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23 Irving Place.
23 Irving Place.
{{Style S-HPB SB. HPB note|So much in defence of {{#tag:span|<span style="text-decoration:underline">phenomena</span>}}, as to whether these Spirits are {{#tag:span|<span style="text-decoration:underline">ghosts</span>}} is another question.
{{Style S-HPB SB. HPB note|So much in defence of <u>phenomena</u>, as to whether these Spirits are <u>ghosts</u> is another question.
H.P.B.}}
H.P.B.}}
{{Style P-HPB SB. Title wanted|Letter from an Idiotic Spiritualist}}
{{Style P-HPB SB. Title|Letter from an Idiotic Spiritualist<ref> The Daily Graphic, New York, Friday, November 13, 1974 - with supplement, p. 91.</ref>}}
{{Style P-HPB SB. Title wanted|Dr. Beard and the Eddys}}
[To The Editor of The {{Style S-Small capitals|Daily Graphic}}.]
I am one of those idiotic Spiritualists to whom Dr. Beard makes vague allusion in his very long and interesting letter to the {{Style S-Small capitals|Daily Graphic}} exposing the Eddys brother.
My indebtedness to Dr. Beard cannot easily express. Unconsciously I had long been stumbling through the world, and with my feeble intellect endeavoring to establish opinions for myself upon such of its perplexities as came within vision. Being a credulous ass, I naturally took in Spiritualism. I never had such a scientifically trained mind as our Creator has vouchsafed to Dr. Beard. My friends never had either. It was poor neighborhood. We couldn’t hire our thinking done for us, we had never then heard of Dr. Beard, and his generous missionary labor did not come in time to save me. I fell into the vortex of Spiritualism. I never got out, and I fear I never shall; for, don’t you see, according to dr. Beard’s showing, I am not open to reason; I am to the last degree credulous liar; I am a deliberate, unconscious liar, possibly amiable but entirely witless ass who can never flounder out of the quagmire I have fallen into except lean upon a man like Dr. Beard, whose trained mind has been devoted for years to scientific modes of thinking? And if I am such a fool in the phenomena of Spiritualism, how can I trust my assininity upon anything? Like Colonel Olcott, I presume some of the phenomena I have witnessed are as real to me as eating, drinking, or feeling. If I am mistaken in some of the wonders I have seen Spiritualism, I have no assurance that I met my live friend Jones yesterday; that I heard Talmage preach last Sunday; that I wear boots on my feet instead of my head; and possibly—indeed the thought creates a shudder—that Dr. Beard’s letter to The {{Style S-Small capitals|Daily Graphic}} is not actual fact, but may be mere whim of my imagination. If it were not additional and unnecessary proof of Dr. Beard’s assertions as to the hopeless imbecility of Spiritualists I could present narrative of experiences and suggest those of some others well vouched for, involving other phases of the great delusion, but with all my credulity (I will say to you in confidence that I swallowed the ''Herald'' hoax as a mere morsel) I am not that kind of fool that I do not know when I meet a man trained to scientific modes of thinking like Dr. Beard. At a glance of his eagle eye he recognizes me as an idiotic driveller, whose reading and experience would be no more to him than the gibbering of one of Barnum’s аpes. It is idle, indeed, as the doctor modestly remarks, for a million weaklings to hurl a stone as far as “one strong boy” (like Dr. Beard). Dr. Beard does not so in words as I recollect, but he leaves it to be fairly inferred that be regards all materializations and all the other phenomena of Spiritualism as the product of trickery and fraud. Assuming that the Eddys are base swindlers, he has yet to dispose of Slade and Foster in New York and some other prominent mediums in both this country and England. Of course if he kills off the leading lights of legerdemain the others will quickly go by the hoard. The English scientists who talked and waited with Katie King while Miss Cook, her medium, was elsewhere visible will doubtless hang their heads now. Like myself, those transatlantic transcendental noodles have never heard of Dr. Beard. Will their friends, if they have any, please seek some private asylum for them?
To be sure there are thousands of private mediums who shrink from the least publicity. In the presence of and through the organizations of these singular and inexplicable phenomena take place. That is to say, they seem so to the hare-brained soft-headed people who witness them, who neither pay admission fee nor eight dollars a weak for board, and who have never known the mediums to be given to practical joking or trickery for the amusement of themselves or the bewilderment of their friends. The phenomena of the household, so largely of a private character, and which are in two-thirds of the towns, cities, and neighborhoods of the land, may be disposed of by a ware of Dr. Beard’s hand. I am a liar, conscious or unconscious; my general statements in the first place are liable to be untrue, and, in the second place, if the supposed phenomena occur they are only ordinary trickery, grossly exaggerated by an active imagination and a desire to believe in the supernatural. In such a way or by some similar method of his trained scientific mind Dr. Beard would hang me up for public ridicule.
I feel sorry for Olcott, who was so “shocked,” Dr. Beard says, when told what the alleged manifestations actually were and what he had better to do to prove them and how soon had better go. But the amiable, idiotic Olcott, I have no doubt, will insist upon insanely replying to the doctor and dash out his poor brains against the impregnable arguments of a trained scientific mind.
{{Style P-Signature in capitals|Spiritualist}}
{{Style S-HPB SB. HPB note|November. — 1874.|center}}
Brooklyn, N. Y., November 10,1874.
{{Style P-HPB SB. Title|Dr. Beard and the Eddys<ref> The Daily Graphic, New York, Friday, November 13, 1974 - with supplement, p. 91.</ref>}}
[''From the Springfield Republican''.]
The man who has a mania for “exposing” all extraordinary phenomena as frauds is as sure to arise as the phenomena themselves. His name to-day is Dr. George M. Beard, of New York. The peculiar operations of young Mr. Brown having been completely explained, he has been taking a turn with the mysteries of Spirit Vale, and in a communication to The Daily Graphic exposes the Eddys with equal ease. Those who have witnessed Mr. Brown’s achievements cannot help being somewhat prejudiced against Dr. Beard as a fair-minded investigator, for it is quite plain that “unconscious muscular action” is ridiculously inadequate to meet the conditions of many of his performances, and yet Beard, having started with that preconceived idea, obstinately insists on stretching it to make if fit them all. So with his “expose” of the Eddys. It is not, of course, impossible that the Eddys should yet be proved humbugs, but it is quite certain that Dr. Beard has not done it. He got into the house of the brothers by leaving his hair uncombed, his boots unblacked and his heard unshaved, and otherwise managing his natural advantages so as to pass for a feeble-minded Spiritualist. Then he “diplomatized,” let us say, profusely, making believe see and recognize spirits when he didn't, and finally got admitted to a dark seance and a light seance. Very little was seen at the former, only the apparition “Honto,” and one other, which did not speak, exhibited, and both, Dr. Beard pronounces, wore personated by William Eddy, as he believes all others are, with the help of the spectator's imagination. In the light seance he assisted Horatio Eddy, and detected that individual in officiating as the spiritual guitar player. Colonel Olcott, who has been in Chittenden for several weeks investigating, and whose illustrated papers have been published in The Daily Graphic, Dr. Beard declares to be as “credulous as a baby” and incapable of telling the truth in regard to anything that takes place in the Eddy seances. The doctor gives a summary of the ring and rope and other feats, all of which are too familiar bits of jugglery to deserve serious attention. It may be at once conceded that all that really catches the public attention in the performances of this Vermont family, and all that they care to have light thrown upon, is the materialization. It is the new thing in their line. Unless the doctor's blunt charge is true, and Colonel Olcott lies by the wholesale, Dr Beard's “exposure” is absurd.
{{Style P-HPB SB. Title|More spiritual wonders}}
{{Style P-HPB SB. Title|More spiritual wonders}}