When you go to a party at Westbridge, to be invited to which is a sort of a testimonial that you are a discreet and proper person, you are expected to take a seat and remain seated. To move about much argues a lightness of mind, and will cause talk. Of course, the conversation will have to be principally carried on with your neighbor, whoever he or she may happen to be; and three hours' uninterrupted conversation with a shy youth or a heavy old bachelor is a mental effort of which let those speak who have tried it. I have generally taken refuge in silence, after having made the observations that are usually considered proper on such occasions.
If you are a lady, books as a subject of conversation are interdicted; for, St. Paul being our great oracle, puddings, and not literature, are considered as the proper objects on which the female mind may exercise itself; and, though the state of public feeling in Westbridge allows a critical supervision over the conduct of the members of its society, yet gossip in its broader sense is interdicted.
Thus deprived of the aliment that sustains it in so many places, the social feeling languished, and sometimes seemed almost extinct. Yet, in reality, it retained a vigorous vitality, and only needed an opportunity to show how strong and deep it had struck its roots in our common nature, so that neither circumstances nor education could utterly destroy it. The mania for moving tables in the peculiar way that came in with the spirit-rappings was just such an occasion as the people in Westbridge would allow themselves to seize upon, as a legitimate means for gratifying the love for novelty and excitement that is inherent in mankind.
They excused, or, I should say, accounted for their ardor in the cause—for to excuse their course of conduct is below a true Westbridgeite—by speaking calmly and wisely of moving tables in that mysterious way as a new fact in science yet unaccounted for, and all their efforts were to be considered as so many scientific experiments to discover whether electricity, or some hitherto unknown physical influence, were the agent. For a time in Westbridge, we all, young and old, became natural philosophers, and pursued our investigations with a most exemplary zeal.
In a state of benighted ignorance on the subject of table-moving, never having heard of it even, I made my entrance into the sewing society, held weekly at Westbridge. As soon as I entered, I became aware that some exciting topic was under discussion. That being our only weekly gathering during the winter, in the calmest times the tongue ran an even race with the needle; but on this particular afternoon the sewing seemed to be forgotten. Work in hand, I seated myself near a lady to whom a large circle were listening in open-eyed wonder.
"At my cousin's in New York," she was saying, with animated emphasis, "they moved a heavy table, with a marble top, up stairs."
"Well, I suppose that is often done," said I, as yet uninitiated into the mystery.
"Yes; but with their hands—that is, without their hands. I mean just by putting their hands on the top of it, without using any force at all."
"I know a gentleman in the city who can, after keeping his hands on the table for a little while, take them off, and it will follow him all about the room," said another lady.
"My cousin told me," said a young girl, so absorbed in listening that her work had fallen on the floor, "that he had heard of tables being made to spring up to the ceiling—heavy tables."