“Dear Leah:
“What a woman you are! Why don’t you write to me? You know how anxious your friends are to hear from you, and you promised to write often and to send papers frequently. Only one paper have I received from you. Everybody whom you care a fig for here in Rochester asks me about Buffalo and you, and you. But I am not posted up and cannot tell them of your triumphs or escapes from the hands of the many-headed hydra whom you have slain so often. Not having a line from you a week ago, in answer to my last letter, I thought you intended to return last Saturday, but no train of cars, which I have heard of, brought you as a part of its living freight, and we (that is I) are ‘a-wearied’ because you answer not our call to ‘come.’ Now I command you, in the name of all the gods of the heathen mythology, to come to us, either spiritwise (on a sheet of paper of ample dimensions), or bodily (as would most effectually comport with our comfort and desire), by an early departing train from our sister city, whose queenly dignity, in thus aspiring to rob us of our Spiritual flame—the guide of our uncertain steps—we are getting jealous of. I received a good letter from your witch sister, my darling little Katie, this morning. She writes with much cheerfulness. Says she has commenced another quarter at her school (in New York). She says also she is ‘crazy’ to see me! You know just about what is intended to be understood when she thus addresses me (her friend and adviser); but Cathie is fast learning to be a woman, and my prayer is that she may escape the bitter trials through which you and your mother have been called to pass. She adds: ‘We had a telegraphic despatch from Maggie, saying she would be here last week Saturday; but she don’t come, and we have given up looking for her.’ She says: ‘Give my love to Leah and Margaretta, and tell them I want to see them.’
“George Willets and myself went over to see Clara (your housekeeper) yesterday. She is getting along tolerably well, but appears unwilling to remain much longer alone. She is evidently afraid—thinks the Spirits annoy her at nights. More than half of that is (of course) imagination. Why not come home, and go again, if you must, westward? But here I am asking you questions and you do not answer them. Busied as you are, and tired as you must be, most of the time, it is too much of a task for you to write to me; and I don’t know but George is right in saying, ‘Leah has found so many new loves that the winds blowing eastward come not freighted with a thought of us.’ Since the above was written an old friend from the country has called in to see me, and one of his questions was, ‘Well, do your views remain the same in regard to the rapping?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I have had no occasion or cause to change them.’ ‘Why, Doctor Flint’s statement has explained the whole thing,’ he said, and added, ‘He writes very plausibly and conclusively on the subject.’ Now, this friend and relative of mine is a most excellent man, and I thoroughly appreciate him as a good member of society, an excellent husband and father, and an honest man; but the light which illumes the pathway of his intellect is not set on a very high hill! Leah, I ought not to write to you, wouldn’t if I could avoid it, and beg pardon of propriety for thus making a virtue of necessity.
“Mine to you—not forgetting Maggie and Calvin.
“Yours,
“J. E. R.”
CHAPTER XV.
EXTRACTS FROM D. M. DEWEY’S HISTORY.
Letters from Rev. Charles Hammond and John E. Robinson.
Before I proceed to our next field of operations, which was Ohio, I may take the opportunity afforded by the interval to extract from a volume entitled, “D. M. Dewey’s History of the Strange Sounds or Rappings Heard in Rochester and Western New York,” two letters, by the Rev. C. C. Hammond, and our good friend, John E. Robinson, which will be found well worthy of perusal.