scrutineers from the audience, and then
making the man's coat come off, and a ring pass over his arm, behind a
simple rug held in front of him, is quite as wonderful as anything I
have ever witnessed at a seance. It has the great advantage of being
done in the light, instead of, as in Mr. Fay's case, in darkness, and
without a cabinet. In fact, I have no idea how it's done; though I have
no doubt the first time I see Dr. Sexton he will point to something
unsatisfactory in the bolts to which that doorkeeper is fastened, and
give me the addresses of the ironmonger who will sell me some like them,
or the tailor who will manufacture me a swallow tail coat with an
imperceptible slit down the back. Then again, I have, as I said, seen
young Mr. Sexton go in and out of the corded box, and I know how that's
done; but Dr. Lynn's man goes into three, one inside the other. Well, I
can understand that if Dr. Sexton's theory be correct, it may perhaps be
as easy to get into a "nest" of three as into one box; but how, in the
name of nature--or art--does the nautical gentleman get out of the
double sack in which he is tied? I cannot bring myself to print what Dr.
Sexton's theory of the box is, because it appears to be such a wanton
cruelty to "expose" things when people go to the Egyptian Hall on
purpose to be mystified. I remember how the fact of having seen Dr.
Sexton do the trick of reading the names in the hat spoilt my enjoyment
of Dr. Lynn's experiment. He really appeared quite bungling when I knew
all he was about. He did not, on this occasion, produce the letters on
his arm; but I saw he could quite easily have done so, though the doing
it would have been no sort of reproduction of Mr. Forster's
manifestation, who showed you the name of some relative when you had
looked in on him quite unexpectedly. I can quite understand how it is
that the spiritualists, who hold these matters to be sacred as
revelation itself--in fact, to be revelation itself, are shocked at
seeing their convictions denounced as trickery and "exposed" on a public
platform; but I confess I do not quite see how they can adopt the tu
quoque principle, and "expose" Dr. Lynn and Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke
as tricksters, because they do not pretend to be anything else. It
would have been fatal if the magicians had "found out" Moses, and they
wisely refrained from trying; but it would have served no purpose for
Moses to "find out" the magicians: and it strikes me Mo