or has not been deceived; and, moreover, even if
accepted at secondhand, I doubt whether facts so accepted ever become,
as it were, assimilated, so as to have any practical effect.

My facts at all events came at first-hand. I suppose a man need not be
considered credulous for believing in his own wife, and nearly all these
phenomena were produced by my wife's mediumship. It was not until late
in the year 1865 or early in 1866, that I ever sat with a professional
medium. My wife, moreover, from first to last, has steadily disbelieved
the spirit theory, so that she has not laid herself open to suspicion of
being prejudiced in favour of the subject. She has been emphatically an
involuntary, nay, even unwilling agent in these matters.

During these eight or nine years the communications were generally given
by automatic writing, though sometimes still by tilting of the table. I
am very much tempted to quote two, which linger in my recollection,
principally, I believe, because they were so destructive of the
cerebration theory, besides being curious in themselves. I kept no
records until a later date. At present all rests on tradition. Each of
these cases occurred in presence of myself, my wife, and a pupil. In the
former, he was a young Englishman, who had lived a great deal abroad,
whose mother was a Catholic and father a Protestant. He had been brought
up in the latter faith; and when I desired him to ask a mental question,
he asked, in French--that being the language most familiar to him--"Is
the Catholic or the Protestant religion the true one?" Mark you, he
never articulated this, or gave the least hint that he was asking in
French. He did it in fact, spontaneously. My wife immediately wrote "Ta
mere est Catholique"--so far, in French, with difficulty, and then
breaking off into English, "Respect her faith."

In the second instance, my pupil was a French youth, a Catholic, who was
living in my house, but used to go to his priest frequently to be
prepared for his first communion. One day when we were writing, this
youth asked who the communicating spirit was, and received in reply the
name of Louis D----. The name was totally unknown to us; but to our
surprise when the youth came back from his visit to the priest that day
he informed us that his reverend instructor had dwelt strongly on the
virtues of Louis D----. Seeing the boy look amazed as the name which had
just been given at our seance was pronounced, the priest