When told about the threatened exposure she expressed very great surprise, and declared that it would be a deep mortification to believers in Spiritualism.
“I don’t believe she can expose any fraud. But if fraud exists, why, then, I say let it be exposed; the sooner the better. There’s no fraud about me, that’s very certain, and I’ve some of the very best people in New York to come here.”
“I’ll tell you what! I have heard that the Fox sisters are dreadfully addicted to drink. I don’t know how far it is true, but I wouldn’t believe anything she might say in the way of exposure. May be she’s out of money and thinks the spiritualists ought to do something for her. I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Now, if you’ll come up here some time, and if you’ll give me a fair report, I shall be glad to show you how I can materialize.”
I thought there was a good deal of material about her already, and so I thanked her.
At their public gatherings in Adelphi Hall, New York, now most meagerly attended, the spiritualists, just after the initial exposé in the Herald, refrained very wisely from taking up the gauntlet of truth thrown down by their chief apostle, Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane. In an interview, however, which was had by a reporter with Mr. Henry J. Newton, the President of the First Spiritual Society of New York, the latter indulged in a number of emphatic statements regarding the “manifestations” produced by the “Fox Sisters,” all of which rested upon his own veracity only. The spirit of what he said may be easily gleaned from this passage:
“I had supposed all along,” he said, “that Mrs. Kane was still in Europe, and that she would never return to this country. I even heard at the time when Katie, her sister, was sent abroad, that Maggie was in Rome, in company with a well known gentleman. I am very much surprised to know that she is in this city, and more surprised that she threatens to make such silly pretended revelations as you say she proposes. They can only be revelations in name. She cannot reveal anything that can injure the spiritualist cause or that will weaken in any one’s mind the truth of what we teach.
“I have been absent in the country and have not read all that the Herald has published on this matter. I have read enough, however, to show me how utterly absurd and ridiculous her position is.
“The idea of claiming that unseen ‘rappings’ can be produced with joints of the feet! If she says this, even with regard to her own manifestations, she lies! I and many other men of truth and position have witnessed the manifestations of herself and her sisters many times under circumstances in which it was absolutely impossible for there to have been the least fraud.
“Nothing that she could say in that regard would in the least change my opinion, nor would it that of any one else who has become profoundly convinced that there is an occult influence connecting us with an invisible world, I have seen Margaret Fox Kane herself, when lying on a bed of sickness and unable to rise, produce ‘rappings’ in various parts of the room in which she was, and upon the ceilings, doors and windows several feet away from her. I have seen her produce the same effects when too drunk to realize what she was doing.”