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of our prairies and white people; each wearing his familiar dress and some even carrying their familiar weapons. One evening, the figure of a Khurd, a man whom Madame Blavatsky had known in Khurdistan. stepped from the closet, clad in his tall cap, high boots and picturesque clothes. In the shawl twisted about his waist were thrust a curved sword and other small-arms. His hands were empty, but after salaaming my friend in his native fashion, lo! his right hand held a twelve-foot spear which bore below the steel head a tuft of feathers Now, supposing this farmer-medium; to have been ever so much a cheat, whence, in that secluded hamlet, did he procure this Kurdish dress, the belt, arms and spear at a moment’s notice—for Madame Blavatsky had but just arrived at Chittenden, and neither I nor any one else knew who she was, nor whence she had come. All my experiences there were described by me, first in a series of letters to a New York journal, and afterwards in book-form,* and I must refer the curious to that record for details, both as to what was seen and what precautions I took against deception. Two suspicions have doubtless; occurred to your minis while I have been speaking—(a) that some confederate or confederates got access to the medium through the closet-window, or dresses and dolls were passed up to him from below through a trap or sliding-panel. Of course, they would occur to any one with the least ingenuity of thought. They occurred to me, and this is what I did. I procured a ladder and on the outside of the house tacked a piece of mosquito-net over the entire window, sash frame and all, sealing the tack-heads with wax, and stamping each with my signet ring. This effectually prevented any nonsense from that quarter. And then calling to my help an architect and a clever Yankee inventor and mechanician, with those gentlemen I made a minute practical examination of the chimney, the floor, the platform, the rooms below, and the lumber-loft overhead. We were all perfectly satisfied that if there was any trickery in the case it was done by William Eddy himself without confederacy, and that if he used theatrical dresses or properties, he must carry them in with him. In the little narrow hole of a closet there was neither a candle, mirror, brush, wig, clothes, water-basin, towel, cosmetic, nor any other of the actor’s paraphernalia, nor, to speak the truth, had the poor farmer the money to buy them with. He took no fees for his stances, and visitors were charged only a very small sum for their board and lodging. I have sat smoking with him in his kitchen until it was time for the seance to begin, gone with him to the upper chamber, examined the closet before he entered it, searched his person, and then seen the self same wonderful figures come out as usual in their various dresses. I think I may claim to have proceeded cautiously, for Mr. A. R. Wallace, F.R.G.S., quoted and eulogized my book in his recent controversy with Professor W. B. Carpenter. Carpenter himself sent to America to enquire into my character for veracity and publicly admitted it to be unimpeached. Professor Wagner of St. Petersburg reviewed the work in a special pamphlet, in which he affirms that I fulfilled every requirement of scientific research, and three European psychological societies elected me Honorary Member. It should also be noted that four years of very responsible and intricate examinations on behalf of the War Department during our late American War—the proofs of which service have been shown by me to the Indian authorities—qualified me to conduct this inquiry with at least a tolerable certainty that I would not be imposed upon. Having then seen all that has now been outlined to you, will you wonder that I should have been thoroughly convinced of the reality of a large group of psychic phenomena, that science helplessly tries to offer some explanation for? And can you be surprised that whatever man of science has, since 1848, seriously and patiently investigated modern Spiritualism, has become a convert, no matter what may have been his religious belief or professional bias?
The mention of religion leads me to a certain fact. While the Prostestant Church has in our time ever resolutely denied the reality of such manifestations of occult agencies, the Church of Rome has always admitted them to be true. In her rubrics there are special forms of exorcism, and when Miss Laura Edmonds, the gifted daughter of the honoured American jurist above mentioned, and one of the most remarkable mediums of this modern movement, united herself with the Catholic Church, her confessor, a Paulist Brother of New York, drove out her obsessing “devils” in due form after—as he told me—a terrific struggle. Mediumship was anathematised by the late Pope himself, as a dangerous device of the Evil One, and the faithful warned <... continues on page 11-13 >
*People from the other World, Hartford, Conn., 1875, American Publishing Co.