But, in our own day, the inquisitive practice of drawing the veil from the mysteries of the other world has spread through a very wide circle, and no name, sounded down from past centuries, is too venerable for its owner to be assailed with questions through the medium of some tipping-table or hysterical young woman; or even to be constrained to appear personally in the transparent guise of his so-called astral body.
The aristocracy of the intermediate kingdom, after they had borne with this presumption for some time, at last bethought themselves of an innocent expedient which would secure them from further intrusion. They made inquiry among the ghostly
masses whether there were any who would be willing to serve as their representatives in case of such demands, and to answer impertinent questions as seemed to them proper.
Now, as many of those who in life had known only selfish pleasures were already so wearied of this spiritual existence that they were ready to jump out of their skin (if they had had a skin), nothing could be more welcome than this proposition to mingle once more in mundane affairs, and to amuse themselves for a few hours with the fashionable play of question and answer.
That they had scant knowledge of the affairs of their famous associates disturbed them as little as it did those whom they were to represent.
For it soon became evident that the questioners at tapping-tables and dark seances were in nowise offended by foolish answers, and received the most palpable nonsense which was whispered to them in the communications of spirits as profound, superhuman wisdom, which they interpreted according to their wishes. It is easy to pipe for him who loves to dance; and he who is determined to hold converse with Julius Cæsar, Plato or Beethoven, will hear, in the stammering utterances of some cartman with whom he has in some mysterious way put himself en rapport, words of the sublimest import.
Several years ago, the town in which the scene of this story is laid was attacked with the fever of spiritualism. At first, people were content to move tables and produce rappings, but by degrees they grew ambitious for a more exalted mode of spiritual intercourse; and two mediums, with their hypnotic subjects, made their entry into town, so that hardly a night passed without some ghostly doings--and that, too, in the homes of the best and most cultured families.