corporeal carriages and horses? Can grave
men admit such fancies as these?[C] Or is all this, even if genuine,
only symbolical,--sounds without objective counterpart? Then what
becomes of the positive character of this narrative, as a lesson, as a
warning to us? The whole degenerates into an acted parable. It fades
into the idle pageantry of a dream. Thus we lose ourselves in shadowy
conjecture.

But, none the less, the facts, if facts they be, remain to be dealt
with. And if at last we concede the ultramundane origin of these
manifestations, whether as objective reality or only as truth-teaching
allegory, what a field is opened to our speculations regarding the
realms of spirit and the possible punishments there in store for those
who, by degrading their natures in this world, may have rendered
themselves unfit for happiness in the next,--and who, perhaps, still
attracted to earth by the debasing excesses they once mistook for
pleasure, may be doomed, in the phantom repetition of their sins, to
detect their naked reality, to have stamped on their consciousness the
vileness of these without the brutal gratifications that veiled it, the
essence of vice shorn of its sensual halo, the grossness without the
glitter: if so, a terrible expiation!

I beg it may not be imagined, that, because I see grave difficulties in
the way of regarding this case as one of imposture, I therefore set it
up as proof of a novel theory regarding future punishments. A structure
so great cannot be erected on foundation so slender. I but furnish it as
a chance contribution towards the probabilities of ultramundane
intercourse,--as material for thought,--as one of those hints which
future facts may render valueless, but which, on the other hand, other
observed phenomena may possibly serve to work out and corroborate and
explain.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] I find in my journal the following:--"_August 17, 1857._ Read over
to the Baron von P---- the Putkammer narrative; and he assented to its
accuracy in every particular."

[B] This story is given in Garinet's _Histoire de la Magie en France_,
p. 75.

[C] Yet in a recent case, occurring in England, and authenticated in the
strongest manner, the "sound of carriages driving in the park when none
were there" is one of the incidents given on the authority of the lady
who had witnessed the disturbances, and who furnishes a detailed account
of them. See "Facts and Fantasies," a sequel to "Lights and Sounds,