But her stay in the “Spiritual Mansion” was short. She had thought that the quiet existence afforded her there would be preferable to the daily and distasteful practice of public “mediumship,” which she must have resorted to at once, had she not accepted the proposition of Mr. Seybert. But the hypocrisy unconsciously required of her by him, while of a more fantastic description, was altogether too much for her to endure. Her intense hatred of her profession as a “medium” appeared in a strong light to those who were then in her confidence.
Mrs. Kane, at the “Spiritual Mansion,” not only produced pretended messages from the departed friends of her patron, but also from nearly every martyr and saint in the Protestant calendar, and from the famous sages and rulers of old. But her imposture stopped short of actual sacrilege. Beyond that line she never has gone.
When it came to transmitting messages demanded by the living of the apostles and fathers of the church, she revolted against this mania for the supernatural and the impossible, and she refused to continue longer the instrument of pure religious insanity.
She declined to produce “spirit rappings,” as emanating from St. Paul, St. Peter, Elijah and the angel Gabriel.
It has often been said that Henry Seybert had an undoubted vein of madness in his brain. Mrs. Kane herself so declares. I believe the same is true of every person (not a knave at heart) who persistently, after reason and conscientious research have demonstrated the truth of the charges against Spiritualism, still refuses to be convinced.
There was, however, a method in the madness of Seybert. Mrs. Kane has always been most careful not to make any positive asseveration of the claims of Spiritualism. Her guarded and, in some measure, candid course, no doubt tended very far towards influencing him to desire an honest and thorough investigation of the so-called spiritualistic phenomena, to be conducted according to the most rigid scientific methods. In his will, he left provision for the founding of a chair of philosophy in the University of Pennsylvania, with the careful stipulation that a certain portion of the income to be derived from the foundation should be devoted to the investigation of “all systems of morals, religion or philosophy which assume to represent the truth; and particularly of modern Spiritualism.”
Thus this legacy gave birth to the celebrated “Seybert Commission,” whose labors have resulted in the most valuable exposé, prior to this present publication, of the fraudulent methods of Spiritualism—“the tricks of the trade,” as it were—which has ever been made.
Even the investigation of the remarkable “rappings,” produced by Mrs. Kane, in which the Commission engaged—while less successful than any other branch of their researches—went so far as fully to convince them that these alleged manifestations were entirely fraudulent, and that they were produced by physical action on the part of the “medium,” probably by or in the vicinity of her feet.
This they were unable to prove, however, by any use of their five senses, which they were permitted to make. Mrs. Kane gave them no such chance of examination, on this occasion, as had been vouchsafed to the Buffalo doctors some thirty-six years before, almost with the result of throttling Spiritualism in its infancy. No; she was much too clever for that. She would greatly have preferred, to being ignominiously found out, to make a public and unreserved confession.
The fact is that no other scientific committee ever enjoyed the facilities of close observation of the production of the “raps” which were accorded to the “Buffalo doctors,” and that, up to this final day, when Mrs. Kane herself tells the truth, there has been not one single positive exposure of the primitive fraud of the “toe-knockings.” Conjectures, it is true, have groped in that direction, time and again—but they never have done more than to grope.