Mr. Thackeray during his stay in New York visited my public séances, but never asked questions in a crowd. His course of investigation was unlike those of all others. The first visit he made he sat and listened to the sounds; and when his turn came to ask questions, he politely asked me to accept his arm and walk with him through the parlors (fifteen minutes were allotted to each visitor) and he said, “You must be weary by this time. Do your investigators always tax you as they have this evening?” I told him I considered this party very little trouble in comparison to most others. The raps followed us as we walked, and were heard by all in the room. He apparently paid little attention to the sounds as we walked. Suddenly he stopped in the middle of the room, and said to me: “I have read much of your family, and the persecution you have been subjected to; and the various expositions of the wise ones; but they have not been able to convict you.”
The rappings became tremendous, and the floor trembled beneath our feet. They were made all about the room and on the furniture. I invited him to call during my private hours, which he subsequently did, and conversed with the Spirits freely.
When he bade me good-by for the last time, he expressed pleasure at having met us, and thanked me for my kindness in permitting him to visit us during our private hours. He expressed himself delighted with his visit, and said he was thoroughly convinced that no earthly power could make the sounds as he had heard them: and he laughed heartily at Dr. Flint’s theory of the knee-joints. Though compelled to restrain the public expression of it in the Cornhill Magazine, of which he became editor, it is certain that Mr. Thackeray was a full Spiritualist, even though not one of those bolder Spirits among men who feel, and live up to, the duty of proclaiming to the world, cost what it may, the divine and regenerating truth which has been received into their own souls. But great difficulties, it must be confessed, stood in his way. The bigotries of his country and times made it impossible for him, under the necessities of a profession wholly dependent on the favor of public opinion, to go further than he did, while it is certain that he was too noble and true a man ever to cater to those bigotries by a word of depreciation of Spiritualism.
“WITCH STORIES.”
I.
Amy Emmet, a well-known character in Rockland County, N. Y., was reputed a witch. And I have been told by a perfectly reliable gentleman of many strange things which occurred in the case of an own sister of his, who is still living. She (his sister) would roll over the floor, like a hoop, for a long time; and, when relieved from such terrible control, would lie helpless and nearly exhausted.
My parents and grand-parents knew her and believed her to be possessed by evil powers.
II.
Mary Treadway was a little girl; a playmate of my mother. She suffered greatly under the power of some evil influence. She would scream and say, in terror, “See her! See her!—Now she’s pinching me.” Then, apparently for saying so, she would be stoned nearly to death. She would be black and blue all over after being pinched, covered with bruises, and often hit in the face with stones tied up in rags. Her mother made a deep pasteboard sun-bonnet, hoping that the poor child might be relieved by wearing it; but the stones would hit her in the face just the same, even when she would bend her face down near the ground to avoid them. Mother saw the stones strike her, apparently coming from the mirror. After having been troubled in every possible way, she suddenly became completely covered with a living mass of vermin.
Her parents were well-to-do, respectable, cleanly people. Her tormentor died, and she recovered.