so.

VII

THE SEERESS OF PREVORST

Modern spiritism, as every student of that fascinating if elusive
subject is aware, dates from the closing years of the first half of the
nineteenth century. But the celebrated Fox sisters, whose revelations at
that time served to crystallize into an organized religious system the
idea of the possibility of communication between this world and the
world beyond, were by no means the first of spiritistic mediums. Long
before their day there were those who professed to have cognizance of
things unseen and to act as intermediaries between the living and the
dead; and although lost to sight amid the throng of latter-day claimants
to similar powers, the achievements of some of these early adventurers
into the unknown have not been surpassed by the best performances of the
Fox girls and their long line of successors.

Especially is this true of the mediumship of a young German woman,
Frederica Hauffe, who in the course of her short, pitiful, and tragic
career is credited with having displayed more varied and picturesque
supernatural gifts than the most renowned wonder-worker of to-day. Like
many modern mediums she was of humble origin, her birthplace being a
forester's hut in the Wuertemberg mountain village of Prevorst; and
here, among wood-cutters and charcoal-burners, she passed the first
years of her life. Even while still a child she seems to have attracted
wide-spread attention on account of certain peculiarities of temperament
and conduct. It was noticed that though naturally gay and playful she
occasionally assumed a strangely intent and serious manner; that in her
happiest moments she was subject to unaccountable fits of shuddering and
shivering; and that she seemed keenly alive not merely to the sights and
sounds of every-day life but to influences unfelt by those about her.
This last trait received a sudden and unexpected development when, at
the age of twelve or thirteen, she was sent to the neighboring town of
Loewenstein to be educated under the care of her grand-parents, a worthy
couple named Schmidgall.

Grandfather Schmidgall was an exceedingly superstitious old man, with a
singular fondness for visiting solitary and gloomy places, particularly
churchyards; and he soon began to take the little girl with him on such
strolls. But he discovered, much to his amazement, that though she
listened with avidity to the tales he told her of the romantic and
mysterious eve