advertisement; and we sat down before the
man who was to bring us to the world of
ghosts.

"You are aware," he said, "that I have
given a good deal of my attention to electro-
biology?" We were aware. "I have
recently visited America, where great sensation
has been made by manifestations from the
world of spirits, made by means of a noise,
like rapping. You have perhaps heard of the
Rappers ?" Something; we came there to be
informed. "It is very curious," said Mr.
Stone. "I have examined these manifestations
with great industry, and I have arrived
at the conviction that they are true, that
they cannot be explained by human minds,
that they really do emanate from the spirit
world. The lady whom I have brought with
me is decidedly the best Medium I met with,
and I, therefore, thought it well that the
phenomena should be investigated in this
country." Mr. Stone here pausing and
looking into the fire, we inquired what might
be the theory of Mediums? "It is very
singular," said Mr. Stone. "There are some
persons in whose sphere the spirits have more
power. The grossness of matter commonly
repels them, but there are some people whose
nervous systems appear to act—you know how
delicate the nervous system is—whose nervous
systems appear to act as—we can only
suppose, of course, we do not profess to account
for these things—as conductors, as magnets,
so to speak, whose bodies are surrounded by
an atmosphere in which the spirits freely
move. In the neighbourhood of such a person,
spirits manifest themselves. Such a person
is a Medium." "Your Medium sits at the
table, and the ghosts rap on it?" we asked.
"She must sit near the table," answered Mr.
Stone, "because—we cannot control or account
for it—the spirits will not knock beyond
her influence. That is the nature and the
necessity of the Medium, but sometimes
the spirits will perform their promise to
follow some person to a distant place and
knock." (The Ghost of Cock Lane, and the
descent into the vault, to witness!) "We
were demonstrating the other evening at the
house of a distinguished gentleman in the
country, when a spirit promised to be present
to him in his library at a fixed hour. The
gentleman listened, and, being very deaf,
heard nothing; but, on holding his ear more
attentively, he said that he distinctly thought
he caught a rapping. It is very curious that
the spirits accommodate themselves to deaf
people. During the whole of the evening at
this gentleman's, the spirits knocked more
loudly than usual."

When Mr. Stone had further talked about
distinguished patronage, and about the
wonders that had been performed, one of us
suggested to him, delicately, as unwilling to hurt
his feelings by implying too roughly that a
man who trembled on the confines of the
other world could think of money, that "Of
course we knew that his time was not wholly
given to the public—that there was some
honorarium," the reply was prompt. "One
guinea each person, or five guineas for a party
of ten." This being understood, we felt our
way to the inquiry, which we shaped as well
as we could, "When will the performance
begin?" The reply being in effect "We
take in each party separately," we signified
our desire to be taken in as soon as possible.

The door into the back drawing-room being
then opened, we were introduced to Mr. and
Mrs. Hayden, the Medium's husband, and the
Medium. Introduction having been promptly
made, we were left—we, Messrs. Brown and
Thompson—in the lady's hands. She sat
opposite to us on one side of the round table,
firm as a rock.

The Medium sat not only opposite to us,
but opposite to the fire. It had first occurred
to us when we went into that back drawing-
room, that the kitchen had come upstairs;
there was such an enormous fire in the grate.
Though it was so warm out of doors that,
as Mr. Stone remarked, "We did not like
to light the fire" in the front drawing-room;
in the back room the glowing coals were
heaped into a red-hot mountain; and the
whole atmosphere was feverish. What did
Catherine Fox tell Mrs. Culver? "Catherine
told me to warm my feet, or put them
in warm water, and it would then be easier
work to rap: she said that she had sometimes
to warm her feet three or four times
in the course of an evening."

As we sat in the hot room, with the table
between us, opposite to the Medium who sat
opposite to the fire, we had begun to ponder
upon by-gone people, and to think how we
could seize "the vapoury phantoms of
futurity" by questioning the ghosts. "Can
we call any spirit?" "You can speak only
with spirits in the room; the room is full of
spirits, and some one spirit that is present will
often go out, if you wish it, to fetch you another
with whom you desire to communicate. If
you question one who is here, he will knock,
or if you wait, some spirit that desires to
communicate with one of us will knock, and
call attention to itself."—"How did you
become a Medium ?" "I did not know what it
meant when I used to hear the spirits rapping
about me in my bedroom, and following me
wherever I went. They knocked so distinctly
that my husband—who heard them also, when
I was present—once got up and opened the
parlour door, thinking that there was somebody
who wanted to come in. Then I found
out that they were spirits who desired to
speak, and had no other way at present of
communicating with us. If you ask them any
question, and they answer yes, they rap; and
if they answer no, they are silent. If we use
letters of the alphabet, and point to them in
succession, they will spell out sentences, and
in that way tell what they wish." This was
the substance of the account given by the