“After reading that report, the writer of this went to Rochester and visited the girls: the result of that visit he published in the Day-Book with just as much expectation of his statements being believed as if he had said that the cars ran off the track, or that he crossed Seneca Lake on board of a steamboat. What was his surprise to find that not one in twenty believed a word of them. The Journal of Commerce, The Courier, The Express, The Christian Intelligencer, and in fact all the papers in the city amused themselves and their readers by making fun of the whole matter. When we met a friend he would accost us with, ‘Well, you have been to see the Rochester knockings, have you?’
“‘Yes sir,’ would be our answer.
“‘Well, what do you think of them?’
“‘I think just what I have written and published!’
“‘Stimson—you don’t pretend to believe in that humbug?’
“‘I believe that I heard the knockings, and that the girls had no direct agency in making them.’
“An incredulous stare full in the face, the cheeks filled with wind, and a sudden bursting into a wild ironical laugh would follow, and the friend would turn away with, ‘Well, Stimson, I am used up; if you are so easily humbugged as that I have nothing more to say.’
“This manifestation of utter disbelief in the whole thing, we must acknowledge, nettled us a little, and we concluded to ‘shut up,’ and deny that we believed in anything. We began to doubt that we had been to Rochester at all, and as for seeing the girls or hearing the knockings, we were ready to swear as bravely and boldly as Peter (and with the same truth) that we knew nothing about them.
“Well, time passed on, the papers had their fun, and the girls are here. What say The Journal of Commerce and The Express now? Do they call it all humbug? O no! some of our great men have been to see and hear for themselves, and instead of calling it humbug swallow it without gulping. Of course The Journal of Commerce can’t go against the great men, and The Express, never having had an opinion of its own, follows on the back track as tamely as an ass colt.”