< An Abortive Seance (continued from page 3-189) >
turbed, nervous, upset; the medium, if she were in reality a medium, mast have been ready to jump out of her skin; and the sceptics (dear! dear! how the broad mantle of this word has occasionally been used, to cover ignorance, injustice, brutality, and foolishness!) put into a condition in which it was impossible for them to see a genuine manifestation from a false one. Some people seem to have about as much aptitude fee scientific investigation as a rhinoceros for conic sections, or a hippopotamus for the study of the Kabbala.
Well, the seance went on; and, with longer or shorter intervals between, we saw what seemed to be the faces of one more man and of an old lady. But they were kept so far back from the aperture, and were so instantaneously withdrawn, that no living person could say whether they were masks or not We were allowed to pass our hands inside to be touched or grasped, and I thought that mine was clutched by three hands of different sires, successively; but I will not say that it was, nor will I that it was not, for I am not accustomed to decide in these spiritualistic affairs upon such solitary evidence.
The evening’s adventures were brought to a close by the untying of Mrs. Wilson within the cabinet, ostensibly by the sprits, and the re-tying of her hands—this time, behind her back—in what some gentlemen thought a very severe manner, and some a sham. To sum up; the seance was utterly unsatisfactory in every respect as a scientific experiment. It was not clear that the voices from within the cabinet might not have been spoken ventriloquially by the medium; not certain that she could not have cramped her hand together so as to slip out of one or both of her wrist- ligatures, and also re-tie herself; cot positive that the so-called spirit-faces were not simple masks drawn from the stuffed bosom of Mrs. Wilson’s dress. She was not stripped and examined by a committee of ladies, in advance, nor were her clothes changed. As for the tying, I would give more for a single frail bit of sewing-cotton passed through the perforated lobes of a woman’s ears, and sealed to the chair-back, as I secured Mrs. Compton, than for all the ropes and gyves that were ever put upon a poor medium, to torture him for the satisfaction of brutal “sceptics.”
At the same time, it is no less true that there is no evidence that this particular medium, upon the evening in question, resorted to fraud in either the case of the faces, voices, or tying’s; and so, as, thanks to the preposterous methods of the well-meaning young gentleman, and, not in every case, young ladies, the company, the spirits, and the mediums were set by the ears, I think I am not far astray in calling this “an abortive seance.”
A Budget of Avient Dreams
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<... continues on page 3-191 >
Editor's notes
- ↑ A Budget of Avient Dreams by Stock, George W. St., B.A.(Oxon)