Another depicted the sorrows she would be obliged to endure before her affairs culminated. She would be watched, annoyed, harassed; but her way would be well watched by the spirit-forms which were evidently floating around promiscuously to protect the pests of society; and, whether she got the man or not, she should share his fortune. This much could be surely promised.
Another was wonderfully favored with divine "spirit light" upon the subject—so favored, indeed, that time without number her other-life had insensibly and unconsciously wandered away in search of correct information regarding the result of the Winslow-Lyon suit, and, without her volition or bidding, it had delved into the mysteries for her suffering sister. She could assure her suffering sister, the clairvoyant said, that Lyon was spiritually at her feet. All the trouble had arisen between them from Mrs. Winslow's standing upon a higher spiritual plane than Mr. Lyon. He, as was natural to man, had more of the sensual element beclouding his spirit-life. Now, pleaded the clairvoyant, couldn't she adjust an average between them? She was certain—yes, the spirits, who never lie, had positively revealed to her that all that was needed was some one to properly discover each of these affinities to the other. In any case, all would eventually be well, and there was peace, prosperity, and a large amount of money in waiting for her.
This sort of absurdity was related by Mrs. Winslow to an unlimited extent that evening, as the three sipped the liquor she had provided, and she insisted with great fervor that all these revelations strongly corroborated the light she herself had received on the same subject.
As a long pause ensued after one of these heated asseverations, Bristol ventured to ask how she had been enlightened concerning the matter.
Raising her flushed face towards the ceiling, then lifting her right arm above her head and holding it there for a moment, she allowed it to slowly descend with a coiling, serpentine motion, when she burst into a sudden ecstasy of speech, movement and feature, and partly as in answer to the inquiry, and partly as if struck with a swift and irresistible inspiration, she said in a low, unearthly voice, and with weird effect:
"Yes, yes, I hear your angel voices calling; I see your beautiful forms; I feel your tender fingers touching my aching head; I am listening to your sweet, soft whispers. Ah! what is it you say?—yes, yes, yes! You are with me. You will watch over and guard me. You will ward off the evil influences that surround me, and despite the darkness which envelops me, even as the glorious sun leaps from his couch of crimson and with his burnished lances drives the grim hosts of shadows before him with the speed of the light!—What! are you now leaving?"
Here Mrs. Winslow gasped and kicked with her pretty feet alarmingly.
"What—what is that?—that rosy, effulgent light that fills all space? Ah, yes! I see they beckon for me to look up, to not be cast down or despair. I will look up. See! in their hands are long, feathery wands with which they sweep the flaming sky, while across its burnished arc I see, yes, I see in letters of purple that oft-recurring legend—Twenty-five thousand dollars!"
Now, although I am not arguing this question of Spiritualism, and am only giving to the public the history so far as I dare of an extraordinary woman and practical Spiritualist, I cannot resist asking the question, or putting forward the theory, which, during the progress of this case particularly, and a thousand times before and since in a general way, has irresistibly forced itself into my mind. I give it in all fairness, I am sure, and only with a view that it may dispel certain feelings of squeamishness with which a good many people approach the subject to investigate it. I may be accused of presenting it with too little delicacy; but the public must recollect that the nature of my business compels me to get at the truth of things, and to do that, matters must in a majority of cases be handled without gloves. This is my only excuse, and perhaps it may be a good defence; but in any event this is the question: Has there ever been a so-called Spiritual "manifestation" that has not subsequently been explained as trickery by persons more credible of belief than its medium or originator? After that has been answered in the affirmative, for it can be answered in no other way, all there is left of this Spiritualistic structure is, how account for such exhibitions as that given by Mrs. Winslow and those given by others of her craft, even granting their personal purity, which is undoubtedly exceptional?
This is the question which has oftenest come into my mind in my necessarily almost constant study of these people, and the answers, though continually varying, have all eventually forced upon me the conviction that this religion, as it is sacrilegiously called, only takes hold of people of abnormal or diseased temperaments—people diseased in mind, in morals, in body, or in all; and if that is true, as I sincerely believe it to be, the dignifying of a disease or infirmity as a religion is simply an absurdity too foolish for even ridicule.