People From the Other World

creature covered with a white fur suddenly appeared in the room where he and three of the other children were sleeping, jumped upon their bed, sniffed at their faces, and then began growing larger and larger until it turned into a great luminous cloud, that gradually shaped itself into a human form. The children screamed, and the mother running in hastily with a candle, the shape disappeared. So year after year things went on, full of trouble and sorrow for all in the unhappy house. No wonder that I found them "curt," "repellant," and "sensitive," and suspicious and calculated to arouse suspicion. I think I would be likewise under like circumstances.

Poor Mrs. Eddy's misfortunes did not cease with her husband's death in 1860, but followed her even into her grave, as she one day in a prophetic vision told the children it would in the exact manner in which it happened. When her death occurred (January 1st 1873) it was intended that she should be buried by the Spiritualists, certain of whom had promised to be present, but it so happened that they were detained away, and two Methodist friends of the husband's acted as sole pall-bearers. As they were about to lower the coffin into the grave these two worthies fell into dispute about a lawsuit that they had just had, and one, in his eagerness to get at his antagonist, dropped his rope and the poor lady was dumped end over end into the pit, and the coffin turned bottom side

One surprising instance of the cruelty begotten by ignorance, is afforded in the means resorted to once to bring William Eddy out of a trance. Pushing, pinching, and blows proving in vain, Anson Ladd, with the father's

permission, poured scalding hot water down his back, and, as a last heroic operation, put a blazing ember from the hearth on his head. But the lad slept on, and the only effect of this cruelty was the great scar that he has shown me on his crest.

The father's scruples did not interfere with his willingness to turn a thrifty penny by an exhibition of the diabolical gifts of his progeny, for, after the Rochester knockings of 1847 had ushered in the new dispensation of Spiritualism, he hired three or four of the children out to one showman, who took them to nearly all the principal cities of the United States, and to another who took them to London for a brief season.

The children got all the kicks and he all the ha'pence in this transaction, and a sorry time it was for them. Passed through the merciless hands of scores of "committees of skeptics," bound with cords by " sailors of seven years' experience," and riggers "accustomed to tic 'knots where human life was at risk," of carpenters with a fancy for other knots than those in their boards, of inventors who knew all sorts of "ropes" in addition to their particular steam-engines or threshing-machines, and suchlike illuminati, their soft young metacarpal bones were squeezed out of shape, and their arms covered with tile scars of melted wax, used to make the assurance of the bonds doubly and trebly sure. These wrists and arms are a sight to see. Every girl and boy of them has a marked groove between the ends of the ulna and radius and the articulation of the bones of the hand, and every one of them is scarred by hot sealing-wax. Two of the girls showed me scars where pieces of flesh had been

pinched out by handcuffs used by "committees"--fools who seem to have been unable to discover suspected fraud without resort to brutal violence on the persons of children.

And then the mobbings they have passed through! At Lynn, Mass.; South Danvers; West Cleveland, Ohio., where William was ridden on a rail and barely escaped a coat of tar and feathers; at Moravia, N. Y.; at Waltham, Mass., where they had to fly for their lives; at Dunville, Canada-in all which places their "cabinet" (a simple, portable closet, in which they sit for the manifestations) was smashed. They make no account in this catalogue of suffering, of the places where they were stoned, hooted at, and followed to their hotels by angry crowds. At South Danvers they were fired upon by hidden assassins, and William has the scar of a bullet in his ankle and Mary one in her arm to show for their picnic in that tolerant locality ! Horatio carries his memento of that place in a stab wound in his leg, and Lynn supplied him with the two tokens of a scar on his forehead, where a brick hit him, and a broken finger, the third, on his right hand.

Ah! these committees are often honorable gentlemen, as may be inferred from the fact that once when applying the " flour-test "- the placing of flour in the medium's hands after his wrists are tied, to detect him if he disengages his hands and plays upon the instruments himself-aquafortis was mixed in the flour, and shockingly burned Horatio's fingers; and once, when the musical instruments, horns, &c., were rubbed with rouge, so that the mediums might be betrayed by their discolored

hands if they should touch them, one of the committee, pretending to make a last examination of the knots, rubbed the hands of both the boys with rouge. In this instance, however, the base trick availed nothing, for, aware of what had been done, the Eddys called for the audience to look at their hands before the cabinet doors were closed, and the culprit was exposed.

The reader will understand, from what I have said of their childhood experiences, that these poor creatures had little or no educational advantages, and their numerous correspondents will not be surprised at the illiteracy shown in their letters. They will be surprised, on the other hand, when I say that I have heard words in six foreign tongues spoken, and conversation sustained in the same, by rappings by some of the phantoms whose appearance before me, during my present visit to the Eddy homestead, I shall describe in future chapters of this true story.

The Daily Graphic was pleased to say of a letter of mine from this place, that "the story is as marvelous as any to be found in history," an opinion that was reiterated by several of the most respected journals in other cities. I risk nothing in now saying that what I am about to narrate is far more extraordinary in every respect, and I expect to tax the public indulgence as to my veracity to the utmost. But I shall at least take good care to be within the limits of the truth, so that my story may be verified by any future investigator who is willing to scan closely, move cautiously to conclusions, and " nothing extenuate nor aught set down in malice." I went to Chittenden to discover the truth as to the "Eddy manifestations,"

and as I find things, so shall I describe them, caring nothing how much my own prejudices are affected by the result.

sailors and riggers; and those whose education and intelligence are likely to make them competent to fathom the philosophical mystery. In looking over the scrapbooks of the Eddys, I find the newspapers, as a rule, reporting such choice of committeemen, and I also find there the evidences of the unnecessary cruelties practiced in the interest of " science," " religion,", "fairplay," and particularly of what these gentry are pleased to call "the truth."

The reader will please observe that I have not relied upon the diaries or verbal statements of the Eddys themselves in making these strictures, but solely upon the testimony of the editorial descriptions of the whole press, for the journals of nearly every section are represented in this modern Book of Martyrs. Such details of the handcuffings and ligatures, the blisterings and acid corrosions, the torture of constrained positions, of mouth-gags and halter-nooses, as the newspapers did not supply, I have filled in after getting the necessary explanations from the mediums, and the drawings were made from life.

I cannot refrain from making a single quotation from Horatio's diary, under date of November, 1867, for it shows the patient, uncomplaining spirit that possessed the poor farmer-boy under his sufferings. It seems the most appropriate introduction I could make to these sketches. He says: "This day we suffered very much by severe tying and abuse from those who professed to be Spiritualists. But we like martyrs, bore our pain with fortitude. We thanked the Divine Power for preserving us from the gross treatment of our enemies. No mortal

knows what brutish tying we submitted ourselves to. It would have made mother's heart bleed if she had known what her children were passing through in Canastota."

How they were treated by the Canastota committee sketch NO. 4 will show.

Horatio was kept with one hand tied to his neck and tile other to his manacled feet for three-quarters of an hour, the cord around his neck being so tight as to half choke him.

The Little Falls, N. Y., investigators tried the pretty device shown in sketch No. 1.

The medium is tied to a wooden T cross, by whip-cord passing through holes bored for the purpose. He was kept so for the space of an hour, until, owing to the tightness of the ligatures at the wrists, the blood trickled from under his finger-nails.

Sketch NO. 3 will recall a scene of rope-tying, to the minds of the good people of Albany, N. Y., who attended a seance at the house of John McClure; a certain Doctor Perkins being the operator. Here the medium is tied down by his fingers to the floor, the tapes being secured to the latter by tacks, and another tape leading to the door-knob. The worthy Doctor kept this patient in this position some two hours, and it is not surprising that his wrists were so swollen in consequence that he was kept in pain several days thereafter.

Sketch NO. 2 shows a common device of the wily committee men of Moriah, N. Y., and numerous other I places, and the drawing requires no word of comment.

Moriah, N. Y. (perhaps I do not get the name just right, but the Eddys cannot help me), is also responsible

for the cheerful " bucking " antidote, against charlatanry, seen in sketch No. 6, in which attitude the victim was obliged to stay two mortal hours, the spirits refusing to manifest themselves under such disturbed conditions, and the committee, with astonishing cruelty, declaring they would keep him there until they did. This happened at the house of Esak Colvin.

In sketch No. 5 we have an illustration of ingenious barbarity worthy of the palmy days of the Inquisition:

Two pairs of handcuffs each, on the wrists and ankles, a rope running through the links of each and passing out of the cabinet at top and bottom, and a halter-noose around the neck, drawn just tight enough to choke without quite strangling, made an applauding public feel secure against "humbug." Bristol, Conn., richly deserves the credit for this apparatus, and the additional statement that it was applied for the space of nearly two and a half hours.

Here, finally, in sketch No. 7, we have an effectual device to prevent the exercise of ventriloquial powers in imitation of spirit- voices, which has been tried in so many places (not to mention Sing Sing and other penitentiary establishments) that I forbear to recount them, lest I might weary.

And now let us drop this disagreeable part of our subject.

It matters little to me how the skeptical may undertake to account for these Chittenden mysteries-that concerns themselves alone. They may attribute them to electricity, but if so, they will have to encounter scientists like Varley, the electrician of the Atlantic cable, who,

after testing them by every electrical apparatus, with twenty-six years' experience to guide him, declares that that subtle agent has nothing whatever to do with their production; of the late Professor Hare, who made the same statement after two years of careful inquiry; of Elliotson, Puysegur, Crookes, Bell, Collier, Gully, the French Academicians, and the London Dialectical Society. If they say it is " animal magnetism "they must face an army of specialists who have exhausted every endeavor to explain away the phenomena as coming under this category. The knee-pan, toe-joint and knuckle worthies, as a class, die a natural death as soon as we get beyond the mere Rochester rappings of 1847, and I feel confident that if Professors Huxley and Tyndall would spend a fortnight at Chittenden, they would see their protoplasms and such-like scientific soothing-syrups flying out of the window upon the entry of the first materialized ghost from William Eddy's closet.

It is scarcely exaggeration to say that this family of mediums, if we may believe their story, is the most remarkable as to psychological endowments of which mention is made in the history of European races. Perhaps among the Chinese, and certain tribes of India (the Yogiswaras, for instance) and of Egypt, parallel cases may be found, but such have not met my eye in the course of a somewhat extensive reading in this branch of literature.

The Eddys represent about every phase of mediumship and seership:--rappings; the disturbance of material objects from a state of rest ; painting in oil and water-colors under influence; prophecy, the speaking of strange tongues; the healing gift , the discernment of

spirits; levitation, or the floating of the body in free air; the phenomena of instrument playing and the show of hands; the writing of messages on paper upborne in midair, by pencils held by detached hands; psychometry, or the reading of character and view of distant persons upon touching scaled letters ; clairvoyance; clairaudience, or the hearing of spirit-voices; and, lastly, and most miraculous of all, the production of materialized phantom forms, that become visible, tangible, and often audible by all persons present.

Much account has been made of the story told by Lord Dunraven and Lord Adair (and, I may mention, confirmed to me personally by the latter gentleman), of Mr. Home's having been " floated " out of one third-story window at Ashley House and into another; but what will be thought of Horatio Eddy having been carried, one summer night, when he was but six years old, a distance of three miles to a mountain top, and left to find his way home next day as best he could ; of his youngest brother Webster, when a grown man, being carried out of a window and over the top of a house from the presence of three witnesses (from two of whom I have the story), and landed in a ditch a quarter of a mile off; of William being carried to a distant wood and kept there unconscious for three days, and then carried back again; of Horatio being " levitated " twenty-six evenings in succession, in Buffalo, in the Lyceum Hall, when fast bound in a chair, and hung by the back of the chair to a chandelier hook in the ceiling, and then safely lowered again to his former place on the floor? Of Mary Eddy being raised to the ceiling of Hope Chapel, in New York city, where she

wrote her name ? Of her little boy, Warren, five years old, who is floated in dark-circles, screaming to be let down all the while ? Of a little son of Stephen Baird, of Chittenden, a neighbor of theirs, who has been handled in the same way ?

Mr. Home is not the only one besides the Eddys who has been thus transported through mid-air, for, since 1347, authenticated reports will be found in the books of a like thing happening to Edward Irving, Margaret Rule, St. Philip of Neri, St. Catharine of Columbina, Loyola, Savonarola, Jennie Lord, Madame Hauffe, and many others whose names I do not at present recall, and in the absence of a library cannot transcribe.

Does any one care to ask me what I think? I answer, Nothing; I watch and wait and report, holding myself open to conviction in the spirit which the great Arago describes in an old article on Mesmerism: " The man who, outside of pure mathematics, pronounces the word 'impossible,' is wanting in prudence."

I make no apology for having now devoted two preliminary chapters to personal details respecting the Eddy family history; for the intelligent reader, before he could give credence to the miraculous events that I shall describe as occurring in their presence, would of necessity ask what sort of people they are--whether they were of suspicious antecedents, whether they had amassed a fortune by their exhibitions, whether they are making money by them now, or what motive impels them to continue in their present public relation ? I stated above that they traveled for the profit of others; by which I meant to say that when William,

Horatio, and Mary were young children, their father, having failed to cowhide their demons out of them, hired them out to a showman for four years, they receiving nothing but their bare expenses; and that at the expiration of that time they were hired by various other speculators, and during the ensuing eleven years received an average of under ten dollars a month apiece. I mean, furthermore, to say that their house and farm would not sell for $3,500 all told; that they do all their housework themselves; that half their visitors are poor and sponge on them for board, and, the other half paying eight dollars per week, the family have saved enough to put some necessary repairs on the house; and finally that they unite in saying that the greatest good fortune that could befall them would be to have their mediumship cease, so that they might work like other farmers and enjoy life like them. They are the galley-slaves of the invisible powers back of the " manifestations," who not only obsess them at their caprice by day while about household duties, and in the evening during the regular circles, but pursue them in the silent watches of the night, playing the pranks of the old-time poltergeists, and making it uncertain whether or no they will wake in bed or in the crotch of  some tree on the summit of an adjacent mountain.

The sketches which accompany this chapter represent with fidelity the appearance of the dining-room, kitchen, and pantry, or buttery, over which extends the one large room where the nightly circles are held. They are intended to show that no trapdoors afford to confederates the opportunity of communication from below.

The dining-room communicates directly with a large apartment in the main part of the house, now used for a general sitting and reception room, but which, until the new hall was built, was the circle-room. The kitchen and pantry are side by side, beyond the dining room, and separated from it by a lathed and plastered partition, with doors joining from each into it. There is also a door which gives communication from the kitchen to the pantry through their dividing longitudinal partition. The ceilings of kitchen and pantry are lathed and plastered. The kitchen is an odd, dingy little place with smoky walls and a worn floor, but it affords a retreat for the family when the house is crowded with visitors; and such of the latter as at such times are privileged to sit with "the boys" about the cooking-stove, and smoke a pipe, and chat upon the day's topics, are regarded with much of the same envy as the favorite at Court, who is passed by obsequions lackeys into the presence, while the rest cool their heels in the corridor.

I have had my days of favor, like the courtier, and passed many a pleasant hour in this little kitchen, in an atmosphere so dense with pipe smoke that we could barely see each other across the room. I have sung my songs and told my comic stories, and heard Horatio sing his songs, and William tell, in his own pathetic way, of the cruelties he suffered in boyhood, and I really fancied that by keeping on my good behavior, I might be allowed to do my work pleasantly and thoroughly. But-however, I will not anticipate.

If the reader will turn to the rear view of the Eddy homestead, he will observe in the gable of the L extension, just over the square window of William's cabinet, two other windows. These light a cock-loft over the circle-room. I confess that it never occurred to me to go up there and see what sort of place it might be, as after careful inspection of the room itself I was satisfied that no communication existed between the two; but one afternoon a lady visitor, subject to trance obsessions, and professing to be influenced by a spirit at the time, called my attention to the fact that, with all my shrewdness, I had overlooked this cock-loft. Though I could not imagine how spirit or mortal could detect the omission in the penciled notes in my pocket diary, I nevertheless went up a ladder in the adjoining vestibule, and, creeping through ancient cobwebs, from rafter to rafter, I saw that there was nothing worth coming to see. The mystery could not be solved there.

and women without any to speak of; people of sense and people of nonsense; sickly dreamers who prate of "interiors" and "conditions" and "spheres" as intelligently as a learned pig or a chattering magpie; clairvoyants and "healers", real and bogus; phrenologists, who read bumps without feeling them, under "spirit direction "; mediums for tipping, rapping, and every imaginable form of modern spiritual phenomena; ""apostles" with one and two arms; people from the most distant and widely-separated localities; nice, clever people whom one is glad to meet and sorry to part from; and people who shed a magnetism as disagreeable as dirty water or the perfume of the Fetis-Americanus. They come and go, singly and otherwise; some after a day's stay, convinced that they have been cheated, but the vast majority astounded and perplexed beyond expression by what their eyes have seen and their ears heard.

Through all, the family jog on in the even tenor of their unsystematic way, receiving new-comers with distrust and letting life slide after a happy-go-lucky fashion. Those who stay longest with them have the most confidence in their mediumship, for they discover that their external misanthropy and curtness are the outcome of years of sorrow and injustice, the result of poor education and bad training. More than any man I ever met, William Eddy lives an interior life; and to be in relation, or supposed relation, with the people of the Silent Land, seems as natural to him as it ever was to the ecstatics of the early centuries or the recluses of Brahma.

Among the few favorite localities of the neighborhood are  "Honto's cave" and Santum's grave, of both of

which the artist has supplied illustrations from sketches taken on the spot.

The term cave is a misnomer in this instance, for the rude apartment by which the sprightly squaw's memory will be perpetuated is, like the "Cave" in Central Park, formed by the leaning of one great fragment of rock against another. It lies in dense shadow at the bottom of a ravine, so shrouded in foliage that the cheerful sunlight scarcely penetrates the spot even at high noon. A clear mountain brook running through it ceaselessly awakens its tiny echoes, and the surface of its rocky walls, is scarred in so curious a manner as to convey the impression that the furrows are the half-effaced inscriptions of some prehistoric people. A path, scarcely practicable for a wider foot than that of the chamois or the mountain goat, runs along one of the steep banks, and the wood resounds with the bubble of the streamlet.

The sketch of the cave was drawn by Mr. Kappes from nature, the figures only being supplied from a published account of a spiritual seance held there on the 24th of May 1874, and the descriptions of eye-witnesses. There were present on the occasion in question, among others the following persons, who may be referred to in corroboration of my story; Mr. Andrew Beebe, Ludlow, Mass. ; Charles Wakefield, Boston; James Little, Lake George, N. Y. ; Mrs. Caroline Goss, Hudson, Wisconsin (West Conson, Horatio wrote it, and perhaps "Hudson" means Madison); Mary E. Jewett and Albert Frost, Rutland, Vt.; and the Eddy family.

The night was warm, and a full moon rode high in the heavens. The company assembled at an early hour, and seated themselves on benches, formed by laying boards

on convenient bowlders. In the arched mouth of the cave, Messrs. Saley and Frost bad constructed a rude framework of joists, to support a curtain of shawls; green branches were piled in the farther end, so as to form a backing ; and boards, loosely laid across the little brook, made a platform upon which the medium might sit on a camp-stool. In composing his sketch, the artist has been obliged to omit the curtain and most of the bough backing, so as to permit the light to shine through, and show the arrangement of the platform and framing.

The spectators at this weird gathering sat silent for awhile, and the stillness of the forest was broken only by the noise of the brook, the chirp of insects, and the rustle of the leaves as they stirred in the warm wind of spring. Suddenly the curtain was pushed aside, and the form of an Indian, fully accoutred, came out, stepped into the stream, and, stooping, made the motion of drinking some water from his band. All eyes were riveted upon him, when some one suddenly exclaimed: "See! -up there-on the rock ! " and high overhead appeared the giant spirit form of Santum in bold relief against the moonlit sky. Presently an Indian squaw was seen upon the verge of the rocky ledge to the right, peering down upon the startled group. Thus, at one time, three ghostly visitors were in sight, and while the audience gazed, all three disappeared. Then successively appeared at the cave's mouth, Honto, who knelt and made as if drinking from the brook, and several other red squaws and chiefs, each dressed after his or her own fashion, with plumes and beads, and the other braveries these simple aborigines love so well; William Eddy, meanwhile, talking within the cave so as to be heard by all.

A spirit-voice presently called out that they had been there long enough, and if they would go to the old Indian camp-ground hard by, more wonders would be shown them. The spot indicated is a level plateau not far from the Eddy house, and bears the traces of former councils in a circle of ancient hearths, where, beneath the sod, are to be found the vestiges of fires long since extinguished. Great maples, beeches, and here and there an oak, stand about the camping ground; giant sentinels, beneath whose shade, within the memory of men now living, the relics of once powerful tribes were accustomed to gather from time to time to celebrate their feasts. At one side a flat boulder set on end, marks the spot where Santum (or, perhaps, in view of his frequent appearance before my eyes in his spiritual form, I should say his body) was buried. He might, if one familiar with the classics should suggest it, say to me upon some occasion when we should meet in presence of the right kind of a medium, what Socrates did to his friend Crito, when asked by the latter where and how they should bury him. "Bury me in any way you please, if you can catch me to bury.... Say, rather, Crito, say if you love me, where shall you bury my body."

Santum's tumulus has almost disappeared under the wash of a thousand rains, and a large maple, whose trunk at four feet from the ground measures four feet seven inches in girth, has sent its roots into the chieftain's dust, and, for aught I know, may have incorporated it in the cells and fibres of its own heart. Upon the sketch will be noticed a rude cross chiseled in the stone by one of the Eddy boys.

But, to resume our story:

Our wonder-seekers having reached the place indicated by the spirit-voice, hastily improvised a "cabinet" by pinning some shawls around the trunks of three trees, and William entered it. After a brief interval, the phantom shape of Achsa Sprague, a mediumistic speaker of some note among the Spiritists, emerged, and in a natural voice, addressed her hearers upon the one absorbing topic for about fifteen minutes; her form and the very play of her features being clearly revealed in the bright moonlight. She was followed by Mrs. Goss' brother, who walked some twenty feet from the  cabinet; and next by an Indian, who ventured a like distance away from his medium, and then swung himself up on the branch of a tree and vanished.

The evening's wonders closed with the appearance of the spirit of the late William White, editor of the Banner of Light, the principal organ to the new creed. Mr. White was dressed in black broad-cloth, and had on a white shirt with studs in the bosom, whereas William wore his usual rough working suit, and brown check shirt without collar or cuffs. In his hand the spirit held a copy of the journal he once edited, which he opened, and showed the characteristic heading that the publication of thirty-five successive volumes has made familiar to thousands of persons.

The next morning Messrs. Saley and Swift revisited the cave to search for foot-prints in the soft earth,. at the places where any mortal climbing the rocks would, of necessity, have trodden, but there were none to be seen. The spectres had materialized themselves on the spots where they had respectively been seen.

observe, classify, analyze, and describe what they heard, saw, and felt, they, too, might find themselves flinging their pre-conceived notions behind the grate, and calling things by their right names.

The case-hardened skeptic, driven like me, from his first position of ascribing all these Eddy phenomena to trickery, and anxious to believe anything or everything rather than admit them to be spiritualistic, will ask me to try if they are not electrical, magnetic, mesmeric or odic in their character. Failing all these, he, who probably never before allowed the idea of a personal devil to be mentioned without rebuke, may, as a Rutland editor did the other day in a conversation we held together, say, it is all the work of the Father of Lies himself. This is good sound Catholic doctrine, and an impregnable refuge. Does not Chrysostom say: Quod est in terra in terra maneat si non a diabolo exfossum ? Having this in view, did not Bishop Viviers, in a pastoral letter published in the Roman Catholic Guardian in 1868, remark: " Doubtless there are relations between the intelligence of men and the supernatural world of spirits, but they (i.e. the faithful) should not less certainly be convinced that these experiments are one of the thousand ruses of Satan to cause souls to perish ? "

Now, as to the matter of electricity, that, as I have before observed, has long since been settled in the negative by Professor Hare, Mr. Varley, Mr. Crookes, and others; while the Committee of the London Dialectical Society cover the whole ground by saying that: " No philosophical explanation of them has yet been arrived at." As to animal magnetism, the Society's sub-committee

No. 2 report that they "have not discovered any conditions identical with those ordinarily deemed necessary to the production of the so-called electro-biological or mesmeric phenomena-but often the reverse." And as to their being the product of odic anterior causes, the great discoverer of Od himself ought to be good authority.

Baron von Reichenbach attended a circle in London, the striking incidents of which he has described; and he adds that he regards " the great influences of Od upon the human spirit as the mere physical side of the matter -the roots by which it adheres firmly to the ground; " and he is thankful to see the day when all his former discoveries show themselves as the portal through which it is possible for him " to go forward into the spiritual department." (Epes Sargent's " Planchette," P. 241)

Where will we land, then, but in the camp of the enemy-in the arms of the Spiritists ? Well, if, like Saul of Tarsus, we are to be knocked off our high horses of prejudice and unbelief, and blinded by the great new light that is to pour upon us from the "gates ajar," let us at least console ourselves that we are only getting back to where our ancestors and the ancestors of the whole race stood from the remotest ages. The Hindoo Vedas, Puranas, Bhagavat-Gita, and Ramayanas; the Chinese

Confucian writings; the Koran; the discourses of the Roman and Grecian sages ; the Egyptian records ; the Persian Zend-Avesta; the Jewish Kabbala; and, lastly, the Christian Bible, attest that a belief in the ministration (If good and evil spirits prevailed among all peoples, in all times. These Eddys hear spirit-voices calling to them in the night-watches, and I myself have heard them

in the circle-room singing, whispering, and delivering discourses upon their spirit-life. This is strange, no doubt, and hard to believe, but it is no new experience.

Herodotus mentions an Egyptian monarch who returned to earth some time after his physical death and talked to his people; the famous statue of Memnon at Thebes, which gave forth melodious sounds when first struck by the sun's morning rays, was so haunted by the invisibles, that spirit-voices and spirit-music were heard issuing from it for ages. Strabo, AElius Gallus, Demetrius, and others attest this fact.

J. M. Peebles, tells in his scholarly book, of the man Agrippa, of the XVth Century, who was not more remarkable for his knowledge of languages and wide range of scholarship than for his spiritual gifts. When at the Court of John George, Elector of Saxony, with the great Erasmus, he was solicited to call up the spirit of Tully. Arranging his audience (as these Eddys arrange theirs), he caused Tully to appear upon the rostrum, where he repeated his oration for Roscius " with such astonishing animation, exaltation of spirit, and soul-stirring gestures, that all present, like the Romans of old, were ready to pronounce his client innocent of every charge brought against him."

The mere quotation of Bible passages narrating the visits of talking and dumb spirits to men, would make a chapter by itself; so I will merely refer to a few that I find enumerated in a stray volume (Peebles' "Seers of the Ages") loaned me from a neighboring house, at the time these lines were written. They are: Genesis XiX., I ; XViii., 1-2 ; xxxii., xvi., 7 ; Ex. iii. ; I Kings,

Num.xxii.,31; Sam. xxviii.,14; Job iv.,14-17; Dan. ix-, 21; x., 9-10; x., 18; viii., 15-16; Acts vii., 35; Ezekiel viii., 2; Xi., I. I have recently read over again with singular interest, the passage in Samuel, above cited, as it so well describes the process of materialization of which I have seen so many examples at the Eddys'.

The experiences of these wonderful Eddys, duplicate those of ancient mediums to so minute a degree, that even their dumb animals have been made to speak after the fashion of Balaam's ass. They killed, a while ago, by accident, an old goose which used to get under the windows, some stormy night and say, in sepulchral tones, "God save my poor goslings!" and "Oh, dear! what shall I do?" and sometimes cry out "Murder ! " . Horatio Eddy, in telling me this tough yarn, said that of course he did not believe that the bird's organs of speech were so changed that it could utter words like a Christian, but that" George Dix" or some other jovial spirit "materialized" a voice close to the creature's mouth. William Eddy and several other witnesses assure me that the story is no lie, they having heard the voice not once, but frequently.

My friend, Richard A. Proctor, in one of his astronomical lectures, told us that so far from the expanse of heaven being the abode of peace and quiet, it was the scene of terrific commotion and violence -thus destroying many pretty conceits of the poets. In like manner our notions of the future life are rudely disturbed by the Eddy phenomena and others of like

character. It is no longer a Valley of Shadows and repose, but a busy scene of domestic occupation ; while the singing and talking phantoms call upon Longfellow to rewrite his "Song of the Silent Land," for it seems a land of speech and song, of music and poetry

"OLand! OLand! For all the broken-hearted, The mildest herald by our fate allotted, Beckons, and with inverted torch doth stand To lead us with a gentle hand Into the land of the great Departed Into the Silent Land."

I have to laugh when I recall Proctor's owly wisdom (see his "Borderland of Science") in explaining away all ghosts, by the discovery that the supposed shade of a certain dear one at his bedside, resolved itself into a student gown and rowing-belt. He is a jolly companion and an honorable fellow, and if he could stop at Chittenden one week with me, I warrant he would not only take a more cheerful view of the other life, but write a new volume; perhaps, with the title "Another World than Ours." And my most valued correspondent, Mr. Charles W. Upham, author of the noble work on Salem Witchcraft, who so complacently argues away all supernatural causes for the phenomena of 1692 by crediting Tituba, Ann Proctor, and the other "Afflicted Children" with a thaumaturgic deftness that would entitle them to rank with the greatest of Chinese jugglers-how amazed would he not be to sit beside me and see not only living materialized spirits, but even evanescent animals and flowers produced!

This is a bad place for materialists in general, and if Tyndall should come to this country again he had best avoid Chittenden. We had three of the kind there within a week--a lawyer, an artist, and an inventor. When they first came they were as spry with their arguments as though fresh from the reading of Vogt, Moleschott, or Feuerbach; denying, as Epes Sargent expresses it, with the asperity of partisanship, all evidences of a psychical nature in man, and seeming to take it as a personal affront if credited with immortal souls.

But when these intelligent men sat evening after evening and saw an average of a dozen ghosts a night stand in their presence, and show delight at being recognized by their personal friends, and actually heard some of them speak in clear, natural voices, their discomfiture was comical to behold. Tied to the anchorage of years of skepticism, unable to drift away into the open sea that suddenly lay before them-an Atlantic of thought with unknown countries beyond it-their little shallops fell to rocking and pitching them about, until they seemed in direful plight. One, the toughest customer of the three, the inventor, saw several of his family connection and was converted from unbelief; the second, the lawyer, and a man of fine intellectual powers, departed, big with essays against all religions, and halting between two opinions ; the artist is still thinking.

It would be amusing, if it were not pitiful, to see men able to put two grammatical sentences together, writing crude criticisms and propagating falsehoods about the Eddy manifestations, miles away from the place. They must concede some shrewdness and common-sense to

others, and conceive the possibility that it may be as hard to humbug me as themselves.

I have already said that there are things about the mediums, their antecedents, and their phenomena, to arouse distrust. But let any fair man stay there a week or two, take time to hear both sides of every story, and watch what occurs, and, my word for it, he will carry away food for reflection to last him the rest of his natural life.

It is difficult to understand the hostility of the Church, whose aggressive side is so well shown in the behavior of the Methodist neighbors of the Eddys, to Spiritism, for is it not its keenest and strongest weapon of offence against the materialists? Against a class of profound thinkers, who exclude Faith and demand sensuous proofs of the future existence of man, what argument can be adduced but the fact that our friends actually revisit us after death and talk to us face to face? Is not the spread of materialism the direct consequence of the exclusion of facts which, if true, this modern Spiritism has re-verified, from religious creeds and scientific consideration?

In the early days of the Church the ministration of spirits was unhesitatingly believed by the Fathers, and the Catholic body holds to it to this day. Protestantism apparently made its fatal mistake when it scouted it, and it might have been better for Calvin and Luther if they had honestly confessed that their own personal experiences in this direction were something else than the work of the devil. If modern Spiritualism should prove true, their followers would be in the condition well-defined by Beattie:

"So fares the system-building sage, Who, plodding on from youth to age,

Has proved all other reasoners fools, And bound all nature by his rules; So fares he in that dreadful hour When injured Truth exerts her power Some new phenomenon to raise, Which, bursting on his frightened gaze, From its proud summit to the ground, Proves the whole edifice unsound."

But let us leave polemics to the doctors and return to our story.

Writers upon the subject that we are now discussing, offer various hypotheses to account for the production of visible spectral forms, by the beings of the other world. Some contend that they are created out of the subtle particles existing in the atmosphere, and have a positive, if evanescent, material existence; while others deny their actuality and attribute their being seen to psychological control of our natural senses of sight, hearing, and touch; in like manner as the mesmerist obliges his patient to see, hear, taste, and feel whatsoever he may call up in his own mind. In my opinion, of course supposing that the tales are not bald fiction, the phenomena may be grouped into two classes-apparitions seen only by one or more sensitives or lucides, and those visible to all without regard to their lucidity; and they should be separately considered.

The experiences of the Eddys are of both kinds. Sometimes a phantom has been seen only by the sick or dying; sometimes by those in health, as forerunners of disaster impending over themselves or others; and sometimes in the materialized condition, so that everybody in the house, believers as well as unbelievers,

perceived them equally well. The occurrence illustrated in the sketch of the phantom carriage was of this character. On a cold winter night, just before bed-time, the family were gathered in the sittingroom, when they heard the noise of a carriage coming rapidly along the road from the northward. The circumstance was so strange, the ground being covered with snow which would prevent the noise of wheels being heard, that all went to the front windows to look. A full moon,  shining bright on the new-fallen snow, Gave a lustre of mid-day to objects below; --and they saw an old-fashioned, open carriage, drawn by a pair of white horses with plumes on their heads, turn rapidly into the yard and stop.

Rushing to the back door and flinging it open, there stood the equipage before their astonished eyes. On the back seat was a lady, dressed in Scotch plaid and furs, with a feather in her bonnet. She looked kindly at them and bowed, but said nothing. On his high box sat the driver, a thistle cockade in his hat and a capacious coat with a standing collar muffling him to his chin. Every buckle and trapping of the harness was plainly revealed by the moonlight, and even the ornamental scroll-work on the coach-panels.

The family, with characteristic rustic bashfulness, said nothing, waiting for the grand lady to manifest her pleasure. No one doubted for an instant the reality of what they saw, and even the skeptical and hardhearted father moved to the door so as to be ready to do what might be required for the belated traveler.

But, as all eyes were fixed upon her, she and her equipage began to fade. The garden fence and other objects, previously concealed behind the opaque bodies of the carriage and horses, began to show through, and in a moment the whole thing vanished into the air, leaving the spectators lost in amazement. Old Mr. Eddy at once exclaimed that his wife and her mother had been up to some of their devilish witchcraft again; but they knew that it was a portent of somebody's death. The boys, then only ten or twelve years old, ran for the lantern and searched all over the road and yard for wheel-tracks, but their quest was fruitless. The phantoms had disappeared, without leaving the slightest impression on the snow. Two months later the grandmother died.

Although I dislike to break the sequence of my narrative, I will state, that in a circle one night I held a conversation about this apparition with a spirit-voice, which informed me that the phantom lady was a Scotch ancestress of Mrs. Eddy, who came to warn them of old Mrs. MacComb's death. And since then, at another séance, Mrs. Eddy herself confirmed the fact.

Portents have occurred before the death of each member of the family, but always entirely different in character from the predecessors, and happening unexpectedly. Mrs. Eddy, the mother of these children, deceased in 1873 after a lingering illness. During the whole time she lay in bed, manifestations of the presence of the departed were frequent. When the surviving children were wearied out with watching, Mrs. Eddy would send them to bed under the pretence that

she needed quiet, and they, watching secretly, would see their dead sister Miranda's spirit in materialized form, doing the necessary offices for the invalid. They would hear her talking with their mother, and when it was necessary to turn her, the spirit, with the help of other spirits, would do it.

One day, as they sat at dinner, soft strains of music came through the open door, and going outside, they heard sweet airs played at the corner of the house, by an invisible harp and flute, the sound gradually receding and dying away on the air. A week before she breathed her last, her own dead mother, to warn whom the phantom lady came in her unsubstantial coach, appeared in materialized form to them all, bearing a basket of white roses in her hand. She told them that Mrs. Eddy would soon come "over the river " to her, and she was waiting to welcome her on the farther shore. The old lady wore the same dress as in life a brown woolen frock, a round calico cape, a check apron, and a cap on her head; her scissors hung as usual at her side, and no detail was lacking to make her identification complete. She left a message for Horatio, to the effect that many years before, when about starting on a journey, she had hidden a string of gold beads in a snuff-box in the cellar wall; and directed him to find it and give the necklace to his youngest sister to wear for her sake. Search was made, off and on, for several months, and finally the box and contents were discovered by Horatio behind a stone in the north side of the cellar wall. The artist has sketched them, and they accompany this chapter.

Horatio, just before his mother's decease, was absent from home, and at her request was sent for. Delia went to the table and wrote the letter of recall ; and, leaving it open while searching for an envelope in another room, she found upon her return that a postscript had been added by the spirit of Miranda, and signed with her familiar autograph. The good lady finally closed her eyes upon the scene of so much misery and suffering; but she did not go far away, for before the funeral she materialized in Delia's presence, and directed her to remove the crape they had hung on the door, there being, she said, occasion for rejoicing rather than for mourning.

How she looked on this occasion I can perfectly understand, for I have seen her materialized on several occasions, and heard her speak, as I will more fully describe in a future chapter.

Mr. Owen relates, at pages 328 and 329 of his "Debatable Land," three cases of ghostly wagons and carriages being heard in England and the United States, but they were not precursors of death. Neither was the frightful apparition, related by Mrs. Crowe, in her " Night Side of Nature," page 413, of the horse and cart at Haverhill, Mass., with its fierce-looking driver and the fearful gray-haired woman lashed to the cart, writhing and struggling to get free.

Nor the "Wild Troop of Rodenstein", a spectral robber band, that at certain times swept along the road between the castles of  Rodenstein and Schnellert ; invisible, but making the round shake and the air resound with the noise of their phantom horses and

carriages, and barking dogs and cracking whips. Nor the herds of ghostly beasts, driven by a spectral herdsman accompanied by his long-haired, black dog, that cross the country in another part of Germany.

These instances serve to show that something, call it spirits or what we will, has the power to call into a temporary but altogether deceptive existence, the forms of animals, carriages and men; and my object in referring to them is to divest the phantom-carriage incident, in the Eddy family history, of much of the air of improbability that it would have if suffered to stand alone without the citation of similar phenomena happening elsewhere.

The discovery of the law by which these things can be made to occur, is among the most interesting of the results that promise to reward the labors of the scientific investigator. When it is demonstrated how motion can be conveyed to the phantasmal imitations of inanimate objects, like a wagon, and life be temporarily imparted to the ghostly shapes of animals, it will evidently be necessary for us to reconstruct our present beliefs as to the nature of force, and the limits of its manifestation.

am well aware that the materialization of spirits, is what the public is most anxious to hear about, but I cannot take up that phase of the subject, before at least skimming the surface of this family history for the other marvelous experiences to which its members have been subjected. It would be like Columbus returning from his gold hunt in the new country with no account of its geography, fauna, flora, or human inhabitants. The stories I am recording were not gathered at appointed sittings, at which the narrator might have been tempted to stretch fancy to help make literary sensations; but in general social conversation, over our pipes around the evening fire, as the discussion of varied topics drew them out. And in every case they have been attested by more than one witness. For the present we will occupy ourselves with more familiar phases of the mediumship. There will be abundant opportunity for me to present the materialization question in its most novel and interesting aspects.

We were upon the subject of portents fore-running death, and in my last chapter I described some that befell, before Mrs. Eddy, the mother, left this world for the other. About a year before the father died, he retired one night, in his usual health to his sleeping- room in the L part, leaving the family in the sitting-room. In a few moments they were startled by seeing him, or what seemed himself, standing in the door leading into the front hall, with his outer clothing removed. The following diagram will show the room they were in, and so account for their alarm:

that it was impossible for him to have reached the place without passing directly through

A is the sitting-room; B Mr. Eddy's sleeping-room; C his bed; D the door where he was seen; E fire-place.

From the room A he could be seen by the family lying in his bed, and yet, there, he or his second self stood at the hall-door! Mrs. Eddy called to him and he answered from his bed, scolding them for disturbing him. The silent figure was then nothing less than his " double " or wraith.

The son James died of diphtheria in 1862 in the north room (marked F on the diagram). A week before the event he asked his mother who the lady was who came every day on the white horse to visit him. She thought his mind wandered, and set to pacifying him, saying that there was no lady nor any white horse, and he must not disturb his mind with such fancies. He insisted that there was a lady, and that she rode up every day at a certain hour, tied her horse to the hitching-post and came and sat in his room, waiting, as she said, for him to come with her. The mother then said it must be a spirit, but

he declared that it was no spirit, but a living person. At this very time Dr. Ross, of Rutland, the attendant physician, prophesied his recovery, but the mother recognized the phantom rider as a warning, and her fears were justified a few days later. The night he died he appeared to his brother William, then a lad working in the dairy on Warren Leland's farm in Westchester County, N. Y., and who started for home before the next dawn. He reached the door of his home weeping bitterly, and anticipated the evil tidings by saying he knew all about it and had come home to the funeral.

How vividly this incident recalls the case of the two illustrious friends, Michael Mercatus and Marcellinus Ficinus, as related by Baronius:

After a long discourse upon the immortality of the soul, they mutually pledged their word that whoever should die first would appear to the survivor. Shortly after, Mercatus being one morning deeply engaged in study, heard the noise of a horse galloping in the street, which presently stopped at his door, and the voice of Ficinus called to him Oh, Michael ! oh, Michael ! vera sunt illa -those things are true". Rushing to the window and flinging open the casement, he plainly saw his friend on a while steed. He called after him, but without another word he galloped out of sight. Thereupon he sent immediately to Florence to inquire concerning his friend's health, and learned that he died about that hour he called to him.

Mrs. Crowe tells of an Edinburgh citizen who, riding gently up Corstorphine hill one day, observed ail intimate friend of his own, on horseback also, immediately behind him. He slackened his pace to give him time to come up, but presently was amazed to find no one in sight, although there was no side road by which his friend could have departed. Perplexed in mind at the strange circumstance, he returned

home to find that during his absence his friend had been killed by his horse falling in Candlemaker's Row.

Again, a Yorkshire farmer's wife, away from home, was suddenly seen to ride into the farm yard on horseback and then disappear, and she was afterward found to have died at that precise time.

One day, before Miranda Eddy's death, the family were sitting at dinner, when suddenly a heavy bell tolled one, in the air, right over their heads, and the reverberations of the peal died away while they listened for the stroke to be repeated. Miranda saw James and Francis in the spirit and gave orders for her own tombstone. She ordered the inscription - "Not dead but risen. Why seek ye the living among the dead?"--to be placed upon it. The survivors declare that she was the greatest medium in the whole family. An old woman of the neighborhood, who has the same passion for laying out corpses that a famous New York thief, nicknamed "The Chief Mourner," had for attending funerals, was counting upon the pleasant job Miranda was soon to furnish her, but the dying girl said the miserable creature should never close her eyes. She made her mother promise that no one but she should touch her body, and then calmly awaited the end. As the ebb of life interfered with her breathing, Mrs. Stephen Baird, a friendly neighbor, supported her in her arms. The last minute arrived, the wrist was pulseless, and the last gasp was being taken, when the dead right arm raised itself, and the dead hand closed the glazed eyes. Here is Mrs. Baird's own certificate:

Chittenden;, October 5th, 1874.-I certify that I was present on the occasion of Miranda Eddy's death ; that I held her up at the last moment ; and that, just at her last gasp, her arm rose and her right hand closed her eyes."     MARY BAIRD.

Miranda wrote her own obituary verses, which, at the family's request, I quote:

There's a silence in parlor and chamber, There's a sadness in every room ; Tho' we know 't was the Father who claimed her, Yet everything 's burdened with gloom. But we will not be comfortless mourners, For we know where the angels have borne her, And soon we shall see her again."

Francis Lightfoot Eddy was Orderly Sergeant of Company G, 5th Vermont Volunteers, in the late war. He contracted a heavy cold in the army that soon ran into quick consumption, and the poor fellow came home to die. He lay sick three months, but three days before the end approached, he wrote in the family Bible, the exact day and hour of his death. A fortnight previous to this, the family heard a wagon drive up to the front door, one evening, the latch lifted and the button turned, and they saw two soldiers bring in a coffin and place it in the entry, and then retire and drive off without saying a word. On the coffin was a plate with a name upon it, which not 'being able to read in the obscurity, they went for a candle; but upon its being brought, the coffin had vanished like its mysterious bearers. When Francis died they sent to Rutland by a neighbor for his coffin, and when that was brought, it was the counterpart of its spectral double, to the very plate and nails.

Francis also dictated the style of his tombstone and Wished it to bear the inscription, "passed into the

world of spirits,'' instead of the usual formula, "died." He also wanted a flag carved on the stone, surmounted by the legend; " Freedom at last." But old Mr. Eddy was bound to have his own way in this as in everything else, and set up a stone to suit himself. This enraged the boy's spirit so much that he came back in materialized and unmaterialized form, and annoyed them until they replaced the obnoxious marble with one according with his dying request.

In the spring of 1863 the child of Sophia Eddy, wife of Sylvester Chase, of Bennington, Vt., lay sick at the old Eddy homestead, of lung fever. Her death was expected by all, and Delia ironed a white dress and skirt for the little girl and laid them away in the mother's trunk. One evening Horatio went out to the penstock for water, and, looking up, he saw his own room in the second story lighted up and two strange old women walking about, shaking the invalid's dresses and busying themselves in other preparations, apparently for the coming death. He ran up-stairs, and, opening his door, found a table set in the middle of the floor, covered with a sheet taken from the bed and on it the child's clothes, which had been removed from the trunk in another room. The smoking wicks of two candles showed the source of the light he had observed. Knowing by experience what this sort of thin,- meant, he came down and told the watchers that the child would die, The mother at once fell into a violent convulsion, which ended in a dead faint. Meanwhile Horatio had gone to the door and stood watching the reliting of the candles and the moving about of the ghostly women, when, just as Mrs. Chase had fainted, the

light Was extinguished, there was a rush of invisible feet down tile stairs and into the chamber and the child soon began to mend in the arms of William, who tended the little one with affectionate care. They were afterwards told that it was fully expected that she would die, and spirit friends had gathered there to receive her, but the mother's alarming condition induced them to unite their efforts to keep alive the flickering spark of life.

Now, please bear in mind that all these portents have had their prototypes in various countries at various times The books are full of them, and unless we choose to reject corroborative testimony of a character and to a degree that would substantiate any other facts in any court of justice, we have no right to whistle these psychological phenomena down the wind. If they have occurred more frequently than might be wished in the presence of illiterate and plain people who were incapacitated to observe and study them to the best advantage, it is only the louder call upon men of science to take up the inquiry and set our minds at rest. Says Mr. Crookes in the Quarterly Journal of Science for July, 1871 :

"It argues ill for the boasted freedom of opinion among scientific men, that they have so long refused to institute a scientific investigation into the existence and nature of facts asserted by so many competent and credible witnesses, and which they are freely invited to examine when and where they please. For my own part I too much value the pursuit of truth, and the discovery of any new fact in nature, to avoid inquiry because it appears to clash with prevailing opinions."

These are noble words, and worthy of consideration by every scientist who would not be considered an obstructionist in this time of progress. He adds in the same article:

"I confess I am surprised and pained at the timidity or apathy shown by scientific men in reference to this subject. Some little time ago, when an opportunity for examination was first presented to me, I invited the co-operation of some scientific friends in a systematic investigation ; but I soon found that to obtain a scientific committee for the investigation of this class of facts was out of the question, and that I must be content to rely on my own endeavors, aided by the co- operation from time to time of a few scientific and learned friends who were willing to join in the inquiry."

When Mr. Crookes announced in 1870 his intention to take up this new branch of scientific inquiry, his determination was applauded by the most influential journals in Europe. "Now," they said, " we shall have the facts, for now a truly great student of nature is set about finding it all out." But when he found it out and announced, like the honest and brave man he is, that his researches warranted the belief that spiritual intercourse was a demonstrable truth, he was abused and vilified to such a degree as to make it apparent that what he was expected to discover was something that would not run counter to popular prejudice.

I have said that the Eddy portents have their prototypes. The frequency of this class of phenomena, led the German psychologists to adopt the doctrine of guardian spirits--"a doctrine," says Mrs. Crowe, "which has prevailed more or less in all ages, and has been considered by many theologians to be supported by the Bible."

The literal accuracy of the sketch of "The Phantom Carriage " has been endorsed on three separate occasions since its appearance in the Daily Graphic, by what claimed to be spirits, who addressed me in audible voice-one of the three Mrs. Eddy herself-and all three assert that the apparition was sent by a

guardian spirit. I know the full value of words, and I mean to say unequivocally that a woman--a breathing, walking palpable woman, as palpable as any other woman in the room, recognized not only by her sons and daughters, but also by neighbors present, as Mrs. Zephaniah Eddy, deceased December 29th, 1872--on the evening of October 2nd, 1874, walked out of a cabinet where there was only one mortal, and where, under ascertained circumstances, only this one man could have been at the time, and spoke to me personally in audible voice. And nineteen other persons saw her at the same time, and heard her discourse.

The records teem with instances of warnings being conveyed by supernatural agency, to persons in temporary danger, as well as to those about to die. Among the most interesting is that of the white- robed child Immanuel, who attended Frau Jung Stilling from 1799 to her death. He would forewarn her of dangers, attended her when traveling, and hovered near at all times and seasons. He addressed her in a language of his own, which, though unintelligible to others, she somehow understood. When she asked the spirit to show himself to her husband he refused, alleging that to do so would make him ill and cause his death. "Few persons," he explained, " are able to see such things."

After the death of Dante, it was discovered that the thirteenth canto of the "Paradiso" was missing, and all search for it proved unavailing. But after some months the dead poet appeared to his son Pietro Alighieri, and told him that if he removed a certain panel near the window of the room in

which the poem was written, the missing canto would be found. And it was found, much mildewed but legible.

The story I told of Horatio Eddy's finding his grandmother's snuff-box and gold necklace, has its counterpart in the case of Madame von Militz (related by Mrs. Crowe), who, being about to sell her ancestral home, was instructed by a voice to go to the cellar and open a certain part of the wall. She did so, and found a goblet in which was a small gold ring, on which was engraven the name Anna von Millitz.

A Scotch gentleman, who was passing the night in the Manse of Strachur, Argyleshire, was visited during the night by an apparition, which said: "I come to tell you that this day twelvemonth you will be with your father." By a most curious concatenation of circumstances, he lost his life at the very time indicated, in a storm.

I have mentioned the appearance of James Eddy to his brother William at the moment of his death, and if I had space, could cite twenty similar cases from familiar authors. One will suffice for the present. Lord Balcarres was confined in the castle of Edinburgh on a charge of Jacobitism, and one night, saw his friend Viscount Dundee open the curtains of his bed and look in upon him; and then walk to the mantel-piece, lean upon it a moment, and go out of the room. At the same hour, as it subsequently appeared, the Viscount had died.

When it is known that William Eddy never had a month's schooling in his life, and that he is almost illiterate, it will readily be imagined that he never even heard of Lord Balcarres.

The curious weapon of which the artist has furnished a sketch was dug out of the ground, from a depth of four feet below the surface, by Horatio Eddy, near Batavia, N. Y., where he happened to be exhibiting, some years ago. His information as to its locality, was obtained, he says, from a spirit. The shape of the weapon, and the quaint ornamentation of the bronze handle, will interest the antiquary.

The sketch of the Spinning Ghost tells the story of a curious family experience, attested to me by every member of the Eddy connection that I have seen. After old Mrs. Macomb's death, she was for years in the habit of returning to the north room on the second floor and turning her spinning-wheel. Four of the boys slept there, and the wheel stood in the south-east corner, behind the door. The children were greatly frightened at first to hear the buzz and see no one, but they soon grew familiar with

the thing, and finally, to be sure that grandmother would awaken them, they hung a little bell on the wheel. The phenomenon, which had frightened them at first so that they hid their little faces beneath the bed-covering, had become a nightly diversion. After awhile the spirit materialized herself, feebly at first but stronger by degrees, until she would come looking exactly as when alive. The sketch represents the scene with absolute accuracy, and it is worth while to call attention to the fact that, except for the title, no one would suspect that the woman was not of this world. It was intended that it should be just so, for I can assure the reader, that, so far from the materialized spirits who appear in the Eddy it circle- room " seeming ghostlike, they are as substantial in every respect as any of us who gaze at the weird phalanx of the dead-alive.

beyond mistake, and declare that, if I misrepresent what I see, hear, and feel, it will be through lack of trained powers of observation, and the consequent deception of my senses, and no other cause. Of course there is danger of this very thing, for I am not capable of doing the work of the man of science, any more than that of the dentist or cabinet-maker. But perhaps I am as competent as the average of laymen, and so we will let it pass at that.

There were one or two pseudo-investigators at the Eddys' during my visit, skipping in for a day or so, and skipping off again, ready to avow that all of William's " materialized spirits" were William in disguise, and all of Horatio's surprising manifestations, the easy tricks of a traveling conjuror. If one tells them of babies being carried in from the cabinet by women ; of young girls with lithe forms, yellow hair, and short stature; of old women and men standing in full sight and speaking to us ; of half-grown children seen., two at a time, simultaneously with another form ; of costumes of different makes; of bald beads, gray hair, black, shocky heads of hair, curly hair; of -hosts instantly recognized by friends and ghosts speaking audibly in a foreign language of which the rnedium is ignorant-their equanimity is not disturbed for an instant. One sound and sufficient rule is applied : exclude everything troublesome, and explain away the rest as fraud. Let the world wag as it will, they are omniscient and infallible; and, with Sir Oracle, say :

" When I ope my mouth, let no (log bark."

The credulity of some scientific men, too, is bound less-they would rather believe that a baby could lift a

mountain without levers, than that a spirit could lift an ounce. Alfred Wallace, of London, told a friend of mine that if a new fact were presented to Tyndall he would smell it, look at it, taste it, turn it over, handle it, bite it,-and then wouldn't believe. This is an extreme illustration of scientific skepticism, but after all it fairly illustrates the habit which, properly moderated, protects the world from false teaching. At the same time it must be admitted, that this spirit clogs the wheels of Progress, and obliges discoverers to win their just renown at the price of suffering and persecution. The other day a visitor at the Eddys' offered to bet me $1,000 to $100 that he could personate every one of the ghosts he saw that night, with a few dollars' worth of stage properties, and do every "trick" of Horatio's light circle after a day's preparation. All I could say was, that in such case he need not hunt for gold mines, for he had one in his head and fingers.

The phenomena publicly exhibited at the Eddy homestead are of the following character: 1 The so-called materialization of spirit-forms, which occur in a "circle-room" in the second story of the a part of the house. 2. The showing of materialized hands; the "ring test;" writing of names of deceased persons upon cards, by detached hands; and playing on instruments in the light; which usually happen in a circle held at the conclusion of the materialization circle. 3. The playing of musical instruments; voices; the sound of heavy dancing; the moving of ponderous bodies; the floating of musical instruments through the air; the noise of struggles and sword combats between two

where the medium, William H. Eddy, sits) is 5 feet 9 7-8 inches high by 2 feet wide. The ceiling of the cabinet at the chimney end is 7 feet 2 inches, and 5 feet at the other end, where the roof slopes. Three sides of the closet are lath and plaster; the fourth the solid brick wall of the chimney. There are no panels to slide, no loose boards in the floor to lift. Every inch is tight and solid. Outside the cabinet a platform as long as the width of the room, and 6 feet 7 inches wide in its widest part, is elevated 23 1-4 inches above the general floor level. Along its outer edge runs a balustrade or handrail, 2 feet 6 inches high, making the height from the floor of the room to the top of the rail, 4 feet 5 1-4 inches. The outside measurements of the L, correspond with those of the circle-room.

For six months after the hall was built, there was no window in the cabinet, but one evening during the excessively hot weather of last July, the medium fainted upon coming out of the stifling place, and the window was cut through.

This window, in consequence of insinuations of its possible use for the introduction of costumes and confederates, I obtained permission to effectually seal up, which I did by tacking a fine mosquito netting over the frame outside, and sealing it with wax stamped with my signet.

This precaution made no difference in what occurred inside. I examined the netting every day until I left the place., about three weeks afterward, and found it just as I left it, with the exception that one night a violent gale and rain-storm made a slight rent, which I

immediately repaired. Before this covering was put on, the window was watched from the outside, during a seance, and no confederacy was discovered.

The audience occupy the two benches and the chairs shown on the diagram. The circles being held by night, such feeble illumination as there is, comes from a kerosene lamp placed at the south side of the room, at the point indicated in the ground plan. My own post of observation is also shown.

It will be remembered that beneath the circle-room are the dining-room, a small kitchen, and smaller buttery, all of which were illustrated in Chapter II. The ceilings of the rooms beneath, are the old lathed and plastered ceilings that have been there for many years. The new story was only added last spring, before which time the circles were held in a large sitting or reception room in the main house. The new circle-room floor is supported on beams of 6 by 4 inch stuff running across the L, and comprises two layers of boards; one rough, laid with open joints, and the upper one of planed, but not tongued and grooved, lumber. This is the common fashion in this section of the country, as I ascertained by examining a new house in course of completion a short distance from the Eddy homestead, There is no floor below the platform floor, but the outer edge of the platform rests upon a stout timber, and its floor, laid like the rest in two layers, is nailed to transverse ribs framed into the crosstimber and the outside plate. By going with a candle into the two little dark pantries opening out from the kitchen and buttery respectively, the whole carpentry

of the platform and cabinet can be easily seen. One of the cuts gives a sectional view of the same.

I have made two careful examinations of this matter - once with the artist, and once with a Massachusetts inventor, who was good enough to give me the follow certificateing certificate:

CHITTENDON, Vt., September 26th, 1874-The undersigned, an inventor of many years' experience, a mechanician, and the grantee of twenty-three patents by the United States Government, hereby certifies that, at the request of and in company with Mr. H. S. Olcott he has thoroughly examined the walls, window, ceiling and floor of William H. Eddy's "cabinet," and the floor of the platform upon which it opens, and that there is no possible means by which confederates could be introduced into the said cabinet, except through the open door, in full face of the audience ; nor any place where costumes or apparatus could be stowed. Furthermore, that after witnessing numerous materializations by alleged spirits, he is perfectly satisfied that the phenomena, whatever may be their origin, are not produced by jugglery, the personation of characters by Win. H. Eddy, or chemical or mechanical device. As to their being spiritual appearances, he has not become perfectly satisfied, for his previously entertained opinions as to a future state, have not been of a nature to allow him to concede the possibility of visits by the inhabitants of another world to this. 0. F. MORRILL, Chelsea, Mass.

A glance at the ground plan of the circle-room will show that, not only can no one get to the medium, after he goes into the cabinet, by entering the door of the circle-room, without detection, but no one can leave the circle to assist. The light, although very dim, is still quite sufficient to make the movements of every person in the room visible.

Stress has been laid upon the fact that members of the Eddy family, sit with the spectators and usually in the front row. But, in the first place, there are times when neither of the family, except William, is in the

room; secondly, they as often sit behind the last bench as on tile front one; and in the third place, it makes no difference where they sit, for no one could move a foot away from his place without being seen by every one else in the room.

Over the circle-room there is nothing but an unfloored cock-loft, in which a man cannot stand upright. Between the braces, the lathing and plaster of the ceiling of the room below are exposed to view, and there is no sign of trap or opening. Moreover, when I examined the place, the old cobwebs stretched from rafter to rafter, showed that no one had preceded me that way, for a long time at least.

I now claim that I have demonstrated the inaccessibility of the cabinet to evil-disposed persons, and so eliminated one most important Source of deception. The question is therefore narrowed down to the following point: Granted that certain forms, apparently differing in sizes, colors, costumes, sex, and age, present themselves on the platform, they must be either, (1) deceptive personations by one man, or (2) the manifestations of an occult force. There is no escape from the syllogism. The battle must be fought out at that cabinet door. I realiz