HPB-SB-1-190: Difference between revisions

  | status = proofread

  | continues = 191

  | title = Mrs. Huntoon's Expose

  | subtitle =  

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{{Style S-Small capitals|Dear Sir}}, —Well you premit me to correct a small, but perhaps serious mistake which I find in your remarks relative to Mrs. Huntoon’s expose at my house on the evening of Oct. 25th? You say “Spiritualists make the expose.” Now, we are not Spiritualists either by name, practice, or profession, therefore, in justice to the Spiritualists as a body, I feel compelled to make this correction, for they do not count upon us nor extend the band of fellowship to us in any form whatever save when they want to raise funds or get board and lodgings. True, we attend Spiritual gatherings sometimes, but we have learned to keep quite of late I having been hooted and objected to as unfit to take part in a public meeting of our towns people on account of my Atheistic views of life and death. There were Orthodox Christians of various shades in this meeting that I refer to, and none of ''them ''saw fit to criticize my honesty on acconnt of my belief; but a Spiritualist did and that one stands now at the head of the line of Spiritualists here in Webster, Mass. Here let me tell you this same zealot stands firm by Mrs. Huntoon, and every bit of her performances. Twenty years ago we had a small opportunity to investigate Spiritualism. We considered it an element worthy of our best judgment, and something that richly deserves honest and open day light investigation. Soon tricks, miracles, and speculations gained mastry over the whole phenomena, and the general public was left to question and enlighten one another providing, that we kept all doubts to ourselves sod accepted the money makers' assertions whenever we asked for personal investigation. Any of us who rebelled against this narrow guage law were set down as skeptics and just as good as damned to commence with; Do any doubt this; I ask them to turn back over few numbers of the Banner of Light sod the Boston Investigator, and read hew from time to time the mould seances were advertized by Dr. Gardner under crucial test conditions. Did the public know anything about these conditions? If my memory serves me they were not allowed to ask a single question in reference to the matter, “Pay me your money for this show and swallow whatever you get,” was the head and front of the investigating part of it. The question ''now ''is did Dr. Gardner know whether he had applied crucial tests to the moulds before he advertized them? The public has his advertisements that ''he knew ''that the mould could not be otherwise than Spiritually begotten; and a certain clique in Boston are very piously passing Dr. Gardner's doubts from one to another. Well if the skeptics had never thought whether the moulds were of a human or Spiritual origin it would be much more pleasant for your Boston gamesters. But did Christianit ever begin to present us with such muddled conditions andy wrangling disputes?'' ''No, we are not Spiritualists, neither did the ''Spiritualists ''make any attempt to question Mrs. Huntoon’s truthfulness. That she came well recommended was all sufficient.