“‘That is strange, isn’t it,’ remarked Mrs. Kane, smiling, ‘in view of the fact that he must have died before you were born? Try again.’
“‘Is Abraham Lincoln present?’ Three raps.
“‘Well you see the “spirits” are very obliging.’
“‘Will Harrison be elected?’ One loud rap (no).
“‘Will President Cleveland get another term?’ Three raps.”
That night some two thousand or more persons crowded the Academy of Music to witness the sensational exposé. Most of them were sober, sensible people who “hailed with delight” the announcement that one of the famous Fox Sisters was to make a “clean breast of her share in Spiritualistic humbuggery.” But certain portions of the house were packed with pronounced Spiritualists, men and women who regarded all efforts to disillusion the public as so many personal insults, and when, previous to Mrs. Kane’s appearance, Dr. C. M. Richmond, a prominent New York dentist who had spent twenty years and thousands of dollars investigating mediumistic tricks and wiles explained and demonstrated in full light the full methods of producing them, this Spiritualistic contingent became decidedly hostile and when Mrs. Kane finally stepped before the big audience to “confess orally what she had already confessed in print” she was laboring under too great a nervous strain to make any “intelligent utterance.” Those in charge of the affair realizing that an address was out of the question at once suggested that she immediately give a demonstration of the “rappings.” One of the New York papers the next morning published the following description of what happened.[9]
“But if her tongue had lost its power her preternatural toe joint had not. A plain wooden stool, or table, resting upon four short legs and having the properties of a sounding board was placed in front of her. Removing her shoe, she placed her right foot upon this little table.
“The entire house became breathlessly still and was rewarded by a number of little short, sharp raps—those mysterious sounds which have for forty years frightened and bewildered hundreds of thousands of people in this country and in Europe.
“A committee consisting of three physicians taken from the audience then ascended the stage, and having made an examination of her foot during the progress of the rappings, unhesitatingly agreed that the sounds were made by the action of the first joint of her large toe.
“The demonstration was perfect and complete and only the most hopelessly prejudiced and bigoted fanatics of Spiritualism could withstand the irresistible force of this commonplace explanation and exhibition of how spirit rappings are produced.”