156 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



followed along paripassu. On reaching the folding-doors, dividing off the two 

 parlors, and which were open, it rose over an iron rod on which the door- 

 trucks traversed, and which projected half or three-quarters of an inch above 

 the level of the carpet. It then entered the other parlor, and went its whole 

 length, until it came near the pier-glass at its end, a center-table having been 

 pushed aside by one of the party to allow its free course. At request, for 

 they during this time spoke as if to actual beings, the motion was reversed, 

 and it returned, until it again reached the iron rod. Here it stuck. The 

 table hove, creaked, and struggled, but all in vain ; it could not surmount the 

 obstacle. The medium was then " impressed by the spirits" to write, and, 

 seizing a pencil, hastily wrote that if the fore-legs were luted over the bar, 

 they (i. e. the spirits) thought they could push the others over. This was 

 done, and the motion kept on. Once or twice Dr. Bell requested all to with- 

 draw a little further from the table, "to see how far the influence would ex- 

 tend." It was found that, whenever a much greater distance, say two feet, 

 was reached, the movement ceased, and a delay of three or four minutes 

 occurred before it recommenced, giving the idea that, if broken off, a certain 

 re-accumulation of force was needful to put it in motion again. The table 

 reached the upper end of the parlor, from which it had started, but was left 

 some four feet from the median line of the room. Dr. Bell expressed the 

 thanks of the company for the very complete exhibition with which they had 

 been favored, but remarked that the obligation would be enhanced if the 

 "spirits" would move the table about four feet at right-angles, so that the 

 chairs would come right for then* late occupants. This was immediately 

 done, and the performance was deemed so perfectly full and satisfactory, 

 that nothing more was asked at this session. Dr. Bell was understood 

 to say that this made some five or six times in which he had seen the 

 table move without human contact, and all under circumstances apparently 

 as free from suspicion as this just related. 



Dr. Bell mentioned that, in his last experiment that just narrated the 

 entire space moved through was over fifty feet. Dr. Bell then passed to the 

 topic of responses to mental and verbal questions, and gave several narratives 

 of long conversations with what purported to be the spirits of persons dead 

 for twenty-five to forty years, in which every question he could devise relating 

 to their domestic history and to events in it, known only to them and him, had 

 been truly answered. Some of the subjects put mentally L e. without speaking 

 or writing had half a dozen correct replies, forbidding of course completely 

 on any doctrine of chances, the contingency of accident or coincidence, as such 

 mental questions, per se, negative the explanation of previous knowledge on 

 the part of the medium. A brief abstract of one of these will give a general 

 idea of their character. Dr. Bell had frequently remarked to his "spiritual" 

 friends that if any medium could reproduce the essential particulars of a final 

 interview which had occurred between himself and a deceased brother, in 

 1826. he should be almost compelled to admit that it came from his spirit, 

 because he was sure that he (Dr. Bell) never had communicated it to any 

 living being. Hence as it had never been known to but two persons, and 

 was of so peculiar, well-marked a character, as not to be capable of being 



