“One of the committee placed one of his hands on the feet of the ladies and the other on the floor, and though the feet were not moved, there was a distinct jar of the floor.”
Here, then, there were three operators and one investigator. The latter puts his hand on the feet of the ladies. How many feet, pray you? There were six feet on the platform, as we know, all of which had been carefully educated in the production of “raps.” Could one man’s hand cover them all? And if it could not, does not this pretended “evidence” fall at once to the ground?
All of the recitals made by spiritualistic writers concerning the doings of the “Fox Sisters,” contain this element of vagueness, the lack of precision and completeness, which to persons unaccustomed to analysis may possibly appear plausible enough, but to the experienced inquirer is merely a more certain proof of weakness and prevarication.
Volumes might be written to meet the statements advanced in every case, and to show how clumsily misleading they are. It is not worth while at this late day, and in that direction, to do more than I have already accomplished in this chapter.
Indeed, the actual demonstration of the fact that the far-famed “rappings” are produced in the manner described at the beginning of this work, should be quite sufficient to all logical minds, to condemn every claim that the professional mediums have advanced as being the agents of any supernatural manifestations.
The good old Latin maxim never applied with greater force than it does here: Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus.
The operations of the eldest sister all tended to the one end: fame and money. In Rochester, fees for the first time were accepted by “mediums,” and shortly afterward a tariff of prices for admission to the séances and the “private circles” was adopted and made public. No jugglers ever drove a more prosperous business than did the “Fox family” for a number of years, when once fairly launched upon that sea of popular wonder, which somebody has said is supplied by the inherent fondness of mankind for being humbugged.
Mrs. Fish had actually the project of founding a new religion, and she tried hard to convince her younger sisters and her own child that there were really such things as spiritual communications, notwithstanding that all of those that were produced in their séances they knew to be perfectly false. She asserted that even before Maggie and Katie were born she had received messages warning her that they were destined to do great things.
“In all of our séances, while we were under her charge,” says Mrs. Kane, “we knew just when to rap ‘yes’ and when to rap ‘no’ by signals that she gave us, and which were unknown to any one but ourselves. Of course, we were too young, then, to have been successful very long in deluding people, had it not been for an arrangement such as this.
“Her own daughter, Lizzie, had no manner of patience with her transparent pretence.