PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SPIRITUAL. 



125 



parent fat, he emptied from the hollow of his 

 palm an ounce or two of that harmless substance 

 with which the New England dairy-women are 

 wont to give a red color to their cheeses, and 

 stirred it in with his finger." Mrs. Hardy seems 

 to have " smelt a rat ; " for at first " she declared 

 that it was doubtful if there would be any mani- 

 festation of spiritual presence, for the reason 

 that some foreign substance had been put into 

 the pail," the "pure spirits with whom she dealt 

 abhorring all chemical combinations." Having 

 been asked, however, whether they could favor 

 , the company, they promised that in seven min- 

 utes the materialization of a spirit-form would be 

 produced ; and, after only five minutes of breath- 

 less expectation, Mrs. Hardy announced that the 

 spirits had done their work. The table-cloth be- 

 ing removed, there lay, within six inches of Mrs. 

 Hardy's right foot, a beautiful model of a human 

 hand, cold as marble, and white as alabaster. 

 " There were exclamations of surprise and won- 

 der from all parts of the room, and some there 

 were who felt themselves in the presence of the 

 sublime realities of the unseen world. But the 

 Herald observer was not of that number." While 

 this model was being passed round for inspection, 

 he dipped four fingers again and again into the 

 now cooling paraffin in the bucket, until they 

 were incased by the material ; and then, as it 

 hardened, he peeled it off and rolled it into a 

 little ball of the size of a nutmeg. He then 

 pointed out that, as the hand was admitted by 

 all to be cold, it could not have been produced 

 out of the paraffin in the pail, which could not 

 have thus completely cooled in so short a time, 

 and that, as it was pure white, it did not corre- 

 spond with the material in the pail, of w r hich the 

 sample he had taken was distinctly red, as all 

 could see. Some demur having been made to 

 this conclusion, on the ground that the coloring- 

 matter might have been unequally mixed, so that 

 some of the paraffin in the pail might have re- 

 mained untinged, Mrs. Hardy was offered twenty 

 dollars to mould a white hand out of it, which 

 challenge she declined. Mr. W. Irving Bishop 

 then took another sample from the pail, and 

 broke off a piece of the hand. The next day he 

 took both samples to Prof. Horsford, of Cam- 

 bridge University; and the day after that he made 

 the following affidavit: 



" I, "W. Irving Bishop, of New York, on oath de- 

 pose and say, that on Sunday evening, October 29, 

 . I was present at a seance held by Mrs. Hardy, 

 4 Concord Square, for the production of moulds and 

 materialization of spirit-hands. A paraffin-form 



of a hand was produced, which Mrs. Hardy alleged 

 was made by the spirits, from the conteuts of a 

 pail of melted paraffin placed under the table. 

 And I here state that coloring-matter had been 

 placed in the said paraffin, and that I took a piece 

 of the hand produced, and also, by dipping my 

 finger into the heated paraffin, obtained an impres- 

 sion of the contents of said pail, for the purpose of 

 comparison. 



" That, subsequently, I submitted both pieces 

 to Frof. Horsford, of Cambridge, who placed a por- 

 tion of each in test-tubes, and, by the applica- 

 tion of proper chemicals, found that the paraffin 

 taken from the pail exhibited a slight reddish 

 color, while that from the mould gave no appear- 

 ance of the existence of coloring-matter. 

 " W. Irving Bishop, 

 of 98 Fifth Avenue, New York. 

 Suffolk, ss. 



" Sworn and subscribed to this 31st day of Octo- 

 ber, 1S7G. Charles J. Brooks, 



" Justice of Peace.' 1 '' 



May we not now affirm with Prince Hal, that 

 "these lies are like the father that begat them, 

 gross as a mountain, open, palpable ? " Well 

 might the reporter of the Herald say of the 

 moulded hand that " it symbolized the cunning 

 and the craft of the woman who produced it, and 

 who for years had speculated upon the credulity of 

 the commnnity, and made heartless traffic of the 

 tenderest sympathies of human nature." Well 

 might he be convinced that " all the much-vaunted 

 spiritual manifestations at the Hardy mansion are 

 the grossest impostures, and that they deserve to 

 be ranked in the same category with those cf 

 such charlatan pretenders as Eatie King, the 

 Eddy brothers, and Mrs. Bennett, the exposure of 

 whose consummate knavery was recently made in 

 those columns." And well might he urge that 

 the time has surely now come when the strong 

 hand of the law should be invoked to protect 

 the public from such chicanery and fraud. 



Spiritual Revelations. 



" By their fruits ye shall know them " is an 

 adage as to which experience is entirely in ac- 

 cord with authority. And I shall close this sur- 

 vey of the present aspect of spiritualism by a 

 brief notice of its teachings. 



The highest form of these, we are assured by 

 Mr. Wallace, 1 is to be found in the spoken ad- 

 dresses of one of the most gifted " tiance-medi- 

 ums," Mrs. Emma Hardinge, of which he gives 

 selected samples. The idea which runs through 

 the whole is that the future life is one of prog- 



1 See his "Miracles and Modern Spiritualism," 

 p. 110. 



