ription I have gathered from Mrs. Kane.

But Mrs. Leah Underhill, in her jumbled up narrative, states that "_When
the raps broke out suddenly close to some of the family, or at the table,
one of the girls would accuse the other of having caused them, saying,
'Now you did that, etc., etc.'_"

Thanks to Mrs. Leah Underhill, such hints of the true explanation of
these "manifestations" are plentiful throughout her book, and one needs
only to bring some little intelligence to bear upon it to read between the
lines the whole story of the fraud.

And here let me quote a passage which only goes to show how very strong
was the love of deviltry in the children:

"Father had always been a regular Methodist in good standing, and was
invariable in his practice of morning prayers; and _when he would be
kneeling upon his chair, it would sometimes amuse the children to see him
open wide his eyes as knocks would sound and vibrate on his chair itself_.
He expressed it graphically to mother: 'When I am done praying that
jigging stops.'"

Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane distinctly remembers incidents like this one; only
she qualifies the narrative by saying that her father never opened his
eyes when these annoyances came while he was at prayer, but went devoutly
on to the end without heeding them.

How absurd for any one to suppose that if these sounds were produced by a
cause unknown to the children, they would laugh at them and regard them as
very great sport, instead of trembling and crying with affright!

"The sounds which were heard at those times," says Mrs. Kane in her
statement to the writer, "were all produced by Katie and myself, and by no
other being or spirit under the sun. Nor did we always do it with our
feet. Frequently in that early stage of the excitement about the
'rappings,' we would make the sounds with our fingers, provided it was
easy to do so without causing suspicion. In order to do it unknown to any
one, we would sit with one hand hidden by an elbow resting upon the table,
or the woodwork of a chair.

"Of course, our mother in her earnest belief, poor soul, excited us to do
a great deal more than otherwise we would had done. The mystery of the
sounds absorbed her entire being for the time. She became pale and
worn-looking and thought that great misfortunes were to happen, and
prayed often and fervently. I can well remember how my heart used to smite
me at times when I looked upon her and knew that Katie and I were t