heen deceived. I certainly did not have a pocket mirror in my investigations, and perhaps therein lies my weakness; yet as I held the slates myself, as they were not out of my grasp for one moment, and certainly not under the table or out of my sight, or in the hands of the medium, I do not see that a looking-glass is an important factor in the solution of the mystery.

Your report, gentlemen, touches a belief dear to thousands. That belief is spreading rapidly. It is not based upon faith alone, but on what its votaries believe to be positive demonstration. Henry Seybert was a firm believer in its truth, and with a generosity that puts to shame much of the bigotry of the world, he made a generous bequest to enable you to thoroughly test its truth. Although he was an ardent believer in Spiritualism, yet he left a large sum of money to cause an investigation which might destroy the very foundations of his cherished belief. He did not leave the thousands of dollars (I do not know how many) to propagate his creed as many wealthy devotees of the various Christian churches have done; but with the desire only that his fellow-men might know the truth of "all systems of moral religion or philosophy which assume to represent the truth, and particularly of Modern Spiritualism." No more generous, unselfish act was ever done by philanthropic Christians. No pet creed was to be propagated, no favorite theory to be established, no falsehood to be shielded; but truth, that emanation from the throne of eternal justice, was what he desired you to seek. Gentleman, have you completed your task? Have you found it? Remember your investigations will affect the happiness of many. Your wit and sarcasm, while it is covert, is all the more cruel. It is pointed at the religious belief of those who need not bend the knee to you in honesty of purpose, conscientiousness of action, or intelligence of opinions. Those who would not willingly deceive themselves in so important a matter as "the evidence of a future life," to them the ground on which you stand is holy ground; on it are gathered all those they loved in life and mourned in death, and a decent respect for the feelings, as well as the opinions of your fellowmen, should silence your wit, smother your sarcasm, and prompt you to perform your duty as becomes thoughtful, earnest, Christian men.

Gentlemen, will you please turn to pages 125, 126, and 127 of your report. Read them. Do you think they accord with either the dignity or responsibility of your position?

error

It may be that the believers in spiritual manifestations are in and I confess that I fear they are; yet until you can explain all the phenomena that attend their séances on the theory of fraud, you are not entitled to a verdict. The frauds you have discovered only go so far as they are concerned. Remember that the daughter of Jairus was raised from the dead, notwithstanding the spurious miracles that were performed during the middle ages.

In conclusion, gentlemen, let me make a suggestion to you: If the so-called independent slate writing is the work of a conjurer, as you report, cannot you find within the broad confines of this earth some professor of magic who can make, through the agency of his art, an inanimate piece of stone write an intelligent sentence on a slate? It is a simple thing to do if legerdemain can do it. Then hire him to explain to the world how it is done-surely your means are ample-you would be but obeying the wishes of the generous dead who gave the money for that purpose, should you so expend a small portion of the bequest. Let the professor of magic do what the mediums of Cassadaga Lake did in the presence of scores of intelligent men and women, and science will know something not now known to her votaries · or a great fraud will be exposed to the gaze of an amused and credulous public.

Respectfully yours,

A. B. RICHMOND.

NOTE. Throughout this volume the italics used in the excerpts from the Report of the Seybert Commission are, in most cases, my own.

A. B. R.

CHAPTER II.

"Wiser in his own conceit than seven men that can render a reason." Prov. xxvi. 12. "The secret is mine, oh king!-Thou can'st not compell me to give it up." Old Play.

GENTLEMEN: As I have repeatedly said, I do not doubt your ability to properly make investigations of the kind required of you in the responsible position you occupy. If I ever had any doubts, they would be entirely removed by the oft-repeated assertion of one of your number as to his capacity, at least. On page 67 of your admirable report he naïvely remarks: —

"My habits of observation have been trained in this kind of work, and I watched the slates intently during the process."

This, of course, is conclusive evidence, as no one can know a man's abilities so well as himself, and it would be folly for any one to doubt a fact stated on such reliable authority. It is this ability on your part, added to the truthfulness of your statements, and the very apparent, serious, and thoughtful candor that pervades the pages of your report, that must give it great weight with the public. Doubtless you relate everything as you saw it. It is this "habit of close observation," and ability to truthfully and clearly relate facts that come under your notice, that must render your evidence nearly conclusive; and, as an illustrative case in point, I call your attention to page 19 of your report, where, in your description of what a juggler can do, you say:

"Who can truthfully describe a juggler's trick? Who would hesitate to affirm that a watch which never left the eyesight for an

instant was broken on an anvil, etc.; or that a handkerchief was burned before our eyes? We all know the juggler does not break the watch, and does not burn the handkerchief."

Surely, gentleman, it could not have been that one of your number who possesses trained habits of observation that thus described the juggler's feats referred to; if it was, he has profited very little by his training. There is not a youth of bucolic antecedents and rural education in the country who has seen the feat you refer to performed at a ten-cent side-show of a country fair, who has not observed that the watch does leave the eyesight for a long instant before it is apparently broken; not a boy in the country, whose habits of observation have been trained to that extent that he has observed the diurnal habits of the poultry on the farm in retiring to rest, but would see the error of your description of the simple trick referred to by you as an illustration in your argument to prove that the scientific experiments of Professors Zöllner and Crookes were simply legerdemain.

The juggler's feat of breaking a watch is so ancient, and so simple in its solution, that no magician would think of performing it before a city audience, unless perhaps he thought that that audience had received your training in habits of observation. Ask your friend, the accomplished magician Kellar, if he would think of introducing that "trick" on the stage in New York or Philadelphia, and he will tell you that if he did, he would expect to be greeted with hisses and cries of "Chestnut!" from the critics in the gallery;- and yet you seriously refer to it as an astounding feat, whereby people are deceivedagainst the evidence of their senses and "habits of trained observation"; and your argument is this: Because a country audience at a side-show has been deceived by the feat of an itinerating juggler in apparently breaking a watch or burning a handkerchief, therefore