MESMERISM TO SPIRITUALISM 297 



I replied to this extraordinary letter by telling him that / 

 could " undertake " nothing, but that the phenomena had 

 occurred at various times when many different persons had 

 been present ; that, of course, he could examine and test them 

 as he pleased, but that if he really wished to witness the 

 phenomena in all their variety, I strongly advised him to 

 be a passive spectator on the first two or three visits, and 

 only apply tests and impose conditions at a later period. I 

 asked him to name a day, and he came. 



At the very beginning he forgot or purposely acted con- 

 trary to my advice. On being asked to sit at the table with 

 my sister, Miss Nichol, and myself, he declined, saying ' I 

 never form part of my experiments. I will sit here and 

 look on " — drawing his chair about a yard away. So we 

 three sat without him, with our hands on the table; and 

 rather to my surprise the rapping sounds began, and were 

 much stronger and more varied in character than when Dr. 

 Carpenter had heard them. They were, in fact, very varied 

 in tone — some mere ticks, others loud slaps or thumps. But 

 to all this he paid no attention. He joked with Miss Nichol, 

 who was always ready for fun, and, after the raps had gone 

 on some time, he remarked, " We know all about these raps. 

 Show us something else. I thought I should see something 

 remarkable." But nothing else came. Then, after a little 

 talk and more chaff with Miss Nichol, he said " Good night " ; 

 and though I begged him to appoint a day for the next sit- 

 ting, he never came again. 



I next tried Mr. G. H. Lewes (whose acquaintance I had 

 made at Huxley's), but he was too much occupied and too 

 incredulous to give any time to the inquiry. During this 

 time I was reading almost everything I could obtain upon 

 the phenomena, and found that there was such a mass of 

 testimony by men of the highest character and ability in 

 every department of human learning, that I thought it would 

 be useful to bring these together in a connected sketch of 

 the whole subject. This I did, and sent it to a secularist 

 magazine, in which it appeared in 1866, and I also had a 

 hundred copies printed separately, which I distributed among 



