ladies. How many feet, pray you? There
were six feet on the platform, as we know, all of which had been carefully
educated in the production of "raps." Could one man's hand cover them all?
And if it could not, does not this pretended "evidence" fall at once to
the ground?

All of the recitals made by spiritualistic writers concerning the doings
of the "Fox Sisters," contain this element of vagueness, the lack of
precision and completeness, which to persons unaccustomed to analysis may
possibly appear plausible enough, but to the experienced inquirer is
merely a more certain proof of weakness and prevarication.

Volumes might be written to meet the statements advanced in every case,
and to show how clumsily misleading they are. It is not worth while at
this late day, and in that direction, to do more than I have already
accomplished in this chapter.

Indeed, the actual demonstration of the fact that the far-famed "rappings"
are produced in the manner described at the beginning of this work, should
be quite sufficient to all logical minds, to condemn every claim that the
professional mediums have advanced as being the agents of any supernatural
manifestations.

The good old Latin maxim never applied with greater force than it does
here: _Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus_.

The operations of the eldest sister all tended to the one end: fame and
money. In Rochester, fees for the first time were accepted by "mediums,"
and shortly afterward a tariff of prices for admission to the seances and
the "private circles" was adopted and made public. No jugglers ever drove
a more prosperous business than did the "Fox family" for a number of
years, when once fairly launched upon that sea of popular wonder, which
somebody has said is supplied by the inherent fondness of mankind for
being humbugged.

Mrs. Fish had actually the project of founding a new religion, and she
tried hard to convince her younger sisters and her own child that there
were really such things as spiritual communications, notwithstanding that
all of those that were produced in their seances they knew to be perfectly
false. She asserted that even before Maggie and Katie were born she had
received messages warning her that they were destined to do great things.

"In all of our seances, while we were under her charge," says Mrs. Kane,
"we knew just when to rap 'yes' and when to rap 'no' by signals that she
gave us, and which were unknown to any one but ourselves