Stilton soon became the controlling spirit of our circle. His presence really seemed, as he said, to encourage the spirits. Never before had the manifestations been so abundant or so surprising. Miss Fetters, especially, astonished us by the vigor of her possessions. Not only Samson and Peter the Great, but Gibbs the Pirate, Black Hawk, and Joe Manton, who had died the previous year in a fit of delirium-tremens, prophesied, strode, swore, and smashed things in turn, by means of her frail little body. As Cribb, a noted pugilist of the last century, she floored an incautious spectator, giving him a black eye which he wore for a fortnight afterwards. Singularly enough, my visitors were of the opposite cast. Hypatia, Petrarch, Mary Magdalen, Abelard, and, oftenest of all, Shelley, proclaimed mystic truths from my lips. They usually spoke in inspired monologues, without announcing themselves beforehand, and often without giving any clue to their personality. A practised stenographer, engaged by Mr. Stilton, took down many of these communications as they were spoken, and they were afterwards published in the "Revelations." It was also remarked, that, while Miss Fetters employed violent gestures and seemed to possess a superhuman strength, I, on the contrary, sat motionless, pale, and with little sign of life except in my voice, which, though low, was clear and dramatic in its modulations. Stilton explained this difference without hesitation. "Miss Abby," he said, "possesses soul-matter of a texture to which the souls of these strong men naturally adhere. In the spirit-land the superfluities repel each other; the individual souls seek to remedy their imperfections: in the union of opposites only is to be found the great harmonia of life. You, John, move upon another plane; through what in you is undeveloped, these developed spirits are attracted."
For two or three years, I must admit, my life was a very happy one. Not only were those occasional trances an intoxication, nay, a coveted indulgence, but they cast a consecration over my life. My restored faith rested on the sure evidence of my own experience; my new creed contained no harsh or repulsive feature; I heard the same noble sentiments which I uttered in such moments repeated by my associates in the faith, and I devoutly believed that a complete regeneration of the human race was at hand. Nevertheless, it struck me sometimes as singular that many of the Mediums whom I met--men and women chosen by spiritual hands to the same high office--excited in my mind that instinct of repulsion on which I had learned to rely as a sufficient reason for avoiding certain persons. Far as it would have been from my mind, at that time, to question the manifestations which accompanied them, I could not smother my mistrust of their characters. Miss Fetters, whom I so frequently met, was one of the most disagreeable. Her cold, thin lips, pale eyes, and lean figure gave me a singular impression of voracious hunger. Her presence was often announced to me by a chill shudder, before I saw her. Centuries ago one of her ancestors must have been a ghoul or vampire. The trance of possession seemed, with her, to be a form of dissipation, in which she indulged as she might have catered for a baser appetite. The new religion was nothing to her; I believe she valued it only on account of the importance she obtained among its followers. Her father, a vain, weak-minded man, who kept a grocery in the town, was himself a convert.
Stilton had an answer for every doubt. No matter how tangled a labyrinth might be exhibited to him, he walked straight through it.
"How is it," I asked him, "that so many of my fellow-mediums inspire me with an instinctive dislike and mistrust?"
"By mistrust you mean dislike," he answered; "since you know of no reason to doubt their characters. The elements of soul-matter are differently combined in different individuals, and there are affinities and repulsions, just as there are in the chemical elements. Your feeling is chemical, not moral. A want of affinity does not necessarily imply an existing evil in the other party. In the present ignorance of the world, our true affinities can only he imperfectly felt and indulged; and the entire freedom which we shall obtain in this respect is the greatest happiness of the spirit-life."
Another time I asked,--
"How is it that the spirits of great authors speak so tamely to us? Shakspeare, last night, wrote a passage which he would have been heartily ashamed of, as a living man. We know that a spirit spoke, calling himself Shakspeare; but, judging from his communication, it could not have been he."
"It probably was not," said Mr. Stilton. "I am convinced that all malicious spirits are at work to interrupt the communications from the higher spheres. We were thus deceived by one professing to be Benjamin Franklin, who drew for us the plan of a machine for splitting shingles, which we had fabricated and patented at considerable expense. On trial, however, it proved to be a miserable failure, a complete mockery. When the spirit was again summoned, he refused to speak, but shook the table to express his malicious laughter, went off, and has never since returned. My friend, we know but the alphabet of Spiritualism, the mere A B C; we can no more expect to master the immortal language in a day than a child to read Plato after learning his letters."
Many of those who had been interested in the usual phenomena gradually dropped off, tired, and perhaps a little ashamed, in the reaction following their excitement; but there were continual accessions to our ranks, and we formed, at last, a distinct clan or community. Indeed, the number of secret believers in Spiritualism would never be suspected by the uninitiated. In the sect, however, as in Masonry and the Catholic Church, there are circles within circles,--concentric rings, whence you can look outwards, but not inwards, and where he alone who stands at the centre is able to perceive everything. Such an inner circle was at last formed in our town. Its object, according to Stilton, with whom the plan originated, was to obtain a purer spiritual atmosphere, by the exclusion of all but Mediums and those non-mediumistic believers in whose presence the spirits felt at ease, and thus invite communications from the farther and purer spheres.
In fact, the result seemed to justify the plan. The character of the trance, as I had frequently observed, is vitiated by the consciousness that disbelievers are present. The more perfect the atmosphere of credulity, the more satisfactory the manifestations. The expectant company, the dim light, the conviction that a wonderful revelation was about to dawn upon us, excited my imagination, and my trance was really a sort of delirium, in which I spoke with a passion and an eloquence I had never before exhibited. The fear, which had previously haunted me, at times, of giving my brain and tongue into the control of an unknown, power, was forgotten; yet, more than ever, I was conscious of some strong controlling influence, and experienced a reckless pleasure in permitting myself to be governed by it. "Prepare," I concluded, (I quote from the report in the "Revelations,") "prepare, sons of men, for the dawning day! Prepare for the second and perfect regeneration of man! For the prison-chambers have been broken into, and the light from the interior shall illuminate the external! Ye shall enjoy spiritual and passional freedom; your guides shall no longer be the despotism of ignorant laws, nor the whip of an imaginary conscience,--but the natural impulses of your nature, which are the melody of Life, and the natural affinities, which are its harmony! The reflections from the upper spheres shall irradiate the lower, and Death is the triumphal arch through which we pass from glory to glory!"