As the house was continually thronged with curious inquirers, and the time, comfort and peace of the family were consumed with these harassing disturbances, besides the most absurd though injurious suspicions being cast upon them, they endeavoured to baffle the haunters by sending Kate to reside with her eldest sister, Mrs. Fish, at Rochester; but no sooner had she gone than the manifestations re-commenced with more force than ever, in the presence of Margaretta. In course of time Mrs. Fox, with both her daughters, went to live in Rochester, but neither change of place nor house, nor yet the separation of the family, afforded them any relief from the disturbances that evidently attached themselves to persons rather than places as formerly.
Although the Fox family had for months striven to banish the power that tormented them, praying with all the fervour of true Methodism to be released from it, and enduring fear, loss and anxiety in its continuance, the report of its persistence began to spread abroad, causing a rain of persecutions to fall upon them from all quarters. Old friends looked coldly on them, and strangers circulated the most atrocious slanders at their expense.
Mrs. Fish, the eldest sister, who was a teacher of music in Rochester, began to lose her pupils, and whilst the blanching of the poor mother's hair in a single week bore testimony to the mental tortures which supra-mundane terrors and mundane cruelties had heaped upon them, the world was taunting them with imposture and with originating the very manifestations which were destroying their health, peace of mind, and good name. They had solicited the advice of their much-respected friend, Isaac Post, a highly esteemed Quaker citizen of Rochester, and at his suggestion succeeded in communicating by raps with the invisible power, through the alphabet (an attempt had been previously made but without success). Telegraphic numbers were given to signify "Yes" or "No," "Doubtful," etc., and sentences were spelled out by which they learned the astounding facts that not only "Charles Rosna" the murdered pedlar, but hosts of spirits, good and bad, high and low, could under certain conditions not understood, and impossible for mortals yet to comprehend, communicate with earth; that such communication was produced through the forces of spiritual magnetism, in chemical affinity; that the varieties of magnetism in different individuals afforded "medium power" to some, and denied it to others; that the magnetic relations necessary to produce phenomena were very subtle, liable to disturbance and singularly susceptible to the influence of the mental emotions. In addition to communications purporting thus to explain the object and something of the modus operandi of the communion, numerous spirit friends of the family, and also of those who joined in their investigations, gladdened the hearts of their astonished relatives by direct and unlooked-for tests of their presence. They came spelling out their names, ages and various tokens of identity correctly, and proclaiming the joyful tidings that they all "still lived," "still loved," and with the tenderness of human affection and the wisdom of a higher sphere of existence, watched over and guided the beloved ones who had mourned them as dead, with all the gracious ministry of guardian angels.
CHAPTER VIII.
But redolent of joy and consolation as is the intercourse with beloved friends, at this time when orderly communion has succeeded doubtful experiment, it must not be supposed that any such harmonious results characterised the initiatory proceedings of the spiritual movement which now made its advent in Rochester.
Within and without the dwellings of the medium, all was fear, consternation, doubt, and anxiety. Fanatical religionists of different sects had forced themselves into the family gatherings, and the wildest scenes of rant, cant, and absurdity often ensued. Opinions of the most astounding nature were hazarded concerning the object of this movement; some determining that it was a "millennium" and looking for the speedy reign of a personal Messiah and the equally speedy destruction of the wicked.
It must not be supposed that the clergy were idle spectators of the tumultuous wave that was sweeping over the city. On the contrary, several of them called on Mrs. Fox with offers to "exorcise the spirits," and when they found their attempts futile, and that though the spirits would rap in chorus to the "amens" with which they concluded their incantations, they were otherwise unmoved by these reverend performances, they generally ended by proclaiming abroad that the family were "in league with the evil one," or the "authors of a vile imposture."
Honourable exceptions, however, were found to this cowardly and unchristian course, and amongst these was the Rev. A. H. Jervis, a Methodist minister of Rochester, in whose family remarkable manifestations occurred of the same character as in that of the Foxes, and whose appreciation of the beauty and worth of the communications he received, several of his published letters bear witness of. Mr. Lyman Granger, Rev. Charles Hammond, Deacon Hale, and several other families of wealth and influence, both in Rochester and the surrounding towns, also began to experience similar phenomena in their own households, while the news came from all quarters, extending as far as Cincinnati and St. Louis, West, and Maine, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York, East, that the mysterious rappings and other phases of what is now called "medium power" were rapidly spreading from town to town and State to State, in fulfilment of an assurance made in the very first of the communications to the Fox family, namely, "that these manifestations were not to be confined to them, BUT WOULD GO ALL OVER THE WORLD."