g about 'Jenny Jones, of Hampstead,' and then withdrew.
To Kate Mr. A. assumed a gallant, lover-like manner; to John King an
air of half-amused defiance. By-and-bye two stones were thrown
violently upon the table, but no one expressed any audible alarm.
Still the room was hot and stifling, the darkness affected the coolest
imagination, and straining one's eyes and ears for spiritual
manifestations produced a not unnatural feeling of uneasiness in the
mind. Sometimes I fancied the table jerked or reared a little,
sometimes I thought I heard animals' feet pattering up and down the
table. It is on such workings of the imagination that spiritualists,
and especially the professional mediums, trade. No more voices coming,
Mr. A. proposed our changing places to 'improve the conditions'--that
is to say, to re-pack the confederates, and still more isolate the
sceptics; but no result came. A grosser and more unsuccessful effort
at a vulgar deception I never saw; and I only ask whether it is just
to prosecute poor women for getting a few shillings by telling
servants' fortunes, and leave professional spiritualists like Messrs.
A. and C. unprosecuted? If pretending to evoke the dead and predict
death for hire is not obtaining money under false pretences, what is?"

For a short time the spiritualists created a considerable sensation,
but their prosperity did not long continue. Mr. W. Irving Bishop, an
American gentleman, who came to Great Britain recommended by Dr.
Carpenter and other members of the Royal Society, exposed the
phenomena attributed to the influence of spirits, in the Windsor
Hotel, Edinburgh, in January 1879.

There was a distinguished company present, including Principal Sir
Alexander Grant, Lord Curriehill, Archbishop Strain, and a number of
the University professors. A committee of four gentlemen having been
chosen to watch the proceedings, Mr. Bishop gave an exposure of the
galvanometer test, accepted by a number of scientific men in London as
conclusive proof of the _bona fides_ of spirit manifestations. Mr.
Bishop next gave an illustration of the theory of "unconscious
cerebration." Archbishop Strain, having written on a slip of paper a
number of figures and the name of a deceased person, took in his left
hand the end of a long wire. Mr. Bishop, taking the other, recited the
numerals from 1 to 9, and stopped at the figures in one of the papers.
Afterwards he recited the alphabet in the same manner, stopping at