icant and lowly
aspect, and apparently under the most inauspicious circumstances for
producing any great effect upon mankind. The Babe of the lowly manger
becomes the Spiritual King of millions of human hearts and souls, and
the "Wood Hut" becomes the gateway through which Holy Ministers of
Light, from their world of Truth and Beauty, send the evidence of man's
immortality, through the instrumentality of a child, to the weary worn
pilgrims of earth, who, praying for the "touch of a vanish'd hand, and
the sound of a voice that is still," welcome with joyful hearts the
Spirit message "WE STILL LIVE."

The scene of the manifestations dealt with in the following pages, was a
small wooden homestead, one of a cluster of houses like itself, in the
little village of Hydesville, near to the town of Newark, Wayne County,
New York (being so called after Dr. Hyde, an old settler, whose son was
the proprietor of the house in question). The place not being directly
accessible from a railroad, was lonely and unmarked by those tokens of
progress that the locomotive generally leaves in its track, hence it was
the last spot where a scene of fraud and deception could find a
possibility of a successful execution. The house was a humble frame
dwelling fronting south, consisting of two fair-size parlours opening
into each other, east of these a bedroom and a buttery or pantry,
opening into one of the sitting rooms; and a stairway between the
buttery and the bedroom leading from the sitting room up to the half
storey above and from the buttery down to the cellar.

This humble dwelling had been selected as a temporary residence during
the erection of another house in the country, by Mr. John D. Fox, who,
with his family, soon afterwards became so prominently identified with
the phenomena which have since become world famous. Their little
dwelling, though so small and simply furnished as to leave no shadow of
opportunity for concealment or trick, was the residence of honest piety
and rural simplicity. All who ever knew them bore witness to the
unimpeachable character of the good mother, while the integrity of the
simple-minded farmers who were father and brother to the sisters who
have since become so celebrated as the "Rochester Knockers" stands
proved beyond all question.

The ancestors of Mr. Fox were Germans, the name being originally "Voss";
but both he and Mrs. Fox were native born. In Mrs. Fox's family, French
by origin and Rutan by n