icles were in the cellar under the ground floor, and had to come from
the rear of the cellar, through the door, into the kitchen, up the stairs,
into the pantry on the second floor, through the pantry into the dining
room, up the second flight of stairs, into the large room in which we
slept, hitting us as we lay in our beds near the front window. * * *

"A cabinet shop was the next thing represented by the spirits. They seemed
to be possessed of all kinds of tools to work with. After sawing off
boards they would let them fall heavily on the floor, jarring everything
around them. Then, after planing, jointing, driving nails, and screwing
down the lid of a coffin, they would shove the hollow sounding article
about the room. (This we understood at a later day.) Often to our utter
amazement, pickets from the discarded lots in the cemetery came flying
through the room over our heads, on our beds, like debris in a tornado.
They came from the extreme west side of the burying-ground, through _that_
lot, and the distance of about two hundred feet through _our_ lot; an
entire distance of about four hundred feet. That they came by no visible
means, we knew; as no human power could have thrown them through the air
into our chamber window, hitting us in our beds, in the same place every
time."

In July, 1848, Leah, her sisters and mother, revisited the Hydesville
house, which was then unoccupied. David, the brother, had fallen by this
time into the plans of Leah, whether a dupe or an accomplice, Margaret,
even at this day, is unable to say. To him was due the very first
suggestion that the so-called spirits might communicate with the living by
means of the alphabet. And since then, this has been the chief stay of
spiritualism, literally the A B C of all its so-called science. It is a
singular commentary upon the consistency of the "spirits," or the good
faith of those who professed to interpret their messages, that the code of
communication at first employed in their circles was entirely different in
the meaning of the simple signals used from the one which finally was
adopted. Would the "spirits," think you, who are divorced from the
trammels of this world, have been guilty of this simple error and have
been obliged to correct it afterward, had they not been impostors?

The object of Mrs. Fish in going back to Hydesville is quite apparent.
There was yet an unworked mine of wonder and superstition, out of which
the dust of dross m