Chapter 16

Let me strengthen this with the following additional illustration: Not long ago at a Materializing séance where I was, I think, unknown to everyone, certainly to the Medium, a Spirit emerged from the Cabinet, clad in flowing white robes, and advanced towards me with a wavering gait, which could be readily converted into a tottering walk, if I should perchance ask if it were my great-grandmother, or could be interpreted as the feeble incertitude of a first materialization, if I should perchance descend the family tree and ask for a more youthful scion. I arose as it approached and asked: 'Is this Rosamund?' 'Yes!' replied the Spirit, still wobbling a little, and in doubt whether to assume the role of youth or of old age. 'What! Fair Rosamund!' I exclaimed, throwing into my voice all the joy and buoyancy I could master. The hint to the Spirit was enough. All trace of senility vanished, and with equal joyousness she responded 'Yes, it's indeed Rosamund!' Then I went on, 'Dearest Rosamund, there's something I want so much to ask you. Do you remember who gave you that bowl just before you died?' Here Fair Rosamund nodded her head gaily and pointed her finger at me. 'Oh, no, no, no,' I said, 'you forget, Fair Rosamund, I wasn't there then. It was at Woodstock.' 'Oh, yes, yes,' she hastily rejoined, 'so it was; it was at Woodstock.' 'And it was Eleanor who offered you that bowl.' 'To be sure, I remember it now perfectly. It was Eleanor.' 'But Rosamund, Fair Rosamund, what made you drink that bowl? Had you no suspicions?' 'No, I had no suspicions.' And here she shook her head very sadly. 'Didn't you see what Eleanor had in her other hand?' 'No.' 'Ah, Fair Rosamund, I'm afraid she was a bad lot.' 'Indeed she was!' (with great emphasis). 'What cruel eyes she had!' 'Hadn't she, though!' 'How did she find you out?' 'I haven't an idea.' 'Ah, Fair Rosamund, do you remember how beautiful you were [here the Spirit simpered a little] after you were dead, and how the people came from far and near to look at you?' 'Yes,' said Fair Rosamund, 'I looked down on them all the while.' And here she glided back into the Cabinet.

It is not impossible that a Spiritualist might urge that the test which I apply is not a fair one--that guile will beget guile, that the Spirits meet me as I meet them.

But what other possible way have I of finding out who the Spirits are, when they do not tell me in advance, but by asking them? Whenever they have been announced to me as this or that Spirit, I invariably treat them as the Spirits of those whom they assert themselves to be, and, in my conclusions, am guided only by the pertinency of their answers to my questions. Whenever William Shakespeare appears to me (and, by the way, let me here parenthetically note, as throwing light on a vexed question, that Shakespeare in the Spirit-world 'favors' the Chandos Portrait, even to the two little white collar strings hanging down in front; his Spirit has visited me several times, and such was his garb when I saw him most distinctly); when, I repeat, Shakespeare materializes in the Cabinet for me, do I not always most reverently salute him, and does he not graciously nod to me--until I venture most humbly to ask him what the misprint, 'Vllorxa' in _Timon of Athens_ stands for, when he always slams the curtains in my face? (I meekly own that perhaps he is justified.) Have I ever failed in respectful homage to General Washington? Did I ever evince the slightest mistrust of Indian 'braves?'

When a Spirit comes out of the Cabinet especially to me, how am I to know, or to find out, who it is but by asking? If it be not the Spirit that I name, will it not, if it has a shred of honesty, set me right? What hinders it from telling me just who it is? If it be the Spirit of my great-grandmother, it can be surely no satisfaction to her, after all the bother of materialization, to hold converse with me as the Spirit of Sally in our Alley; and if she be, in every sense of the word, a 'spirity' old lady, she will instantly undeceive me, and 'let me know who I am talking to.' But why should I anticipate deceit at Spiritual hands? If William Shakespeare can appear to me, why not Fair Rosamund? Hereupon a Spiritualist may maintain that if the Spirit said she was Fair Rosamund, and displayed a familiarity with the incidents of that frail woman's life and death, she probably was Fair Rosamund. So be it. I yield, and will go farther, and hereafter find no more difficulty, than in her case, in Tennyson's Olivia, Marie St. Clair, and in the heroes and heroines of Scheherezade's Thousand and One Nights.

Although I have been thus thwarted at every turn in my investigations of Spiritualism, and found fraud where I had looked for honesty, and emptiness where I had hoped for fulness, I cannot think it right to pass a verdict, universal in its application, where far less than the universe of Spiritualism has been observed. My field of examination has been limited. There is an outlying region claimed by Spiritualists which I have not touched, and into which I would gladly enter, were there any prospect that I should meet with more success. I am too deeply imbued with the belief that we are such stuff as dreams are made on, to be unwilling to accept a few more shadows in my sleep. Unfortunately, in my experience, Dante's motto must be inscribed over an investigation of Spiritualism, and all hope must be abandoned by those who enter on it.

If the performances which I have witnessed are, after all, in their essence Spiritual, their mode of manifestation certainly places them only on the margin, the very outskirts of that realm of mystery which Spiritualism claims as its own. Spiritualism, pure and undefiled, if it mean anything at all, must be something far better than Slate Writing and Raps. These grosser physical manifestations can be but the mere ooze and scum cast up by the waves on the idle pebble, the waters of a heaven-lit sea, if it exist, must lie far out beyond.

The time is not far distant, I cannot but think, when the more elevated class of Spiritualists will cast loose from all these physical manifestations, which, even if they be proved genuine, are but little removed from Materialism, and eventually Materializing Séances, held on recurrent days, and at fixed hours, will become unknown.

HORACE HOWARD FURNESS.

INDEX.

Advertisement calling for mediums Appendix

Briggs, Mr. Fred., medium

Caffray, Mr. Joseph, medium

Flint, Mr. R.W., medium Fullerton, Prof. G.S., on the Slade-Zoellner investigation Furness, H.H., on materialization On mediumistic development On Slade

Independent slate writing

Kane, Mrs. Margaret Fox Keeler, Mr. P.L.O.A., medium Keeler, Mr. W.M., medium Kellar, Mr. Harry Knerr, Dr., on slate writing Koenig, Prof. Geo. A., about Mrs. Thayer

Leidy, Prof. Joseph, about Mrs. Thayer On mediums Letter from Mrs. Kane Letters, sealed Lord, Mrs. Maud E., medium

Mansfield, Dr. James Martin, Mrs. Eliza A., medium Martin, Mrs. Dr. Eleanor Materialization Mediumistic development

Names of commissioners

Patterson, Mrs. S.E., medium Photographs, spiritual Powell, Mr., medium Preface to the Appendix

Rappings, spirit Report of commission Rothermel, Dr.

Screen, use of by Keeler Sealed letters Slade, Dr. Henry, examined by Dr. Pepper letter from personal appearance examination of resolution of commission in regard to Slate writing Spirit rappings Spiritual photographs

Thayer, Mrs. M.B., medium Tricks of jugglers of Slade

Wells, Mrs., medium

Zoellner, Slade-, report on calling attention to in report