it must of necessity carry
with it whatever material substance it has touched, and leave it
deposited upon the surface or material hand of the medium. This is a
scientific question. How many innocent mediums have been wronged? and
the invisible have permitted it, until we should discover that it was
the natural result of a natural law."

What a great discovery! and how lucidly it is set forth! The author
(who, by the way, is editor of the "Portland Evening Courier") of this
new discovery, was not so modest but that he hastened to announce and
claim full credit for it in the columns of the "Banner of Light"--the
editor of which journal congratulates him on having done so much for the
cause of spiritualism! Those skeptics who were present when the
lamp-black was "transferred" from the gentleman's hair to the medium's
hand, rashly concluded that the boy was an impostor. It remained for Mr.
Hall--that is the philosopher's name--to make the "electro-magnetic
transfer" discovery. The Allen boy ought ever to hold him in grateful
remembrance for coming to his rescue at such a critical period, when the
spirits would not vouchsafe an explanation that would exculpate him from
the grievous charge of imposture. Mr. Hall deserves a leather medal now,
and a soapstone monument when he is dead.

A person, whose initials are the same as the gentleman's named above,
once lived in Aroostook, Maine, and was in the habit of attending
"spiritual circles," in which he was sometimes influenced as a
"personating medium," and to represent the symptoms of the disease which
caused the controlling spirit's translation to another sphere. It having
been reported in Aroostook that a certain well-known individual, living
further east, had died of cholera, a desire was expressed at the next
"circle" to have him "manifest" himself. The medium above referred to
got "under influence," and personated, with an exhibition of all the
symptoms of cholera, the gentleman who was reported to have died of that
disease. So faithful to the supposed facts was the representation, that
the medium had to be cared for as if he was himself a veritable
cholera-patient. Several days after, the man who was "personated"
appeared in Aroostook, alive and well, never having been attacked with
the cholera. The local papers gave a graphic account of the
"manifestation" soon after it occurred.

But to return to the Allen boy. After his exposure by means of the
lamp-black test, and