egards dark seances,
which have a tendency to send me to sleep; and I believe that my
presence does not "stop manifestations:" so that I suppose I am not a
hopeless sceptic.

On the occasion of which I am about to speak we met in my study, where I
am in the habit of rearing a few pet snakes. I had just got a fine new
specimen; and having no proper habitation for it, had turned my
waste-basket upside-down on a small chess table, and left him to
tabernacle under it for the night. This was the table we generally used
for seances; and my legal friend, who was writing, immediately began to
use most foul language, on the subject of the snake, exhorting me to
"put him anywhere, put him in the cupboard, old boy." Such was the
edifying style of communication we always got through this worthy limb
of the law, but it was so much worse than usual on the present occasion
as to fairly make us roar at its insane abuse. The gentleman himself, I
ought to add, is by no means prone to profane swearing. My priestly
friend was making a wide-awake hat reply by tilts; and still got his old
reply that his Satanic Majesty was personally present. I did not in the
least credit this assertion, any more than I accepted as proven the
identity of the bargee, though I hold the impersonation in either case
to be a strange psychological fact. That I did not do so is best
evidenced by the circumstance that I said, "This spirit asserts himself
to be his Satanic Majesty. Have you either of you any objection to
communicate with him supposing such to be the case?"

Neither one nor the other had the slightest. My Catholic friend, I knew,
always carried a bottle of holy water in his pocket, and at my entreaty
forbore for the moment to exorcise. The legal gentleman, though a
"writer" himself, was not at all convinced about the phenomena, as was
perhaps natural, seeing the exceedingly bad company to which it
professed to relegate him. As for me, my scepticism was to me robur et
aes triplex. I disposed of the snake, put out the gas; and down we three
sat, amid profound darkness, like three male witches in "Macbeth,"
having previously locked the door to prevent any one disturbing our
hocus-pocus.

Any one who has sat at an ordinary dark seance will recollect the number
of false starts the table makes, the exclamations, "Was that a rap?"
when the wood simply cracks, or, "Did you feel a cold air?" when
somebody breathes a little more heavily than usual. I have my