believe in the supernatural? Was that
poor little child at Road, murdered by spirits?
Was the Waterloo-bridge mystery the work of
Mr. Mompesson's demon? No one—not even
the most enthusiastic spiritualist—goes the
length of saying that these things were done by
other than living agents. But when it comes to
knocks against the floor, disguised voices in the
air, falling crockery, and locomotive bolsters,
with any other utterly useless and extravagantly
absurd physical manifestations, human agency
is thrust aside; the power of sleight of hand,
which our conjurors have rendered familiar
to us, is ignored; the most ordinary requirements
for reliable evidence are abandoned; the
loosest accounts are taken as of mathematical
accuracy and undeniable truth; no allowance is
made for natural exaggeration, or for natural
mistakes; the most shadowy idea, the least definite
perceptions, are put into strong, broad,
trenchant language; and we, unbelievers, are
required to subscribe to the whole account,
under pain of being set down as animals or
atheists. The ordinary amusement of each
person, in a large company, writing down a
certain story which has to be whispered from
one to the other, and the strange variations
between the first version and the last, might
supply to the most credulous, a startling
instance of growth by repetition. There are few
of us who can repeat a circumstance exactly as
we saw it, or tell a story in the same words and
spirit as that in which it was told to us.
Indeed, the very fact of embodying a thing in
words at all, often gives it a weight and value
which it did not originally possess. The Law
Reports are full of these discrepancies; yet
evidence, which would not be admitted when
dealing with the theft of a pocket-handkerchief,
is to pass unquestioned when the subject is that
wondrous mystery, the Spirit World, and its
connexion with man.

My amiable friend and contemporary calls on
the Conductor of this Journal to "stand up" to
the question of how a certain medium obtained
the name and address of a country curate, whose
friends were assisting at the séance, together
with certain passages of his history. I beg it
to be understood that I, the writer, "stand up"
to it for myself, and not for him. Granting
even that the guess was right—and without
something more explicit in the way of testimony
I would not grant it—yet am I to balance one
lucky guess against half a dozen unlucky guesses,
and assume the spiritual veracity of the one, but
by no means the material humbug of the other?
The spirits never, by any chance, spell a name,
or rap out a fact right through, without hesitation.
Glib enough in mere common-places, no
sooner do they come to facts than they stutter,
stammer, hesitate, try back, make mistakes, so
as to give the medium ample time for studying
the countenance of the person to whom
the message is being addressed; and, unless
the one is a sad bungler, or the other more reticent
and self-composed than most people are, a
possible name is rapped out, which, fills every
one with amazement. In the case of my friend,
spoken of before, a very impassive face, a steady
hand, and an unfaltering voice, threw the
medium off the scent; and a name was given which
had as much connexion with him as with
myself. If any one watches the hand of the person
trying the alphabet, unless there is an unusual
amount of self-control, the pencil will linger at
certain letters wished for, and a keen sight and
ready brain will make these the letters rapped
out. But I concede the power, also, of the
mesmeric thought-reading: a power that I think
to be far more rare than its upholders assert,
but far more frequent than its deriders would
allow.

Nothing is rejected by the partisans of this
superstition. Even Mr. Owen, scholar, and
gentleman of careful training as he is, accepts
everything that falls into his way with a
most remarkable wholeness of belief. Things
which have been exploded as confessed
impostures years ago, he repeats in this
Footfall book of his with a naïveté that makes
one stare. John Wesley's rapping demon,
the Fox imposture, the hoax carried on at
the Castle of Slawensik, Mademoiselle Guldenstubbé's
account of the uncomfortable young
Governess with a Double: in a word, all the
supernatural stories with names and dates to
them which have been current of late years, he
adopts.

The story of the Governess with the Double,
excellently told as a narrative, is not a bad
instance of the way in which "proof" of such things
accumulates. The story is related to Mr. Owen
by one young lady. That one young lady tells
Mr. Owen that the incidents occurred at a
certain seminary where she was one of forty-two
pupils. Also, that the seminary was under the
"superintendence of Moravian directors." Also,
"that every person in the house saw the Double."
Hereupon Mr. Owen tells the story as if it had
been told to him by the forty-two pupils, the
Moravian directors, and all the servants in the
establishment, and as if they all agreed in all
the particulars! Yet on examining the text,
I do not find the least hint that Mr. Owen
has made any inquiry into the narrative of
any human being but the one young lady!
"Corroborative evidence," he says, indeed,
"can readily be obtained by addressing the
directors;" but he neither says what
corroborative evidence, nor that he has ever referred
to one of them (or to any one of the remaining
one-and-forty pupils) for a single word of
corroboration.

Tried by the ordinary rules of evidence, not
one of these stories can stand; nevertheless, I
rise from the perusal of this book with a high
regard for Mr. Owen, personally. He is a gentleman
of a sweet temper, and expresses himself as
a gentleman should: using none of the many
very offensive missiles abundantly stored in the
Spiritual Magazine. He is a very good writer,
and has an admirable power of telling a story.
That one of his stories which is called THE
RESCUE, is by far the best of its kind to be