rty work of
cleansing the modern mind of its gross Augean Sadduceeism. The only
theory promotive of self-complacency that I could ever concoct, as to
why I was put through such an ordeal, is, that I was suffered for my own
and the general benefit to see the dangers of necromancy, and especially
the awful psychodynamical methods used by spirits to obsess and
gradually craze human brains. I, at least, received a scare that made me
careful, ever after, how I called spirits from the vasty deep, or
elsewhere. After passing perils manifold, both carnal and
spiritual--having gone, torrent-borne, through the yawning chasms
represented in Cole's 'Voyage of Life' pictures, I come into calmer
seas, the lines fall in pleasant places; and now I sit me down, in
life's high noon--having lighted on a certain place where was a den (a
pleasanter than Bunyan's)--to write the strange things that befell me in
the seeming long ago--the dew and freshness of my youth. And though I be
reckoned of many a dreamer of dreams, he shall not, I think, go
unprofited, who can rightly 'read my rede.'

To come, then, to the details. I had been for several months, whether
wisely or unwisely doth not appear, a link in one of those human chain
rings supposed to be as peculiarly receptive of extra and super and
ultra mundane facts as a legislative 'ring' is of the loose change of
the lobby; and had sought in vain for personal contact with the world to
come, when one afternoon a streak of the 'od' lightning suddenly ran
down my right arm, as I sat in my private apartment, and behold I was a
'writing mejum.' The usual 'proofs' of relationship were given. Not
being very credulous, however, I did not, at first, acknowledge them as
such. But as my time was at my own disposal just then, I gave myself up
to the influence for several days. The consequence was, that I became so
thoroughly mesmerized, or 'biologized,' that I ceased to be complete
master of my own faculties, and was _forced_ to give a half assent to
all the absurdities that were communicated. Be it understood, then, that
these experiences are given as those of a person whose will, whose very
soul and _proprium_ had been temporarily subjugated by some other will
or wills; and whose natural powers of discrimination were as much
distraught as are those of the subjects of the itinerant biologist; who
are made to believe, most firmly, that cayenne pepper is sugar, that
water is fire, that a cane is a snake.