn, we want to settle with reference to his own or kindred performances, and, still more, in the production of the phenomena known as spiritual. I have spent some years of my existence in a hitherto vain endeavour to solve the latter problem; and the farther I go, the more the mystery seems to deepen. Of late, the two opposed parties, the Spiritualists and the Conjurers, have definitely entered the arena, and declared war to the knife. Each claims to be Moses, and denounces the others as mere magicians. Mr. Maskelyne holds a dark seance, professing to expose the spiritualistic ones; Dr. Lynn brandishes against them his strong right arm upon which is written in letters all of blood the name of one's deceased grandmother, while, in return, Dr. s.e.xton exposes the conjurers, and spoils one's enjoyment of a hitherto enjoyable evening, by showing "how it's done"--how the name of one's departed relative is forged and painted early in the afternoon, instead of "coming out" on the spot--and in spots--like measles or nettle-rash (as we feel defunct relations ought to come) or walking in and out of the corded box at pleasure, and even going so far as to give the address of the clever mechanist down a by-street near Notting-hill Gate, who will make the mysterious packing case to order in return for a somewhat heavy "consideration."

I accepted Dr. Lynn's invitation to be present on his "opening night;"

and wondered, in pa.s.sing, why everybody should not make their cards of invitation such thorough works of art as his. Now I am going to do even-handed justice all the way round; and I must say that Dr. Lynn's experiment of fastening his attendant to a sort of penitential stool with copper wire, surrounded by scrutineers from the audience, and then making the man's coat come off, and a ring pa.s.s over his arm, behind a simple rug held in front of him, is quite as wonderful as anything I have ever witnessed at a seance. It has the great advantage of being done in the light, instead of, as in Mr. Fay's case, in darkness, and without a cabinet. In fact, I have no idea how it's done; though I have no doubt the first time I see Dr. s.e.xton he will point to something unsatisfactory in the bolts to which that doorkeeper is fastened, and give me the addresses of the ironmonger who will sell me some like them, or the tailor who will manufacture me a swallow tail coat with an imperceptible slit down the back. Then again, I have, as I said, seen young Mr. s.e.xton go in and out of the corded box, and I know how that's done; but Dr. Lynn's man goes into three, one inside the other. Well, I can understand that if Dr. s.e.xton's theory be correct, it may perhaps be as easy to get into a "nest" of three as into one box; but how, in the name of nature--or art--does the nautical gentleman get out of the double sack in which he is tied? I cannot bring myself to print what Dr.

s.e.xton's theory of the box is, because it appears to be such a wanton cruelty to "expose" things when people go to the Egyptian Hall on purpose to be mystified. I remember how the fact of having seen Dr.

s.e.xton do the trick of reading the names in the hat spoilt my enjoyment of Dr. Lynn's experiment. He really appeared quite bungling when I knew all he was about. He did not, on this occasion, produce the letters on his arm; but I saw he could quite easily have done so, though the doing it would have been no sort of reproduction of Mr. Forster's manifestation, who showed you the name of some relative when you had looked in on him quite unexpectedly. I can quite understand how it is that the spiritualists, who hold these matters to be sacred as revelation itself--in fact, to be revelation itself, are shocked at seeing their convictions denounced as trickery and "exposed" on a public platform; but I confess I do not quite see how they can adopt the tu quoque principle, and "expose" Dr. Lynn and Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke as tricksters, because they do not pretend to be anything else. It would have been fatal if the magicians had "found out" Moses, and they wisely refrained from trying; but it would have served no purpose for Moses to "find out" the magicians: and it strikes me Moses would have deemed it very infra dig. to make the attempt. The two things stand on quite different grounds; and I cannot help thinking that the spiritualists unwisely concede a point when they accept the challenge of the conjurers. I am quite aware that the theory of the spiritualists makes of many a conjurer a medium malgre lui, and says he ought to come out in his true colours. It was so Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke were originally introduced to a London public at the Crystal Palace under the auspices of an eminent spiritualist; but it really appears to me that such an a.s.sertion amounts to begging the question; for I doubt whether it would not "pay" quite as well to come out boldly in Mr. Williams's or Mr. Morse's line as in that of Dr. Lynn or Mr. Maskelyne.

In a lengthened confab which I once had with Mr. Maskelyne himself after one of his performances, he told me that by constant attendance at the seances of the Davenports he found out how that was all done; and, being a working watchmaker, was able soon to get the necessary apparatus constructed. I must again be just, and state that while the cabinet seance of Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke seems to me the exact counterpart of the Davenports', their dark seance fails to reproduce that of the spiritualists as the performances of Professor Pepper himself. True, this latter gentleman does all his exposes on a platform which is sacred against all intrusion, and Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke a.s.sume to allow as much examination as the spiritualists. But I myself, who have seen Mr. Home float around Mr. S. C. Hall's drawing-room, and handled him above and below in transitu, quite fail to discern any reproduction of that phenomenon in the heavy, lumbering levitation of the lady by means of the scissors-like apparatus behind her, which we are only privileged to behold from the stalls. The dancing walking-stick is as palpably made terpsich.o.r.ean by a string as the chairs I have seen cross Mr. Hall's drawing-room in full light were not drawn by strings, for I was able to look closely at them; and I do not know how that was done.

Fresh from Dr. Lynn's really marvellous performances of recent times, and with Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke's equally clever tricks in my mind's eye, though not quite so recently, I still am bold to say I believe there are still six of one to half-a-dozen of the other. If the conjurers reproduce the spiritual phenomena in some instances, the spiritualists distance the conjurers in others. I speak of phenomena only. The magicians produced many of the same phenomena as Moses; but, even so, if we are orthodox we must believe the source of such manifestations to have been utterly different.

But I am, as I said, wise in my generation, and stick to phenomena. I venture to think the conjurers unwise in irritating the spiritualists, who are a growing body, by placarding their entertainment as exposes, even though such announcements may "draw" the non-spiritual public. I suppose, however, they understand the science of advertising better than I do; but I feel sure the spiritualists are unwise to follow their example, because they have got nothing to expose. Dr. Lynn or Messrs.

Maskelyne and Cooke are as much pleased as conscientious mediums would be shocked at being proved clever tricksters. The only folks who are injured by being told "how it's done," are the British Public, who pay their five shillings to be mystified at the Egyptian Hall, just as the spiritualists do in Lamb's Conduit Street.

If it is to come to a race for the championship--and seriously it would seem that, having begun, the two parties are bound to continue the strife--one can scarcely imagine anything more attractive than such a combined display of talent. Dr. Lynn gets lots of people to come and see "How it's done"--the gentleman with the mandolin is well worth a visit, and I cannot guess how he does it--while Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke must really be making a good thing of it. Mr. Williams's seances are decidedly attractive (and how he does it has puzzled me for years, as I said), nor does the Progressive Inst.i.tute seem to decrease in interest; but let us only picture the fascination of a long evening where Pepper's Ghost should be pitted against John King, Mrs. Guppy and Messrs.

Maskelyne and Cooke's lady float in compet.i.tion round the room or even in from the suburbs, while the Davenports and Dr. Lynn's man should wriggle out of or into iron rings and their own dress coats! Until some such contest takes place, the public mind will probably gravitate towards the conjurers rather than the spiritualists, and that through the actually suicidal policy of the latter; because while the spiritualists of necessity can show no visible source of their manifestations, one of their own rank devotes himself to aiding the conjurers by showing in reference to their tricks, "How it's done." It would have been wiser, surely, to stand upon dignity, and in a truly conservative spirit (is it too late even now to rea.s.sume it?), say, "These men are mediums, but it does not suit their pockets to confess it."

Well, they are signs of the times. London loves to be mystified, and would only have one instead of manifold methods to be so if the spiritualists and conjurers were to strike hands, and reduce us all to the dead level of pure faith or relentless reason and cold common sense!

CHAPTER XLVI.

PROS AND CONS OF SPIRITUALISM.

It has been repeatedly urged upon me on previous occasions, and also during the progress of these sheets through the press, that I should make a clean breast of my own belief or disbelief in spiritualism; that besides being descriptive, I should go one step beyond a mere catalogue of phenomena, and, to some extent at least, theorize on this mysterious and generally proscribed subject.

Let me say at the outset that against the proscription of this, or indeed any topic which does not offend against morals, I would at the very outset protest as the height of unwisdom. Thus to taboo a subject is at once to lend it a fact.i.tious interest, and more than half to endorse its truth: and I believe modern spiritualism has been very generally treated in this way. Whether truth has gained by such indiscriminate condemnation and prejudgment is, I think, greatly open to question.

For myself, I have, from the first, steadily refused to look upon spiritualism in this bugbear fashion. The thing was either true or false--or, more probably still, partly true and partly false: and I must bring to bear on the discovery of its truth or falsehood, just the same critical faculties that I should employ on any other problem of common life. That, I fancy, is no transcendental view of the matter; but just the plain common sense way of going to work. It was, at all events, right or wrong, the method I adopted to get at such results as I proceed to make public. I declined to be scared from the study either by Bogey or my esteemed friend Mrs. Grundy, but went at it just in the calm Baconian inductive method in which I should have commenced any other study or pursuit.

What I want to do is to tabulate these results in the same order as that in which they occurred to me; and here I am met by a preliminary difficulty, not incidental to this subject only, but common to any narrative where we have to take a retrospective glance over a number of years. We are apt to view the subject from our present standpoint; and I shall try to avoid this by quoting, whenever I can, what I published, or committed to writing in the course of my investigations. I shall not cull from others, because I want to make this purely a personal narrative.

Let me add, too, I do not in the least expect persons to believe what I say. Some, I think, will regard me as a harmless (_if_ a harmless) lunatic, on account of certain statements I may have to make. Others will consider the whole thing as decidedly unorthodox and "wrong." For each of these issues I am prepared. I would not have believed any one else if they had, prior to my experience, told me what I am going to tell them here; and therefore I do not expect them to believe me. All I hope to do is to interest persons sufficiently in the subject to induce them to look into the matter on their own account; for verily I believe, as a distinguished spiritualist once said to me, that this thing is either an important truth or else one of the biggest swindles ever palmed off upon humanity.

One word more, and I proceed to my narrative. Of the three aspects under which it is possible to view spiritualism, the scientific, the theological, and the social, I shall not touch at all on the first since I am not a scientific man; shall only glance at the second, because this is not the place for a theological discussion. I shall confine myself to the third, therefore, which I call the social aspect; looking at the subject as a question of the day, the truth about which we are as much interested in solving as any other political or social question, but the investigation of which need not make us get excited and angry and call one another bad names. I venture to hope that by these means I may manage to compile a not unedifying or uninteresting narrative, though our subject be withal somewhat a ponderous one.

In order then to cover the preliminary part of my narrative, and to let my readers somewhat into the state of my own mind, when I had looked at the subject for several years, I will quote some extracts from a paper I read before a society of spiritualists at the Beethoven Rooms a few years ago under the t.i.tle "Am I a Spiritualist?" I may mention that the a.s.sembly was divided, and never decided whether I was or not, and what is more, I do not think they are quite decided to the present day. I am a patient investigator still; but I really do not feel it necessary to issue perpetual bulletins as to the state of my convictions.

Taking as my thesis, then, the question, Am I a Spiritualist? it will certainly appear, at first sight, I said, that the person best qualified to answer this question is precisely the person who puts it; but a little consideration will, I think, show that the term "Spiritualist" is one of such wide and somewhat elastic meaning--in fact, that the word varies so widely according to the persons who use it--that the question may really be asked of one's self without involving an inconsistency.

When persons ask me, as they often do, with a look of unmitigated horror, "Is it possible that you, a clergyman, are a spiritualist?" I am often inclined to answer, "Yes, madam,"--(for it is generally a lady who puts the question in that particular shape)--"I _am_ a spiritualist, and precisely because I am a clergyman. I have had to express more than once my unfeigned a.s.sent and consent to the Common Prayer Book, and the Thirty Nine Articles; and that involves belief in the inspiration of all the Bible (except the Apocrypha), and the whole of that (_not_ excepting the Apocrypha) is spiritual, or spiritualistic (if you prefer the term) from beginning to end; and therefore it is not _in spite of_ my being a clergyman, but _because_ I am a clergyman that I am such a confirmed spiritualist."

I could answer thus, only I do not, simply because to do so would be dishonest. I know my questioner is using the word in an utterly different sense from what I have thought proper to suppose. Besides such an answer would only lead to argumentation, and the very form of the question shows me the person who puts it has made up her mind on this, as probably on most other subjects; and when a feminine mind is once made up (others than ladies have feminine minds on these subjects) it is very little use trying to alter it. I never do. I administer some orthodox verbal sedative, and change the subject. But even accepting the term in the way I know it is meant to be used--say, for instance, as it comes from the mouth of some conservative old gentleman, or supposed scientific authority--one's medical man to wit--"Do you believe in spiritualism?" meaning "Are you such an a.s.s as to believe in table-turning, and rapping, and all that kind of nonsense?"--even so, the question would admit of being answered by another question; though I rarely enter so far on the matter with those whose minds are evidently quite comfortably made up on the matter. It is such a pity to interfere with cherished opinions. I have found out that there are Athanasian creeds in science as well as in theology; and really, whilst they form recognised formulae in the one or the other, it is positively lost labour to go running one's head against them. The question I want to ask--not the gentle apothecaries, but my readers--is, What do you mean by believing in spiritualism? Many of the phenomena of spiritualism I cannot but believe, if I am to take my five senses as my guides in this as in other matters, and quite setting aside any credence I may give to respectable testimony. When, however, I pa.s.s from facts to theories, and am asked to account for those facts, then I hesitate. There are some here, I know, who will say that the spiritualist like the lady who hesitates is lost--who think me as heterodox for doing so, as the inflexible old ladies and the omniscient apothecaries did on account of my even deigning to look into the evidence of such phenomena. I feel really that I have set myself up like an animated ninepin to be knocked down by the first thorough-going spiritualist who cares to bowl at me.

But whatever else they think of me--sceptical though they deem me on subjects where perhaps you are, many of you, a little p.r.o.ne to dogmatize--I claim the character at least of an honest sceptic. I do not altogether disavow the t.i.tle, but I understand it to mean "inquirer." I confess myself, after long years of perfectly unbia.s.sed inquiry, still an investigator--a sceptic. It is the fashion to abuse St. Thomas because he sought sensible proofs on a subject which it was certainly most important to have satisfactorily cleared up. I never could read the words addressed to him at all in the light of a rebuke--"Because thou hast seen thou hast believed." The Church of England treats the doubt of St. Thomas as permitted by G.o.d "for the more confirmation of the faith;"

and I feel sure that professed spiritualists will not be so inconsistent as to censure any man for examining long and carefully matters which they believe to admit of demonstration. I heard the most eloquent of their advocates say, when comparing spiritual with credal conviction, "Our motto no longer is 'I believe,' but 'I know.'" Belief may be instantaneous, but knowledge will be gradual; and so it is that, standing at a certain fixed point in very many years' study of spiritualism, I pause, and--so to say, empanelling a jury--ask the question it seems I ought to answer at others' asking--Am I a Spiritualist?

One word of apology further before entering on the details of the matter. It will be inevitable that the first personal p.r.o.noun shall recur frequently in the course of this paper, and that so the paper shall seem egotistical. The very question itself sounds so. I am not vain enough to suppose that it matters much to anybody here whether I am a spiritualist or not, except in so far as I may be in any sense a representative man. I believe I am. That is, I believe, nay, am sure, that a great many persons go as far as I do, and stop where I stop.

There is a largish body of investigators, I believe, dangling there, like Mahomet's coffin, between heaven and earth, and it would be a charity to land them somewhere. Of the clerical mind, I do _not_ claim to be a representative, because the clerical mind, qua clerical, has made up itself that the phenomena in question are diabolical. Of course if I accepted this theory my question would be utterly irrelevant, and I should claim a place among the spiritualists at once. The diabolical people not only accept the phenomena, but admit their spiritual origin, and, more than this, identify the spirits. They are in point of fact the most thorough-going spiritualists of all.

In sketching their creed, I have mentioned the three stages through which most minds must go in this matter. Some few, indeed, take them by intuition, but most minds have to plod patiently along the path of inquiry, as I have done. The first stage is acceptance of the phenomena, the second the a.s.signment of those phenomena to spirits as their source, the third is identification of these spirits.

1. On the first part of my subject I shall venture to speak with some boldness. I am not a philosopher, therefore I can afford to do so. I shall suppose my five senses to serve my purposes of observation, as they would be supposed to serve me if I were giving evidence in a court of justice. If I saw a table move, I shall say _it did_ move, not "it appeared to move." I do this in my capacity of a commonplace instead of a philosophical investigator; and I must say, if I were, as I supposed myself just now, in the witness-box, with a good browbeating counsel cross-examining me on this point, I would rather have to defend the position of the commonplace inquirer than the philosopher, pledged to defend the philosophy of the last fifty years, and bound hand and foot by his philosophic Athanasian Creed, and I don't know how many articles, more than thirty-nine, I fancy.

In the latter part of the year 1856, or beginning of 1857, then, I was residing in Paris, that lively capital being full of Mr. Home's doings at the Tuileries. At that time I knew nothing, even of table-turning. I listened to the stories of Mr. Home and the Emperor as mere canards. I never stopped to question whether the matter were true, because I in my omniscience knew it to be impossible. It is this phase of my experience that makes me so unwilling to argue with the omniscient people now; it is such a waste of time. At this period my brother came to visit me, and he had either been present himself or knew persons who had been present at certain seances at Mr. Rymer's. He seemed staggered, if not convinced, by what he had heard or seen, and this staggered me too, for he was not exactly a gullible person and certainly by no means "spiritual." I was staggered, I own, but then I was omniscient, and so I did what is always safest, laughed at the matter. He suggested that we should try experiments instead of laughing, and, not being a philosopher, I consented. We sat at the little round table in our tiny salon, which soon began to turn, then answered questions, and finally told us that one of the three, viz., my wife, was a medium, and consequently we could receive communications. I went to a side table and wrote a question as to the source of the manifestations, keeping it concealed from those at the table, and not rejoining them myself. The answer spelt out by them was--"We, the spirits of the departed, are permitted thus to appear to men." Again I wrote--"What object is served by your doing so?" The answer was--"It may make men believe in G.o.d." I have said I am not a philosopher, therefore I do not mind confessing that I collapsed. I struck my flag at once as to the _impossibility_ of the matter. At the same time I did not--as I know many ardent spiritualists will think I ought--at once swallow the whole thing, theory and all. I should not have believed if a man had told me this; was it to be expected that I should believe a table? Honesty is my best policy; and I had better, therefore, say I was never so utterly knocked over by anything that occurred to me in my life before or since. My visage of utter, blank astonishment is a joke against me to this hour.

We pursued the inquiry almost nightly during the remainder of my stay in Paris--up to late in the summer of 1857 that is--and also on our return to England; but, strangely as it seems to me now, considering how we began, we did it more as a pastime than anything else. The only time we were serious was when my wife and I sat alone, as we often did. Of course when I came to inquire at all into the matter I was met by Faraday's theory of involuntary muscular action, and also with the doctrine of unconscious cerebration--I was quite ready to accept either.

My own position, as far as I can recall it, then was that the spiritual agency was "not proven." My wife had great reluctance against admitting the spiritual theory. I was simply pa.s.sive; but two circ.u.mstances seemed to me to militate against the theories I have mentioned: (1.) The table we used for communicating was a little gimcrack French affair, the top of which spun round on the slightest provocation, and no force whatever, not even a philosopher's, applied to the surface would do more than spin the top round; but when the table turned, _it turned bodily, legs and all_. (2.) As to that ponderously difficult theory of unconscious cerebration communicated by involuntary muscular action, whenever we asked any questions as to the future, we were instantly checked, and told it was better that the future should not be revealed to us. I was anxious about a matter in connexion with an election to an appointment in England, and we asked some questions as to what form the proceedings would take. The reply was that certain candidates would be selected from the main body, and the election made from these. I thought I had caught the table in an inconsistency, and said--"There now you _have_ told us something about the future." It immediately replied--"No, I have not; the matter is already settled in the minds of the examiners." Whence came that answer? Certainly not from our minds, for it took us both by surprise. I could multiply a hundredfold instances of this kind, but, of course, to educated spiritualists these are mere A B C matters; whilst non-spiritualists would only accept them on the evidence of their own senses. I do not mean to say they actually question the facts to the extent of doubting one's veracity, or else nearly all testimony must go for nothing; but there is in these matters always room for doubting whether the narrator has not been deceived; and, moreover, even if accepted at secondhand, I doubt whether facts so accepted ever become, as it were, a.s.similated, so as to have any practical effect.

My facts at all events came at first-hand. I suppose a man need not be considered credulous for believing in his own wife, and nearly all these phenomena were produced by my wife's mediumship. It was not until late in the year 1865 or early in 1866, that I ever sat with a professional medium. My wife, moreover, from first to last, has steadily disbelieved the spirit theory, so that she has not laid herself open to suspicion of being prejudiced in favour of the subject. She has been emphatically an involuntary, nay, even unwilling agent in these matters.

During these eight or nine years the communications were generally given by automatic writing, though sometimes still by tilting of the table. I am very much tempted to quote two, which linger in my recollection, princ.i.p.ally, I believe, because they were so destructive of the cerebration theory, besides being curious in themselves. I kept no records until a later date. At present all rests on tradition. Each of these cases occurred in presence of myself, my wife, and a pupil. In the former, he was a young Englishman, who had lived a great deal abroad, whose mother was a Catholic and father a Protestant. He had been brought up in the latter faith; and when I desired him to ask a mental question, he asked, in French--that being the language most familiar to him--"Is the Catholic or the Protestant religion the true one?" Mark you, he never articulated this, or gave the least hint that he was asking in French. He did it in fact, spontaneously. My wife immediately wrote "Ta mere est Catholique"--so far, in French, with difficulty, and then breaking off into English, "Respect her faith."

In the second instance, my pupil was a French youth, a Catholic, who was living in my house, but used to go to his priest frequently to be prepared for his first communion. One day when we were writing, this youth asked who the communicating spirit was, and received in reply the name of Louis D----. The name was totally unknown to us; but to our surprise when the youth came back from his visit to the priest that day he informed us that his reverend instructor had dwelt strongly on the virtues of Louis D----. Seeing the boy look amazed as the name which had just been given at our seance was p.r.o.nounced, the priest inquired the reason; and, on being informed, of course directed his catechumen never to join in such diablerie again.

The impression, then, left on my mind by these years of desultory dabbling with--rather than study of--the subject, was decidedly that the phenomena of spiritualism were genuine. Looking at the matter from my present standpoint and frame of mind, it seems to me incredible that I should have thought so little of the source of the phenomena. It was, as I said, that I was then dabbling with, not studying, the subject.

But even without advancing beyond this rudimentary stage, I saw a very serious result produced. I saw men who literally believed in nothing, and who entered on this pursuit in a spirit of levity, suddenly staggered with what appeared to afford even possibility of demonstration of another world, and the continued existence of the spirit after bodily death. I believe a great many persons who have never felt doubt themselves are unaware of the extent to which doubt prevails amongst young men especially; and I have seen many instances of this doubt being--if not removed--shaken to its very foundation by their witnessing the phenomena of spiritualism. "Yes, but did it make good consistent Christians of them?" asks one of my excellent simple-minded objectors.