ively, however, that much of the effect of the
'rappings' is greatly exaggerated in this statement which my mother was
made to write. I say that she was _made_ to write it, because the wording
of the statement, if not largely dictated by others in the first
place--men who desired to make public the details of the 'rappings' and to
make money by the sale of a pamphlet describing them--was afterwards
grossly garbled, that it might be used to suit the dishonest purposes of
professional spiritualists. I am not even certain that mother ever signed
the document, of which Mrs. Underhill makes such great parade. The same is
true regarding the other pieces of so-called evidence in her work. Utterly
futile as they are, when confronted with my living testimony, and when
judged by their own internal weakness, I should not regard them as in any
sense genuine unless I could see the original handwriting and could
recognize the signatures. I say to you now, that professional
spiritualists are capable of going to any lengths to bolster up their
impostures. No forgery, so long as there was the least chance of its
succeeding, as a furtherance to their object, would in the least repel
them. Some of the so-called statements in Leah's book I believe were
manufactured from beginning to end, though to tell you the truth I have
avoided reading the greater part of it because of the disgust I have felt
for a long time for that whole infamous system of pretense and falsehood.

"Well, we were led on unintentionally by my good mother in the
perpetration of this great wrong. She used to say when we were sitting in
a dark circle at home: 'Is this a disembodied spirit that has taken
possession of my dear children?' And then we would 'rap' just for the fun
of the thing, you know, and mother would declare that it was the spirits
that were speaking.

"Soon it went so far, and so many persons had heard the 'rappings' that we
could not confess the wrong without exciting very great anger on the part
of those we had deceived. So we went right on.

"It is wonderful, indeed, how two little children could have made this
discovery, and how, by simply obeying the natural thirst for the
marvelous, in others, and their inherent superstition, they should have
advanced step by step, in the fraud, deluding those who most ardently
wished to be deluded.

"Until first suggested to us by our mother, who was perfectly innocent in
her belief, the thought of 'spirits' had