lothing exert no deleterious effect, but the gaze of a human eye is
fatal to all Spiritual manifestation; although to one of our number, on
three occasions, a pocket mirror, carefully adjusted, unknown to the
Medium, gave back the reflection of fingers, which were clearly not
Spiritual, opening the slates and writing the answer.

There is really no step in the bare process of producing this writing,
as we have observed it, which might not be accomplished by trickery or
by legerdemain. Of course, therefore, we were sincerely anxious to
disprove in these experiments the presence of those discreditable
elements, not only for the credit of human nature, but for the sake of
the great scientific interest involved. We are perfectly ready to accept
any fact of Spiritual power; and so far from flinching from an open
avowal of our belief in this revelation of a novel force in Nature, we
would welcome it. But no one, not a Spiritualist, we should suppose, can
demand of us that we should accept profound mysteries with our eyes
tight shut, and our hands fast closed, and with every avenue to our
reasoning faculties insurmountably barred. Yet this is precisely what is
demanded of us by Mediums in regard to Independent Slate Writing. We
must sign a dispensation to forego the exercise of common sense, and
accept as 'fact' what they choose so to term. Few assertions by departed
Spirits are more hacknied than, 'This is a great truth,' and yet in an
honest endeavor to prove that it is a 'great truth;' and not a great
lie, the sincere and earnest seeker is at every turn baffled and
thwarted.

To eliminate from our investigations every element of distrust, or
hostility, or suspicion, or chilling antagonism, we entrusted to Mr.
Hazard's friend, Mrs. Patterson, vouched for by him as one of the very
best Mediums in the country, two carefully closed and sealed slates,
enclosing, of course, the required piece of slate-pencil, with the
earnest entreaty that the Spirits should write therein even if it were
but the merest mark, sign, or scratch, therewith we would be content,
and be ready to accept Independent Slate Writing with its train of
consequences. The Medium was fully impressed with the importance of the
trial, and with the fame which would thereby accrue from such a
wholesale conversion as that of the united Seybert Commission.

Every Medium, it would appear, is under the special tutelage of a
departed Spirit; this Spirit is termed the 'M