I told him that these were all the questions I desired to ask him. He exhorted me to be calm, and told me a cheerful story of a young girl's having been recently buried alive, of which, I infer, the moral was, that she would have found it more comfortable all round to have been sold to the doctors. I paid him his fee and left.
In conclusion, let me add that we have by no means exhausted the lessons which Spiritualism, in the hands of some of its votaries, can teach us. To our purblind vision the joint ownership of one skull by two different persons presents a physiological problem more or less difficult of solution. But all difficulty vanishes as soon as 'the river is crossed.' I derived no little comfort and much light from a Materializing Séance which I attended shortly afterwards in Boston, where both Marie St. Clair and Sister Belle appeared together, at the same time, and greeted me with affectionate warmth. To my inexpressible relief they were each well provided with skulls. They were more mature and matronly, I confess, than my ardent fancy had painted them, and Sister Belle's 'golden curls one yard long' were changed to very straight black hair; the golden hue which Sister Belle had herself ascribed to them must have been due to the light in which she saw them, 'the light that never was on sea or land.'
I was pleased to find that Marie's English was excellent, without a trace of foreign accent. But this, and the matronly appearance, I learned subsequently were presumably due to the age, shape and nativity of the Medium through whom she materialized. For when Marie afterwards appeared to me, as she did many times at another Medium's séances, her appearance was quite youthful, with clustering brown curls low down on her forehead, which when I once attempted to stroke I found to be full of sharp pins; and to my expressions of gratitude that she should so kindly appear to me, she lisped in broken English: 'I am viz you olvays.' The present of an amber necklace, with the name 'Marie' engraved on the silver clasp, obtained for me from her the written expression of her pleasure that I had carefully preserved what I assured her was 'the last thing on her neck before she passed over.' Need I say that this document, in Marie's own handwriting, invests the skull with even added interest?
HORACE HOWARD FURNESS.
* * * * *
MATERIALIZATION.
I think it would be difficult to find a psychological study more interesting than that which is afforded by a Materializing séance. I have never attended one that did not yield abundant food for reflection, and present one problem, at least, too deep for any solution I can devise. Although, perhaps, our first experience in such séances makes the deepest impression, yet the novelty never wears off, nor can custom stale its variety. The audiences are never wholly the same, and every Medium has her own peculiar method.
In the cities where the Mediums reside, and where they hold their séances on regular days throughout the winter, the audiences are by no means composed only of those who go out of idle curiosity; these form but a small segment of the 'circle,' the majority are regular attendants, mostly those whose lives have been clouded by sorrow, and who go thither as to a church or sanctuary, and so serious and earnest is their deportment that I cannot imagine any temptation to open levity. This unaffectedly religious character of these séances cannot fail, I think, to strike even the most indifferent. The careful arrangement of the visitors who are to compose what is termed the 'circle;' the nice balancing of positive natures with negative natures, wherein the Medium is guided by her delicate spiritual insight; the quiet hush; the whispered conversation; the darkened room; the darker drapery of the mysterious Cabinet, with its untold possibilities; the subdued chords of the dim melodeon; the soothing tones of familiar hymns, in which all voices join; the words full of assurance of a deathless life, of immortal love, of reunion with earthly idols, not lost, but gone before only a very little distance, and now present and impatient for the Medium's trance to enable them to return radiant with love and joy—all these conspire to kindle emotions deeply religious in hearts that are breaking under blows of bereavement, and of such, as I have said, the majority of the audiences are composed. Every effort is made by the Mediums to heighten the effect. Before entering the Cabinet to undergo her mysterious trance, the Medium generally makes a short address, reminding the circle that this is a solemn hour, that here is the forecourt of the world beyond, thronged with living Spirits, eager to return, bearing visible, tangible assurance of immortality and of enduring love, and that the mysterious agency, whereby they return, is greatly aided by a sympathetic harmony in the circle, and so forth. The Medium then enters the Cabinet; the curtains close; the light is lowered; the organ sounds some solemn chords, gliding into the hymn, 'Nearer, my God, to Thee,' which all join in singing. At its close there is a hush of anticipation; and that nature must be unimpressionable indeed, that is not stirred when the dark, heavy folds of the curtains of the Cabinet are discerned to be tremulously moving; and, as they gently part, disclose a figure veiled from head to foot in robes of white.
If the return of the heavenly visitant would but end here, I think the impression would be deeper and more abiding. The filmy, vague outline of the white figure thoroughly harmonizes with all established, orthodox notions of ghosts, and if this were all of the apparition vouchsafed to us, we might, perhaps, have a harder problem to deal with than when the Spirit actually emerges from the Cabinet with outstretched arms of greeting. A substantial, warm, breathing, flesh and blood ghost, whose foot-falls jar the floor, is slightly heterodox and taxes our credulity; if hereunto be added an unmistakable likeness to the Medium in form and feature, many traces, I am afraid, of the supernatural and spiritual vanish.
Mindful of our endeavour as a Commission, to have as many observers as possible in cases demanding close observation, I never attended a Materializing séance as a member of this Commission. Whenever I happened to be personally known (and my ear-trumpet soon makes me a marked man), that official capacity was unavoidably imputed to me, but I never announced it nor claimed it. I was present merely as an observer on my own account, with the intention of making arrangements, if practicable, for séances with the rest of the Commission, if what I saw seemed to me sufficiently remarkable to justify the expense, which experience, with other Mediums in other lines, had taught me would be very considerable. I therefore took no notes, and could at this late day only after much difficulty furnish dates. Wherefore all that I propose in this Memorandum is to give my own private conclusion, which is worth no more than the conclusion of any other private individual, and to mention the test to which I subjected all the Spirits whom I had the pleasure of specially 'interviewing'; as this test can be applied by any one, at any time, at any séance, it partakes of the nature of a general truth, which does not need the support of dates, or names, or places to uphold it. I suppose I have attended between twenty and thirty Materializing séances.