now for the initial of your Christian name
in this world?"—T. "Is that right?" asked
the Medium. Thompson said no. "Then
we had better try again, there may be some
mistake." The Medium explained the matter
in her own way to the table, and trying again,
speculated again unluckily upon M. That
was again quite wrong, and the Medium
proposed to try again. Thompson had no
doubt, that in not more than twenty-six
trials, and, perhaps, in one or two less, the
right letter could be hit upon: so declared
himself content. He would now be glad
if the supposed ghost of his mother would
condescend to name the year in which she
passed into the spirit world. Did she
remember it? Rap-tap. Would she tell
it? Rap-tap. And what year was it?
Figures being now touched on the card
instead of letters, there was a tap at one, a tap
at eight, a tap at four (wrong, it should have
been at two), and a last tap at nine, which
the spirit recanted by refusing to ratify the
whole number when asked at the end whether
it was what she meant. The Medium
probably caught a smile on Thompson's face, and
reserved to herself the advantage of another
guess; she then settled upon the year 1846,
which was by more than twenty years a
blunder. Thompson then ceased from his
inquiries, and we all proposed to wait and try
the powers of another spirit.

After the usual solemnities, there was a
rapid rat-tat-tat-tat. "What does that mean?"
asked Brown. The Medium explained that
no two spirits have the same rap, and that by
familiarity you know the rap of any spirit as
distinctly as you know a voice. That spirits
rapped according to their temperaments;
those of nervous people tapping quickly, of
quiet people almost inaudibly, and so on.
"Well, who is this?" asked Brown, and it
turned out to be a repetition upon Brown of
the dull guesses we had just gone through in
the case of Thompson. It was the spirit of his
mother. (Brown's mother, he is happy
to observe here, is alive and well.) Had
this spirit of the dead-and-alive anything to
say? Yes. A dead-and-alive ghost was the
properest for the occasion. The most interminable
game at beggar-my-neighbour is not half
so dull and stupid as the knocking out of
long and foolish sentences from the A. B. C.
D. card of a Rapper. Brown must have been
regarded as a suspicious chai'acter by the
Medium. The ghost of the dead-and-alive,
blundering over letters, tapping back; and,
leaving, after all, her sentences in a broken
down condition, said to Brown, "Be candid;
investigate; be careful; for this is God's
work, my son."

God's work!

The spirit then informed Brown by the
usual slow process that his mother's name
was Mary; falling into a trap which Brown
had laid, possibly by dwelling with the
pencil over M and A and R and Y; also
that she had been dead six years—all
wrong.

"I wish," said Brown, "to ask some
questions concerning the future; can the spirits
answer them without your knowing what
they are?" "If they cannot, they will be
silent," said the Medium, "sometimes they
do so. Try."—"As they are questions
which I should not like to ask in public.
Will they see them written on paper?"
"O yes."—Brown wrote down very clearly:
'Shall I soon be married ?' "Will the spirits
answer this question ?" Rat-tat-tat. "Is
Yes the answer ?" Rat-tat-tat. 'How many
children shall I have?' was written next,
Brown saying "This is a question that must
be answered in numbers. Does the spirit see
it?" Rat-tat-tat. "Can it answer me?"
Rat-tat-tat. And so the spirit answered by
the usual process, "One Hundred and Thirty-
Six." When the 1 was obtained, and then
the 3 to go next to it, and then the 6 to go
after that, the rapid growth of Brown's family
amused Thompson, and the imminent carrying
on of the sum into thousands was prevented
by his ill-timed mirth. The production
of children by Brown stopped therefore
prematurely at the number of one hundred
and thirty-six.

The Medium, who always asked whether the
answers fitted, and who aid not clearly know
whether she might not be succeeding vastly,
although she evidently felt a little puzzled by
the sense that she was not doing so well as
might be expected, was now re-assured by the
reverent tone in which the too explosive
Thompson asked whether the spirit of his
sister were in the room. His only sister being
in vigorous health, he did not expect her
ghost; but it was there, and very prompt to
answer him. How long had she been dead?
Two years.

So the dreary labour was continued; but we
cannot fatigue our readers with the whole
monotony of a sitting that was not enlivened
by one happy guess.

After two hours in the presence of the
Medium and the great fire, we passed into
the front drawing-room again, and paid our
money. Mr. Stone trusted that we had found
the spirits answering satisfactorily. It
appeared to us rather probable that they
did answer very satisfactorily at a guinea
a head. Nevertheless we grumbled not,
and listened to the further wonders that
he had to tell of spirits that sometimes not
only rapped, but moved heavy furniture
about. He had seen a large loo table, he
said, turned topsy turvy by the spirits. He
told us more, and offered us gratuitously
a fresh sitting, if we had not been satisfied
with the first. We had seen enough. We
asked for printed information, and brought
home with us a pamphlet upon Spirit Knocking,
which he recommended to our notice.
It had the motto on the cover, "Behold, I stand
at the door, and knock." Within the pamphlet