Mrs. L. C. Moulton, London correspondent of the Boston Herald, sends the following, published July 17:
“Like every body else, in London they are interested in hypnotism, spiritualism, etc.—interested, I mean, as inquirers, not as believers, and I saw a table move round briskly under the pretty fingers of Mrs. Hunt and a young lady cousin of hers.
“The latest feminine sensation is Miss Ramsey, the Girton girl of twenty, who beat all the men at Cambridge this year in Greek; and what makes her success still more triumphant, is that the pretty little creature had only learned her Greek alphabet four years ago, while the men had all been pegging away at the language for ten years.
“Prof. Stainton-Moses of University College, London, is certainly a trained scientist, and a man accustomed to weigh evidence, and tells me that with him spiritualism is not a matter of mere belief, but of actual, personal knowledge. A great deal of spiritual writing has been done through his own hand; not professionally, but for his own satisfaction. Holding Zoroaster or Aristotle in his left hand, and reading attentively, he has written out most extraordinary things with his right. For instance, one day—in answer, he thinks to a wish on his part for an especially strong test—his hand wrote of the death of a woman of whom he had never heard, giving her name and the time and manner of her passing away, etc. ‘But,’ he said, as he read it over, ‘I don’t see that this is a test. I could find it in a newspaper; I may have read it, and unconsciously remembered it.’ Instantly it was written, ‘No, that cannot be; she died but an hour ago, and when you see it in the paper you will have had your test.’ The next day he searched the papers in vain, but on the second morning, there, in the death column, he found the announcement of the death, corresponding with what had been written through him, in every particular of name, date, and disease. Also he has seen spirits in friendly converse—entertained them at his own fireside.
“I went, by invitation of Prof. Stainton-Moses, to a festal reunion of the ‘Spiritual Alliance,’ of which he is president, and I am bound to say that I met there men and women who seemed to me as sincere and earnest, and intelligent as one finds anywhere. Oh, and I saw Eglinton—the medium who is now what Home was—though he told me last night he meant soon to get out of the professional part of spiritualism. He is a singularly agreeable man, handsome, and with a look in his dark eyes as if they might easily see visions. I am told that he has lately married a very rich wife, and this may account for his intention to withdraw from spiritualism as a profession.”
Mr. Eglinton has published in the London Medium a very interesting narrative of his seances with the Emperor and Empress of Russia, the royal family and nobility. In the first royal seance, the Grand Duchess Vladimir proved to be a medium, and was lifted in the air, screaming the while. ‘As she continued to ascend,’ says Mr. Eglinton, ‘I was compelled to leave her hand, and on returning to her seat, she declared that she had been floated over the table without anything having been in contact with her.’
The Grand Duke Vladimir brought a new bank-note in an envelope to have its number told, which he did not know. The number was correctly written by the spirits, between slates, 716,990.
At the seance with the emperor there were present a party of ten, the empress, Grand Duke and Duchess of Oldenburg, Grand Duke and Duchess Sergius, Grand Duke Vladimir, Prince Alexander, and Gen. Richter. All hands being joined, a spirit voice conversed with the empress in Russian. A female form materialized near the Princess Oldenburg. A music-box weighing about forty pounds, was carried around and placed on the emperor’s hand. Other phenomena occurred, but the chief incident was the levitation. Mr. Eglinton was lifted in the air, the empress and Prince Oldenburg holding his hands and standing on their chairs, until his feet rested on the shoulders of the emperor and the Grand Duke Oldenburg.
Mr. Eglinton was overwhelmed with invitations from the nobility and professors. M. de Giers the great Foreign Minister and his two sons (mediums) were spiritualists of many years standing.
The Journal could not contain half the marvellous things that are happening.
The Louisville Courier-Journal reports that in Bracken County, Ky., (on the Ohio river, between Louisville and Cincinnati):
“Excitement is at fever heat in the Milford neighborhood, in the southern portion of this county, over the mysterious appearance of the most wonderful faces and figures upon the window glass of the houses in that section. The first appearance of these singular and most extraordinary pictures on the glass was at the residence of William Showalter, where the window panes all at once showed the colors of the rainbow, on which two days later the heads of people and animals were clearly visible. On the glass of another house a head and face resembling President Lincoln’s were to be seen. On another the form of a young girl bending over an infant, the body of a lion, the figures twenty-two, and a landscape were all visible, as distinctly outlined as any artist could have drawn them. Some of the most striking pictures are on the windows of the Milford Baptist Church, which are protected with shutters that are kept tightly closed. The people of Bracken county have not in years been more worked up over anything than they now are over these pictures.”