“We will pay $500 to Dr. Gardner, to Mrs. Henderson, to Mrs. Hatch, or to Mr. or Mrs. anybody else who will communicate a single word imparted to the ‘Spirits’ by us, in an adjoining room; who will read a single word, in English, written inside a book, or sheet of paper, folded in such a manner as we may choose; who will answer, with the aid of all the higher intelligences he or she can invoke from the other world, three questions—which the superior intelligences must be able to answer, if what they said in The Melodeon was true; and we will not require Dr. Gardner or the mediums to risk a single cent on the experiment. If one or all of them can do one of these things, the five hundred dollars shall be paid on the spot. If they fail, they shall pay nothing; not even the expense incident to trying the experiment.”
Immediately on receipt of this challenge from the professors, Dr. Gardner replied, “Now, Mr. Editor, I accept the offer, as I do also the distinguished gentlemen named as the committee, provided the person or persons making the offer will agree to let all of the conditions of the arrangement come within the scope of those natural laws within which we believe Spirits are confined in producing the manifestations above referred to; and I will meet the person or persons making the offer at any time and place, after next Sabbath, which he or they may name, to make such arrangements as are necessary to a thorough and scientific test of this great subject.
“H. F. Gardner.
“May 27, 1857.”
The committee named in the Courier was George Lunt (editor of that paper), Prof. Benjamin Pierce, chairman, Prof. Agassiz, Prof. Horsford, and Dr. A. B. Gould.
The place of meeting was in the upper room of the Albion Building, corner of Tremont and Beacon Streets, Boston.
I and Katie accepted an invitation to go to Boston to lend our contribution to this investigation, with disinterested self-sacrifice for the sake of the cause, and in support of Dr. Gardner, one of the best of men and Spiritualists, who thus stood forward as its representative and champion. I may mention that this was anterior, not subsequent to the Phosphorus affair related in the preceding chapter. There were present Miss Kendrick, George A. Redman, J. V. Mansfield, the Davenport brothers, Katie and myself—mediums.
The committee of Spiritualists were Mr. Allan Putnam, Dr. Gardner, Major G. Washington Rains.
At the first meeting Dr. Gardner expressed his dissatisfaction with the idea of a penalty of $500, or of any money, to be paid by the Courier, and this seemed to meet unanimous approval; so that no ground remained for the position afterward taken by the professors, that they had to make an award, as stakeholders and judges, of $500 on the presentation of certain specific phenomena laid in Prof. Felton’s original (unsigned) article in the Courier, while the document above quoted, of June 9, 1857, between the Courier and Dr. Gardner, is conclusive to the effect that it was to be a general scientific investigation. It will be seen below how the professors afterward quibbled over this point, and avoided making a report of any results, but only an “award” that the $500 was not claimable, because the specific phenomena originally put forward by Prof. Felton had not been exhibited; while at the same time promising a future report, which report they never came up to the scratch of making. It was generally understood that a draft of a report had been proposed by a portion of them, but suppressed because deemed more “damaging to Christianity” than one favorable to Spiritualism. So that Harvard has ever since remained under the odium and ridicule of never having made a report, of which, in what they called an “award,” it had recognized that the duty was incumbent on the professors, and which they had expressly promised to make. It was in vain that for months and years the Spiritualist papers of Boston clamored for the promised report, and jeered at those who evidently found it impossible to make one which should not be more or less favorable to Spiritualism.
This meeting, to my mind, was very unsatisfactory. I was astonished and disappointed at the course which the professors pursued. Astonished at their seeming ignorance of all laws of order and harmony, and disappointed to find that they had met, determined to establish some appearance of carrying their point, right or wrong.
They fell far beneath the degree of intelligence we had met on so many former occasions, in connection with the phenomenal manifestations associated with Spiritualism. Our investigating committees had always heretofore been chosen with reference to their intellectual competency and honorable character; whose reports were expected to enlighten thousands who were unable to make such experiments themselves. But I am quite sure, from the experience I have had, that a great majority of those highly conceited professors, many of whom were of quite ordinary talent, had, to some extent, overcome the deficiencies of nature by turning their attention in one direction of specific study only.