ge to another of this queer illusion, and,
being compelled by a harder and more mature intelligence to repeat their
part over and over again, became the chief means of establishing that
injurious belief in communications from the spirits of the departed, of
which such great numbers have become the victims.

Many an older offender against common sense, reason and strict morality
persists through force of circumstance in the pathway he has chosen, and
does not turn backward, merely because he cannot do so without wearing the
face of shame.

From such slight and trivial beginning came the great movement--great
because of the number which it comprised and of the sensation which
attended its progress--that for more than forty years has alternately
surprised, puzzled, disgusted and amused the world.

From so little a plant has grown a gigantic weed of deceit, corruption and
fraud, nurtured upon the fattening lust of money, and of the flesh.

What has developed from it is not alone a system of so-called
communications through a puerile code of signals with an unseen world;
but, as Dante describes, in his incomparable epic, forms of monstrosity
which combine a hideous human semblance and a loathly animal foulness, so
this venomous evil has become conglomerate in its hateful phases of
delusion, and its petty sordidness and depravity.

Thus the Tuscan bard describes the spirit of fraud:

"'Lo! the fell monster with the deadly sting!
Who passes mountains, breaks through fenced walls
And firm embattled spears, and with his filth
Taints all the world! Thus me my guide addressed,
And beckon'd him, that he should come to shore,
Near to the stony causeway's utmost edge.
"Forthwith that image vile of fraud appear'd,
His head and upper part expos'd on land,
But laid not on the shore his bestial train.
His face the semblance of a just man's wore.
So kind and gracious was its outward cheer;
The rest was serpent all; two shaggy claws
Reach'd to the armpits, and the back and breast,
And either side, were painted o'er with nodes
And orbits. Colors variegated more
Nor Turks nor Tartars e'er on cloth of state
With interchangeable embroidery wove,
Nor spread Arachne o'er her curious loom.
As ofttimes a light skiff, moor'd to the shore,
Stands part in water, part upon the land;
Or, as where dwells the greedy German boor,
The beaver settles watching for his prey;
So on the rim, that