Urged to return to New York—Visit to Buffalo—Attempt by a Pretended Friend to Frighten us away—Thunderbolt from the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser—The “Females”—Knee-joint Theory—Our Reply Challenging Investigation of it—The Doctors’ Day—Mrs. Patchen’s Peculiarity.
We all returned to our home in Rochester, but immediately started for the old homestead (Arcadia, Wayne County), where for about a month we enjoyed the society of our dear friends to our hearts’ content. After this it became necessary to go back to Rochester, where we received urgent letters from New York, insisting on our return to that city, now that we had had what our friends there thought a sufficient period of repose and holiday. These invitations we refused, whatever might be the conditions offered; but this soon brought upon us a visit of Judge Edmonds and others, in person, who insisted, in the name of all our friends, as well as in that of our “duty,” that some of the family at least should return with him to New York. This finally led, after much persuasion and deliberation, to our consent that Katie, accompanied of course by mother, should do so, and Maggie remained with me at my house in Troup Street, Rochester. At New York mother and Katie were to reside successively with our principal friends in the great city.
We left Rochester for Buffalo the 16th of December, 1850, at the earnest solicitation of many friends there. It was our intention on leaving home to be absent about two weeks, but, like the Spirits, we could not calculate our time. When we had been there about two weeks, we began to think of turning our steps homeward; but our friends would not consent to our leaving them so soon, as the crowded séances and the continued increasing interest seemed to demand our presence still longer. We remained, and soon found why we were detained. About this time two of the Buffalo doctors called on us, viz., Dr. C. B. Coventry and Dr. Charles A. Lee. To my certain knowledge, Dr. Austin Flint never appeared in our presence until after he had made the wonderful discovery of “knee-ology,” which is fully explained hereafter. Dr. Coventry appeared gentlemanly at all times and places; but Dr. Lee proved himself to be a wily, deceitful man. He certainly professed, to us, to be greatly surprised at what he witnessed in our presence; and I was myself afterward surprised at the manner and tone of the subsequent attacks upon us in which he united.
The first intimation we had of the thunderbolt which was being forged to be hurled upon us by the Buffalo doctors, from what they seemed to consider as an Olympic height of professional authority, was a visit which I received one morning from Dr. T. M. Foote, formerly U. S. Minister to Bogota, and at this time editor of The Buffalo Commercial Advertiser. He professed to come as our friend, and with a gentle blandness and confidential tone advised me to leave Buffalo at once, suggesting that the first train would leave in about two hours; that the whole thing was now found out and exposed, and that he came to save us from being mobbed out of the city. I suppose now that our oily friend in his own evil heart imagined us to be really frauds, and that I would probably be frightened into flight; or, at any rate, give evidence of conscious guilt in the mode of receiving such a friendly warning. For a moment or two I scarcely understood his meaning; but then I asked, with my best haughtiness, what right he had to come to my door, at our private hours, without sending up his card; and I stepped back into my room, shutting and locking the door in his face, and at once rang the bell, more violently than was perhaps lady-like, but so as to bring the porter very promptly to the door, near which my visitor was still standing. I told the porter to beg Mr. Rogers, the good and kind proprietor of the house, to step up, and to him I complained that that man had dared to come to my door, within my private hours, without first sending up his card for permission; that he had insulted me, and that I begged he might never be admitted again under any circumstances. Of course I knew well enough who “that man” was, for he had often been at our rooms, and had entertained us with stories of the tricks of legerdemain he had witnessed in South America. He was here an important and potent personage, being an ex-diplomatist and editor of an evening paper. From his other title, I suppose he must once have also been of the same profession as the three M.D.’s whose attack on us was already in type in his columns, as I soon afterward knew by the news-boys’ cries of “The Rochester Knockings! Great Exposure of the Rochester Knockings!”
If the Rochester knockings were an imposture, nobody was more imposed upon by them than myself, and nobody could have had a greater interest in learning how they were produced. I therefore sent out to buy a copy of The Commercial Advertiser of February 18, 1851, still damp from the press, in which I read the following authoritative scientific account of the way in which, for now nearly three years, my little sisters and myself had been wearing out our knee-bones to impose upon the world, our family, and ourselves! And this is what I read:
“To the Editor of The Commercial Advertiser:
“Curiosity having led us to visit the rooms at the Phelps House in which two females from Rochester—Mrs. Fish and Miss Fox—profess to exhibit striking manifestations from the Spirit world, by means of which communion may be had with deceased friends, etc.; and having arrived at a physiological explanation of the phenomena, the correctness of which has been demonstrated in an instance which has since fallen under our observation, we have felt that a public statement is called for which may perhaps serve to prevent a further waste of time, money, and credulity (to say nothing of sentiment and philosophy) in connection with this so long successful imposition.
“The explanation is reached, almost by a logical necessity, on the application of a method of reasoning much resorted to in the diagnosis of diseases—namely, the reasoning by exclusion.
“It was reached by this method prior to the demonstration which has subsequently occurred.
“It is to be assumed, first, that the manifestations are not to be regarded as spiritual, provided they can be physically or physiologically accounted for. Immaterial agencies are not to be invoked until material agencies fail. We are thus to exclude Spiritual causation in this stage of the investigation.