SCIENCE AND THE SPIRITS/ 447 



I sat at her right hand, and a left-hand pocket, 

 within six inches of her person, contained a magnet. 



Our host here deprecated discussion, as it ' exhausted 

 the medium.' The wonderful narratives were resumed ; 

 but I had narratives of my own quite as wonderful. 

 These spirits, indeed, seemed clumsy creations, com- 

 pared with those with which my own work had made 

 me familiar. I therefore began to match the wonders 

 related to me by other wonders. A lady present dis- 

 coursed on spiritual atmospheres, which she could see 

 as beautiful colours when she closed her eyes. I pro- 

 fessed myself able to see similar colours, and, more 

 than that, to be able to see the interior of my own 

 eyes. The medium affirmed that she could see actual 

 waves of light coming from the sun. I retorted that 

 men of science could tell the exact number of waves 

 emitted in a second, and also their exact length. The 

 medium spoke of the performances of the spirits on 

 musical instruments. I said that such performance 

 was gross, in comparison with a kind of music which 

 had been discovered some time previously by a scientific 

 man. Standing at a distance of twenty feet from a 

 jet of gas, he could command the flame to emit a 

 melodious note ; it would obey, and continue its song 

 for hours. So loud was the music emitted by the gas- 

 flame, that it might be heard by an assembly of a 

 thousand people. These were acknowledged to be as 

 great marvels as any of those of spiritdom. The spirits 

 were then consulted, and I was pronounced to be a 

 first-class medium. 



During this conversation a low knocking was heard 

 from time to time under the table. These, I was told, 

 were the spirits' knocks. I was informed that one knock, 

 in answer to a question, meant ' No ; ' that two knocks 

 meant * Not yet , ' and that three knocks meant ' Yes.' 



