ded was haunted. This, as well as other evidence of the public
feeling at that time, was cleverly employed for her own benefit by Leah,
who easily foresaw how anything that might bear the semblance of religious
persecution would promote her cause, false though it was, by bringing to
it both greater notoriety and widespread sympathy.

There is no doubt, too, that if there had not been a very strong vein of
superstition in the Fox family, the first "rappings" would never have
produced the deep impression that they did on the mother and her son
David. Many strange stories, which had been handed down from a grandfather
or a great-grandfather, a great uncle or a great aunt, were told at the
fireside with such embellishment as will inevitably come from recital and
repetition to a wonder-delighting audience. There were traditions of
prophecies fulfilled and of dumb cattle behaving queerly, all of which
Mrs. Underhill has very carefully set down and magnified in her own
peculiar manner to her own unholy purpose.

CHAPTER IX.

THE MERCENARY CAMPAIGN.

The public campaign of Spiritualism was now begun.

A sufficient hubbub had been made over it to induce attention from all
sorts and conditions of people.

The mother and her daughters went again to Rochester, and there placed
themselves in the hands of the first of many "committees of friends" who
were used as tools or confederates, according to their character, to
"humbug" the public more completely. The character and functions of these
committees may be judged from the following, which is found in Leah's
book: "The names of this committee were Isaac Post, R. D. Jones, Edward
Jones, John Kedzie and Andrew Clackner. _They were faithful friends, who
never permitted any one to visit us unattended by themselves or some
reliable person._"

The so-called spirits soon urged in laborious communications that it was
needful to make their demonstrations more public, and that an
"investigation" of the "rappings," ought therefore to be made by some
well-known men. The "spirits" were even so kind as to spell out by means
of the tentative alphabet, the names of those whom they wished to have
appointed to perform this part. The desire for advertisement, indeed, was
not likely to cause the rejection of the name of any available person,
whose prominence would increase the public interest in the movement. We
are not astonished, then, to find that Frederick Douglass was one of those