d delight at being together once
again. Mrs. Kane had but just been talking to me about her projected
lecture on "The Curse of Spiritualism," and Mrs. Jencken, who had
heard nothing of the proposed expose, except as it was casually
rumored in her ear at the steamship dock, promptly gave her
acquiescence to it as soon as she understood the situation.

"I do not care a fig for Spiritualism," she said, "except so far as
the good will of its adherents may affect the future of my boys. They
are all I have in this life, and I live or die for them."

Mrs. Jencken looks a far different person than she was when in deep
trouble in this city and when she had to do with the rather
unsympathetic measures of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Children. No matron could bear a more placid and comely
expression, and she declares with heartfelt earnestness that she is
done forever with her once-besetting vice.

"Mrs. Jencken, are you willing to join with your sister in exposing
the true modus operandi of Spiritualism?" I asked.

"I care nothing for Spiritualism," was her reply. "So far as I am
concerned I am done with it. I will say this, I regard it as one of
the very greatest curses that the world has ever known. If I knew
those powerful spiritualists who have done their utmost to harm me in
the past could not do so in the future, I would not hesitate a moment
to expose it. The worst of them all is my eldest sister, Leah, the
wife of Daniel Underhill. I think she was the one who caused my
arrest last spring, and the bringing of the preposterous charge
against me that I was cruel to my children and neglectful of them. I
don't know why it is, she has always been jealous of Maggie and me;
I suppose because we could do things in Spiritualism that she
couldn't."

"Why don't you come squarely out, then, with the truth, and make the
public your friends? You needn't fear any persecution if you do
that."

"Well, if my sister's health were only fully restored and I knew she
was fully herself I would certainly join her in showing Spiritualism
to be what it really is. I want to be sure of that, however. I want
the thing done properly when it is done."

"Then you will not deny that what she has said of Spiritualism is
true?"

"I will not deny