d, the thumbs broad and flat, the nails hideous; they are the
antipodes of the psychic or dramatic type of hands: a type that,
needless to say, witches have never been known to possess. Once the
invocation of the dead was one of the practices of ancient witchcraft:
one might, perhaps, not inappropriately apply the term witch to the
modern spiritualist.

If we credit the Scriptures with any degree of truth, then witches most
certainly had the power of calling up the dead in Biblical days, for at
Endor the feat--rare even in those times--was accomplished of invoking
in material form the phantasms of the good as well as the evil. Though I
am of the opinion that no amount of invocation will bring back a
phantasm from the higher spiritual planes to-day, unless that invocation
be made in very exceptional circumstances, with a specific purpose, I am
quite sure that _bona fide_ spirits of the earth-bound do occasionally
materialise in answer to the summons of the spiritualist. I do not base
this statement on any experience I have ever had, for it is a rather
singular fact that, although I have seen many spontaneous phenomena in
haunted houses, I have never seen anything resembling, in the slightest
degree, a genuine spirit form, at a seance. Therefore, I repeat, I do
not base my statement, as to the occasional materialisation of _bona
fide_ earth-bound spirits, on any of my experiences, but on those of
"sitters" with whom I am intimately acquainted. What benefit can be
derived from getting into close touch with earth-bound spirits, _i.e._
with vice and impersonating elementals and the phantasms of dead idiots,
lunatics, murderers, suicides, rakes, drunkards, immoral women and silly
people of all sorts, is, I think, difficult to say; for my own part, I
am only too content to steer clear of them, and confine my attentions to
trying to be of service to those apparitions that are, obviously, for
some reason, made to appear by the higher occult powers. Thus, what is
popularly known as spiritualism is, from my point of view, a mischievous
and often very dangerous form of witchcraft.

A Frenchman to whom I was recently introduced at a house in Maida Vale,
told me the following case, which he assured me actually happened in the
middle of the eighteenth century, and was attested to by judicial
documents. A French nobleman, whom I will designate the Vicomte
Davergny, whilst on a visit to some friends near Toulouse, on hearing
that a mil