of polished wood on a couple of
small wheels, with a pencil at the apex. Hands laids upon this by two
persons properly conditioned, will give apparent vitality and volition
to the small machine, and make the pencil seem to write of itself in
answer to expressed (or meditated) questions. At a wealthy mansion in
South Kensington, for instance, I saw two charming young Italian ladies,
sisters, covering rapidly sheet after sheet with the abstrusest essays
on occult subjects, given to them to write upon inspirationally; and the
chief wonder was (as a learned friend by me well observed) where the
knowledge came from, so seemingly infused into two unscientific young
girls. Afterwards the said learned friend tried Planchette with me, and
we were considerably startled to find that when I asked of the
so-called spirits, "What think ye of Christ?" the pencil under our
unconsciously-guided hands made answer, "With the utmost reverence!" I
need not assure mankind that neither my friend nor I (both incredulous
and unwilling witnesses) lent ourselves or one another to any deception,
and were mentally inclined, if at all, to the expectation that the
"spirits" might rather blaspheme than bless. It is right to mention
that, beyond the pair of young ladies and our two selves, only the host
and hostess were in the room; of whom I have this further wonder to
report, viz., that the host, whom I must not specify by name without his
leave, is afflicted with blindness, notwithstanding which and his
alleged incompetence towards poetry as an old naval officer, his wife
showed me several copybooks full of blank verse written by him in a hand
unlike his own, and supposed by them to be inspired by Young, as a
continuation of his "Night Thoughts." The captain and his lady also told
us how frequently flowers and sweetmeats (!) were showered on them from
the ceiling at their domestic dual _seances_: and on another occasion a
lady showed my wife and me a paper of seed pearls, alleged to have been
flung into her lap from the heavens--through the ceiling--by her
departed lord and master! Similarly, a lady well known in the
professedly spiritualistic circles, deposited round her chair, in the
dark, at Mr. S.C. Hall's, a profusion of bouquets--probably from Covent
Garden;--and that, notwithstanding the hostess had herself searched the
lady before the _seance_, as it was known that Mrs. G's special gift
from the spirits was the multitudinous creation of flower