VERY UNEXPECTEDLY MADE.

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here given may be confidently relied on; and that Mr. X———'s word may be unhesitatingly taken when he assured me, as he did after completing the story, that there had occurred no tecedent circumstance whatever which could give him the slightest reason to imagine that any one would apply for drap d'été; or that there was the most remote chance of his effecting the sale in question.

In this case the minute particulars of time, place, and attendant circumstances-the unforeseen absence of the usual salesman, the specific article demanded, the unusual quantity so closely approaching the amount actually sold-are such that we are compelled to reject the idea of chance coincidence.

In the Erskine case one can comprehend the motive that recalled the departed spirit; the same which operates in the majority of such cases-attraction through the affections: here displayed in humble fashion, indeed-in anxiety that the "auld gude-wife," as a Scotch domestic of those days would be likely to phrase it, should, in her poverty and widowhood, have her own-yet none the less a phase of the longings of true love.

But in the Philadelphia case one can imagine no attracting motive whatever seeing that the predicted sale, to a particular amount and at a particular hour and day, was of no conse quence to any human being, except only as proof that, when Paul enumerated among the gifts common in the early Christian Church, the gift of prophecy, he was speaking of a phe nomenon which actually exists and which is not miraculous.

BOOK III.

PHYSICAL MANIFESTATIONS.

CHAPTER I.

THE SPIRIT-RAP.

Ir is not a difficult thing, if one has time and patience and an honest love of truth, to satisfy one's self, past all possible peradventure, that what is called the spirit-rap is, like the electric spark, a genuine phenomenon, with momentous sequences. And these strange echoes may be as surely referred to agencies from another sphere as the spark from the Leyden jar may be identified with the lightning from the thunder-cloud. They occur, like that mysterious spark, under certain conditions; but they cannot, as it can, be called forth with certainty at any moment; for, being spiritual in their origin, they are not at the bock and call of man.

The conditions under which they present themselves are sometimes of a personal, sometimes of an endemical character. They occur more frequently and more persistently in certain localities than in others, and they are heard much more frequently in the presence of some persons, called mediums or sensitives, than of others. They are usually most loud and powerful where the two conditions, personal and local, are found combined.

I have heard them as delicate, tiny tickings, and as thundering poundings. I have heard them not only throughout

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our own land, but in foreign countries; as in England, France, Italy. I have heard them in broad daylight and in darkened rooms; usually most violent in the latter. I have heard them in my own house and in a hundred others; out of doors; at sea and on land; in steamer and in sail-boat; in the forest and on the rocks of the sea-shore.

But in no circumstances have I witnessed this wonderful phenomenon under such varied conditions, and with such satisfactory results, as in the presence of two members of that family, in whose dwelling in Western New York, it originally showed itself—namely, the eldest and the youngest daughters of Mrs. Fox.* The faculty of mediumship, or as it might otherwise be expressed, the gift of spiritual sensitiveness, was hereditary in the family. † 1n Leah Fox (Mrs. Underhill) and in Kate Fox I have found the manifestations of this power, or gift, in connection with the spirit-rap, more marked and more readily to be obtained, than in any other persons with whom I am acquainted, either here or in Europe.

And it is due to these ladies and to Mr. Underhill to say that they have kindly afforded me at all times every facility I could desire to test these and other spiritual phenomena under the strictest precautions against deception: well knowing that I took these for the sake of others rather than to remove doubts

of my own. Nor, in all my intercourse with them, have I ever seen the slightest cause for believing that they were ac tuated by other motive than a frank wish that the truth should be ascertained and acknowledged.

In the autumn of the same year in which I published "Footfalls," I accepted from Mr. Underhill an invitation to spend a week or two at his house: thus obtaining ample opportunity to investigate this and cognate manifestations.

* For particulars of the disturbances in the Fox family, especially on March 31, 1848, and succeeding days, see Footfalls, pp. 287–298. + Footfalls, pp. 284, 285.

+ Daniel Underhill, President of an old-established Insurance Com pany in Wall street, New York.

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THE RAPPINGS TESTED.

One of my first experiments was to pray Mrs. Underhill to accompany me over the house, in quest of rappings. Begin ning in the lower parlors, I asked if we could have raps on the floor, then from the walls, then from the ceiling, then on various articles of furniture. In each case the response was prompt, and the raps loud enough to be heard in the next room. Then I asked for them on the steel grate and on the marble mantle-piece. Thence they sounded quite distinctly, but less sharply-with a duller sound-than before. Then, setting open one of the doors into the passage, placing myself so that I could see both sides of it and putting my hand on one of its panels, I begged Mrs. Underhill to stand a few feet from it and, reaching out one of her arms, to touch it with the tips of her fingers. Within two or three seconds after she had done so, there were raps on the door as loud as if some one had knocked on it sharply with his knuckles; and the wood vibrated quite sensibly under my touch, as if struck by a pretty strong blow.*

When we passed out into the corridor and up the stairway, it was no longer necessary to request rappings. They sounded under our feet as we went; on the steps and then from the hand-rail, as we ascended; from various parts of a sitting-room and of other apartments on the second floor: then, again, on the stairs leading to the third story and in every chamber there. It was evident that, in Mrs. Underhill's presence, they could be had from any spot in the house. I found, too, that if I requested to have any particular number of raps, they were given with unfailing precision.

The sounds were peculiar. I could not imitate them with the hammer, nor with the knuckle on wood, nor in any other way. They seemed more or less muffled.

I have repeated similar experiments several times with Mrs.

* Some time afterward I repeated the same experiment at the house of Mrs. C—, sister of one of the best known among the New York editors, where I accidentally met Mr. and Mrs. Underhill, and where conversation happened to turn on the raps.

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Underhill and with her sister Kate, in various places, and always with the same result. With other mediums the responses were more or less prompt; and sometimes they were confined to the table at which we were sitting.

Passing by, for the moment, the hundreds of proofs which teach that an occult intelligence governs the spirit-rap and speaks through it, I keep to the physical aspect of the phe

nomenon.

ON THE WATER AND IN THE LIVING WOOD.

On the tenth of July, 1861, I joined a few friends in an excursion from the city of New York, by steamboat, to the Highlands of Neversink; Mr. and Mrs. Underhill being of the party.

It occurred to me, while sitting on deck by Mrs. Underhill, to ask if we could have the raps there. Instantly they were distinctly heard first, from the deck; then I heard them, and quite plainly felt them, on the wooden stool on which I sat.

In the afternoon our party went out in a sailing-boat, fifteen or twenty feet long. There, again at my suggestion, we had them, sounding from under the floor of the boat. It had a centre-board, or sliding keel, and we had raps from within the long, narrow box that inclosed it. At any part of this box where we called for the raps, we obtained them.

In the evening we ascended a hill, back of the hotel, to the light-house. In returning and passing through a wood on the hill-side, I proposed to try if we could have raps from the ground and immediately I plainly heard them from beneath the ground on which we trod: it was a dull sound, as of blows struck on the earth. Then I asked Mrs. Underhill to touch one of the trees with the tips of her fingers, and, applying my ear to the tree, I heard the raps from beneath the bark. Other persons of our party verified this, as I had done.

In returning, next morning, on another steamer, we had raps on the hand-rail of the upper promenade deck, and also