he
cause of all her trouble. In later years, long after I had come to the age
of understanding, I had very bitter reasons for such pangs of remorse,
especially towards the last of mother's life, when, as I know, she was in
a great measure undeceived and feared for the perdition of the souls of
her children."

In Mrs. Underhill's book, (written for her by another,) there is an effort
to convey the impression that John D. Fox, her father, shared in the
belief which she sought to establish in the spiritual origin of the
"knockings." Such an implication Mrs. Kane declares to be utterly false.
He never manifested in any way a tendency toward such belief; on the
contrary, he always showed by his conduct and his manner of speech, the
utmost repugnance to it, and a perfect contempt for the weakness which
could lead one into it.

Margaret Fox, the mother, used to say to her husband:

"Now, John, don't you see that it's a wonderful thing?"

"No, I don't," he would answer. "Don't talk to me about it. I don't want
to hear a word about it!"

Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane says, further: "My father did not believe in
Spiritualism. The excitement which we caused annoyed him a great deal. He
signed a statement which merely amounted to his declaring that he did not
know how the noises originated. He was cajoled into doing this. He wanted
to get rid of the importunities of those who believed, or affected to
believe, in the 'rappings.'"

* * * * *

Such is the story of the earliest "rappings" at Hydesville.

It is embellished by Mrs. Underhill with many transparent falsehoods. But
still further to bolster it up, it was thought necessary to discover
traditions, or to invent "hearsay" anecdotes, giving to the house in which
they lived a ghostly history. There are few country houses about which the
memory of the oldest neighboring inhabitant does not recall something or
other remarkable and strange, which was told him by some one or other
whose identity is very indefinite, in the dim, distant past. Thus it is
stated that odd noises had been heard in the Hydesville house during
several previous years by successive occupants. But it is confessed that
none of those persons (whose testimony no one pretends to give) had
obtained any intelligible messages from another world.

Mrs. Kane states that all of this alleged neighborhood gossip was totally
unknown to her at the time, and she believes that it had its chief-