

THEOEY OF KISSING. 293 



ating a deceit than that of eliciting a sentiment of martyrdom 

 on behalf of deceivers. 



When the record of extraordinary manifestations first 

 appeared in the newspapers, I will freely admit that I was 

 stimulated by a certain feeling, the precise nature of which 

 I need not expatiate upon here. That matters not ; enough 

 to state that, without departing from any form of good breed- 

 ing, I sent a polite note to the Brothers Davenport, soliciting 

 an invitation to one of their seances, to the end that I, as 

 a scientific person, might endeavour to satisfy myself as to 

 the conditions and limitations under which the phenomena 

 were manifested. This note, written on the officially-headed 

 paper of a magazine, bespeaking an audience on the part of 

 St. James's, and subsequently adverted to in a note signed 

 by me, and published in the Morning Post, constituted a 

 missive that no philosopher would have wished to evade, and 

 no charlatan durst treat with contempt. 



Not the slightest notice was taken of this missive ; whereby 

 the Brothers Davenport put themselves in a situation exactly 

 parallel to that in which a witness once convicted of felony 

 has placed himself, when asked a question relative to some 

 unpleasant event of his past life, he declines to answer it. 

 True, by the Brothers Davenport's own election, I have not 

 had an opportunity of firing a charge of small shot at the 

 reputed preternatural hand. I have not been enabled to 

 strew the ground with iodide of nitrogen, which would have 

 exploded beneath the lightest footfall; nor have I had the 

 opportunity of grasping at any reputed phantom with hands 

 clad in gloves internally studded with fish-hooks. That is 

 their election, not mine ; and by the result of it I am enabled 

 to affirm of them, as Professor Dumas affirmed of the atomic 

 theory, viz. ' There may be atoms, or there may not be/ 

 said this great philosopher ; ' but in respect to this matter, 

 all I can say is, that if atoms really could be proved to exist, 

 matter must behave exactly as it does now.' 



