riginal
facts, and in many cases are literal transcripts of, while in every
instance they agree with, the records of the case as minutely reported
during its progress.

By way of further explanation, I desire to remind my readers how very
difficult it is for those not familiar with the detective business to
realize the masses of iniquity we are often obliged to unearth,
unpalatable as the work may be and is. But while, from the nature of my
business, my records are necessarily so exhaustive, and have been made
so thoroughly minute, as to contain simply everything, good or bad,
regarding an operation, and are, therefore, as records, reliable and
true--though they thus become repositories of much that is vile--I have
striven in every instance, while relating the truth and nothing but the
truth, to speak of unpleasant things in as delicate a manner as
possible, and in a way which, while plain enough to convey with proper
force and directness the moral lessons that these developments cannot
fail to impress upon the minds of all readers, might still leave no
unclean thought behind them; and the only sense in which a charge that
my "Detective Stories" were in any respect untrue might be sustained,
would be in the fact that I have in numberless instances, for the very
good reason mentioned, told immeasurably less, and never more, than the
whole truth.

I make no assumption of having given in this book an exhaustive _expose_
of modern spiritualism, and I wish it as well remembered that I have no
more prejudice against the good there is in that ism than I have
against the good there is in any other ism; but my experience with these
people, which has been large, has invariably been against their honesty
or social purity.

So far as there being anything about Spiritualism to compel awe or
attract any but weak-minded or "weak-moraled" people, the assumption is
simply absurd; for the few illustrations given in the following pages
will show how utterly preposterous the claim of supernatural power is,
as applied to the _cause_ of these "manifestations," which are not, in
themselves, first-class tricks, but which, when made mysterious and
enshrouded with the element of superstitious fear--which all of us in
some measure possess--lead crowds of inconsiderate people into unusual
eccentricities, if not eventually into insane asylums, as in some
painful instances of which the public are already well aware.

In my exceptionally strange