One of the most pleasant of my reminiscences of our Ohio campaign, about three and thirty years ago, is my intercourse with the great and good man whose honored name heads this paragraph. He was a frequent visitor to my séances, to which he used to bring also members of his family and friends. He combined, with his eminent intelligence, culture and love of the truth, great geniality of temperament and manners. He was a convinced and warm Spiritualist, and his autograph name is a frequent one in my register.
Not a few also of the representatives of foreign countries visited us at Washington and New York, and were surprised to receive communications in their several languages.
To the above array of the Author’s “Miscellaneous Incidents” I will add one of recent occurrence, for the sake of the evidence which it involves of two points, namely,
First, of the reality of Mrs. Underhill’s still continued mediumship;
And secondly, of the interest really taken by her controlling Spirits in this work of hers.
In the course of our united labors over it, extending through a period exceeding four months, there have arisen a number of occasions on which we have differed over various points of expediency in regard to the arrangement and treatment, the insertion or suppression, of her voluminous materials or notes, and have discussed them freely, with some tenacity of opinion on both sides, while with reasonable candor and openness to conviction, certainly on her side. She has generally maintained that her Spirits had “impressed” and directed her so and so (the chief of them seeming to be Dr. Franklin and her grandfather), and a Spirit claiming to be Dr. Franklin has sometimes intervened in these discussions, either voluntarily or on being appealed to by us. I will describe one of these occasions, to afford the reader the opportunity of judging for himself of the genuineness of this Spirit intervention in these friendly discussions between two mortals still in the flesh, both of them actuated by an equal sincerity of zeal for the truth and for the good of humanity.
We were sitting in her library, on the opposite sides of a library table. The only other person present was a most highly estimable friend of hers, lending her his friendly aid in copying, who was seated some seven or eight feet off. Both of her hands were on the table. My knee was suddenly grasped by a strong, firm hand, evidently to call my attention. “Is this you, dear Dr. Franklin?” I asked. “Yes,” was the reply given by three pressures of the hand which held my knee strongly between its thumb and fingers. I did not doubt the Spirit to be what he claimed to be, and I asked his opinion on the point in question. He usually addressed me as “my son” or “my dear son.” He did not habitually seem to impose his will, but rather to give his opinion, which I must say was generally on the lady’s side, and to which I generally conformed, even when saying that I still thought differently.
Presently I felt my knee again grasped in the same way, but this time by what was evidently a smaller and a female hand. It proved to be that of my “sister Mary,” of whose existence Mrs. Underhill knew nothing. Her object was to tell me to write to another sister, Adelaide (still in the flesh, and at some three thousand miles of distance) because, as she said, the latter was “distressed and suffering” on account of my recent silence (for which there had been special reasons causing procrastination). Of these private family names and matters, Mrs. U. had no means of knowing anything. Her hands, I repeat, were on the table, and there was no human agency through which, in either of the two instances, the grasping of my knee could have been caused. The knowledge of my private family matters goes far to prove that in the one case it must have been really done by my sister (a Spirit), and this identification of her in the one case goes far to confirm that of the other as Dr. Franklin, both having in the same way declared who they were.—Ed.
[22] The mysterious phenomenon of “the double”—called by the Germans doppelganger, and the subject of various German tales—while one of the most calculated to provoke incredulity, is undoubtedly an occasional reality. I have heard more than one person whose veracity I cannot doubt relate how they have been seen at the same time in places hundreds of miles apart. Any one may inquire of Mr. E. H. Britten on this subject. Undoubtedly such persons are mediums.