l papers, purporting to be
an interview with you in regard to the subject of Spiritualism. I
have taken the liberty to inquire of you if the statements therein
contained are true.

"I have been a believer in the phenomena from its first inception
through you and your sister, believing it to be true since that time.

"I am now eighty-one years old and have but a short time, of course,
to remain in this world, and I feel great anxiety to know through you
if I have been deceived all this time in a matter of vital interest
to us all.

"Will you greatly oblige me with an answer?

"Very respectfully yours,
"E. F. BUNNELL.
"No. 319 Kearny St."

And here is a communication which is signed by what is evidently only a
part of the writer's name, but which carries with it in every line the
absolute impress of truth and of a deep and pathetic earnestness:

"BOSTON, MASS., OCT. 15, 1888.

"MRS. MARGARET FOX KANE,

"DEAR MADAM:

"Hundreds of thousands have believed through you and you alone.
Hundreds of thousands eagerly ask you whether all the glorious light
that they fancied you have given them, was but the false flicker of a
common dip-candle of fraud.

"If, as you say, you were forced to pursue this imposture from
childhood, I can forgive you, and I am sure that God will; for he
turns not back the truly repentant. I will not upbraid you. I am sure
you have suffered as much as any penalty, human or divine, could
cause you to suffer. The disclosures that you make take from me all
that I cherished most. There is nothing left for me now but to hope
for the reality of that repose which death promises us.

"It is perhaps better that the delusion should be at last swept away
by one single word, and that word 'fraud.'

"I know that the pursuit of this shadowy belief has wrought upon my
brain and that I am no longer my old self. Money I have spent in
thousands and thousands of dollars within a few short years to
propitiate the 'mediumistic' intelligence. It is true that never once
have I received a message or the token of a word that did not leave a
still unsatisfied longing in my heart, a feeling that it was not
really my loved one after all, who was speaking to me, or if it was
my loved one, that he was changed, that I hardly knew him and th