The Death-Blow to Spiritualism Part 10

"A pleasant debate followed. Mr. Pet.i.t proposed to refer the pet.i.tion of the Spiritualists to three thousand clergymen. Mr. Weller proposed to refer it to the Committee on Foreign Relations, as it might be necessary to inquire whether or not when Americans leave this world they lose their citizenship. Mr. Mason proposed that it should be left to the Committee on Military affairs. General Shields himself said he had thought of proposing to refer the pet.i.tion to the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, because there may be a possibility of establishing a spiritual telegraph between the material and spiritual worlds. The pet.i.tion was finally, by a decisive vote, laid upon the table. The table did not, as we learn, tip in indignation at this summary disposal of Spiritualism in the Senate, by which we must infer that the 'spirits,' if there were any in the Senate at that time, endorsed its action and considered the same all right."

I might here enter into a description of the various forms of modern spiritualistic representations. It would be a waste of time. I wish, however, to allude more particularly just here to one of the "evidences"

which Mrs. Ann Leah Underhill apparently values most highly in connection with the claim of inherent and hereditary "mediumistic" powers residing in certain individuals and families. This is the somewhat noted so-called exhibition of "mediumistic" ability by a child of Mrs. Kate Fox Jencken, a babe, only about six weeks old at the time that it began. It is needless to go into all the details of the wonders attributed to little "Ferdie"

Jencken, now a fine lad of fifteen, which rest wholly upon the testimony of persons who were interested in magnifying them to the greatest extent.

Shadowy forms are said to have appeared to his nurse while she was watching him. At three months he was said to have articulated "Mamma!" But the cap of the climax is the feat he is said to have performed when not six months old. As he was restless one day, his mother gave him a piece of blotting paper and a pencil to play with. He made some marks on the paper and dropped it. When his mother picked it up she exclaimed to Mrs.

Underhill, the only other person present:

"See here, he was written something."

It is pretended that on one side of the blotting paper was the message:

"Grandma is here.

"BOYSIE."

Later and up to the close of his first year, he was said to write other messages, but all under like circ.u.mstances.

Mrs. Underhill lays great stress upon these "manifestations" in two portions of her work.

The simple and only comment to be made upon them is, that Mrs. Catherine Fox Jencken now declares that they were fraudulent. The messages were in every case written upon the paper before it was placed in the baby's hands, the mother knowing, of course, that a child a few months old would not retain anything very long in its grasp, that those who chanced to be present would not observe, unless previously warned, whether it was wholly blank or not, and that the picking up of the paper from the floor would give ample opportunity to turn undermost the side on which the child may have really scratched some unmeaning marks.

So much for that and kindred marvels of infant "mediumship."

"Ferdie" Jencken, so far as is known, has never, since that early period of his existence, exhibited any "mediumistic power."

The character of the communications purporting to come from the "spirit-land" has always been such as to condemn them, even if nothing else would, in the mind of any one gifted with a clear judgment. How many have read with a bitter sneer those pretended words from "the great ones of the earth," which would place them, if they had really written or uttered them in the unseen life, on a mere level with the emptiest-headed mortals whom we know in this!

"Alas!" exclaims Nathaniel Hawthorne in "The Blythedale Romance,"

"methinks we have fallen on an evil age! If these phenomena have not humbug at the bottom, so much the worse for us. What can they indicate in a spiritual way, except that the soul of man is descending to a lower point that it has ever reached while incarnate? We are pursuing a downward course in the eternal march, and thus bring ourselves into the same range with beings whom death--in requital of their gross and evil lives--has degraded below humanity. To hold intercourse with spirits of this order, we must stoop and grovel in some elements more vile than earthly dust.

These goblins, if they exist at all, are but the shadows of past mortality--mere refuse stuff, adjudged unworthy of the eternal world, and as the most favorable supposition, dwindling gradually into nothingness.

The less we have to say to them, the better, lest we share their fate."

CHAPTER XII.

A SCIENTIFIC JURY.

At one period of her strange career, Mrs. Kane entered the service of Mr.

Henry Seybert, the famous and wealthy spiritualist of Philadelphia, who proposed to found what he called a "Spiritual Mansion."

Mrs. Kane's salary and appointments were liberal, and her situation was one which would have met the fondest wishes of many noted and ambitious "mediums." She was the high priestess of this new temple of the unseen ent.i.ties, and as such she was honored and treated with most exalted respect.

The conditions of the "Spiritual Mansion" were in all respects favorable to the intercourse of dwellers in the flesh with those who inhabit the realm of shadows, if such there had been.

The taking up of her abode in this singular inst.i.tution was one of her earliest steps, after the throwing off of her deep weeds of mourning, worn in memory of the untimely termination of her dream of happiness. It was then that she found that the professional life of a "medium" was the only refuge left her from the cruel pursuit of poverty and want.

But her stay in the "Spiritual Mansion" was short. She had thought that the quiet existence afforded her there would be preferable to the daily and distasteful practice of public "mediumship," which she must have resorted to at once, had she not accepted the proposition of Mr. Seybert.

But the hypocrisy unconsciously required of her by him, while of a more fantastic description, was altogether too much for her to endure. Her intense hatred of her profession as a "medium" appeared in a strong light to those who were then in her confidence.

Mrs. Kane, at the "Spiritual Mansion," not only produced pretended messages from the departed friends of her patron, but also from nearly every martyr and saint in the Protestant calendar, and from the famous sages and rulers of old. But her imposture stopped short of actual sacrilege. Beyond that line she never has gone.

When it came to transmitting messages demanded by the living of the apostles and fathers of the church, she revolted against this mania for the supernatural and the impossible, and she refused to continue longer the instrument of pure religious insanity.

She declined to produce "spirit rappings," as emanating from St. Paul, St.

Peter, Elijah and the angel Gabriel.

It has often been said that Henry Seybert had an undoubted vein of madness in his brain. Mrs. Kane herself so declares. I believe the same is true of every person (not a knave at heart) who persistently, after reason and conscientious research have demonstrated the truth of the charges against Spiritualism, still refuses to be convinced.

There was, however, a method in the madness of Seybert. Mrs. Kane has always been most careful not to make any positive a.s.severation of the claims of Spiritualism. Her guarded and, in some measure, candid course, no doubt tended very far towards influencing him to desire an honest and thorough investigation of the so-called spiritualistic phenomena, to be conducted according to the most rigid scientific methods. In his will, he left provision for the founding of a chair of philosophy in the University of Pennsylvania, with the careful stipulation that a certain portion of the income to be derived from the foundation should be devoted to the investigation of "all systems of morals, religion or philosophy which a.s.sume to represent the truth; and particularly of modern Spiritualism."

Thus this legacy gave birth to the celebrated "Seybert Commission," whose labors have resulted in the most valuable expose, prior to this present publication, of the fraudulent methods of Spiritualism--"the tricks of the trade," as it were--which has ever been made.

Even the investigation of the remarkable "rappings," produced by Mrs.

Kane, in which the Commission engaged--while less successful than any other branch of their researches--went so far as fully to convince them that these alleged manifestations were entirely fraudulent, and that they were produced by physical action on the part of the "medium," probably by or in the vicinity of her feet.

This they were unable to prove, however, by any use of their five senses, which they were permitted to make. Mrs. Kane gave them no such chance of examination, on this occasion, as had been vouchsafed to the Buffalo doctors some thirty-six years before, almost with the result of throttling Spiritualism in its infancy. No; she was much too clever for that. She would greatly have preferred, to being ignominiously found out, to make a public and unreserved confession.

The fact is that no other scientific committee ever enjoyed the facilities of close observation of the production of the "raps" which were accorded to the "Buffalo doctors," and that, up to this final day, when Mrs. Kane herself tells the truth, there has been not one single positive exposure of the primitive fraud of the "toe-knockings." Conjectures, it is true, have groped in that direction, time and again--but they never have done more than to grope.

The members of the "Seybert Commission" were extremely eager to obtain sittings with Mrs. Kane, and were successful at an early stage of their studies in doing so. Mr. Horace Howard Furness of Philadelphia was acting chairman of the Commission a good part of the time, and as such he wrote to Mrs. Kane in the following very urgent manner:

"222 WEST WASHINGTON SQUARE.

"DEAR MRS. KANE:

"I wrote to you some ten days ago, but, since I have not heard from you, fear that my letter has miscarried, and will therefore repeat it.

"I am anxious, very anxious, that the 'Seybert Commission,' of which I am the chairman, should have an opportunity of investigating the 'Rappings.' Will you, therefore, appoint some day and hour, at your earliest convenience, when I can visit you in New York and make arrangements with you personally?

"I sincerely trust that your summer has been healthful and peaceful, and beg to subscribe myself

"Yours respectfully, "HORACE HOWARD FURNESS.

"22nd October, 1884."

Mrs. Kane became the guest of Mr. Furness at his house, and there produced the "rappings" at two seances which were full of important significance.

The first was on the 5th of November, 1884, in the evening. The company consisted of Dr. William Pepper and his wife, Dr. Joseph Leidy, Dr. George A. Koeing, Prof. Robert Ellis Thompson, Mr. Horace Howard Furness, Mr.

George S. Fullerton, Mr. Coleman Sellers, all, excepting the lady, members of the Commission, and Mr. George S. Pepper, Miss Logan, and the "medium." All seated themselves around an open dining-table, Mrs. Kane at one end and Mr. Sellers at the other. The report of the Commission says:

"The medium sat with her feet partly under the table, and consequently concealed from most of those present--her feet were hidden also by her dress."

After the usual preliminaries of an introduction to denizens of the "spirit land," the soul of Henry Seybert was announced. He declared through the "medium" that he knew the names of the members of the Commission, and particularly of the one who was addressing him. Mr.

Sellers, who happened to be this person, requested the spirit to spell his name by the aid of a written alphabet, each letter of which was pointed to in turn, the letter intended by the "spirit" being indicated by three "raps." The result was that the name spelled out was the following:

"CHARLES CERI!"