effulgent light that fills all space?
Ah, yes! I see they beckon for me to look up, to not be cast down or
despair. I _will_ look up. See! in their hands are long, feathery wands
with which they sweep the flaming sky, while across its burnished arc I
see, yes, I see in letters of purple that oft-recurring
legend--_Twenty-five thousand dollars!_"

Now, although I am not arguing this question of Spiritualism, and am
only giving to the public the history so far as I dare of an
extraordinary woman and practical Spiritualist, I cannot resist asking
the question, or putting forward the theory, which, during the progress
of this case particularly, and a thousand times before and since in a
general way, has irresistibly forced itself into my mind. I give it in
all fairness, I am sure, and only with a view that it may dispel
certain feelings of squeamishness with which a good many people approach
the subject to investigate it. I may be accused of presenting it with
too little delicacy; but the public must recollect that the nature of my
business compels me _to get at the truth_ of things, and to do that,
matters must in a majority of cases be handled without gloves. This is
my only excuse, and perhaps it may be a good defence; but in any event
this is the question: Has there ever been a so-called Spiritual
"manifestation" that has not subsequently been explained as trickery by
persons more credible of belief than its medium or originator? After
that has been answered in the affirmative, for it can be answered in no
other way, all there is left of this Spiritualistic structure is, how
account for such exhibitions as that given by Mrs. Winslow and those
given by others of her craft, even granting their personal purity, which
is undoubtedly exceptional?

This is the question which has oftenest come into my mind in my
necessarily almost constant study of these people, and the answers,
though continually varying, have all eventually forced upon me the
conviction that this religion, as it is sacrilegiously called, only
takes hold of people of abnormal or diseased temperaments--people
diseased in mind, in morals, in body, or in all; and if that is true, as
I sincerely believe it to be, the dignifying of a disease or infirmity
as a religion is simply an absurdity too foolish for even ridicule.

She sat rigid as a church-spire for a few moments, as if the sight of
so much money, even if only in purple letters upon a burnished sky, had