et.

It is not impossible that a Spiritualist might urge that the test which
I apply is not a fair one--that guile will beget guile, that the Spirits
meet me as I meet them.

But what other possible way have I of finding out who the Spirits are,
when they do not tell me in advance, but by asking them? Whenever they
have been announced to me as this or that Spirit, I invariably treat
them as the Spirits of those whom they assert themselves to be, and, in
my conclusions, am guided only by the pertinency of their answers to my
questions. Whenever William Shakespeare appears to me (and, by the way,
let me here parenthetically note, as throwing light on a vexed question,
that Shakespeare in the Spirit-world 'favors' the Chandos Portrait, even
to the two little white collar strings hanging down in front; his Spirit
has visited me several times, and such was his garb when I saw him most
distinctly); when, I repeat, Shakespeare materializes in the Cabinet for
me, do I not always most reverently salute him, and does he not
graciously nod to me--until I venture most humbly to ask him what the
misprint, 'Vllorxa' in _Timon of Athens_ stands for, when he always
slams the curtains in my face? (I meekly own that perhaps he is
justified.) Have I ever failed in respectful homage to General
Washington? Did I ever evince the slightest mistrust of Indian 'braves?'

When a Spirit comes out of the Cabinet especially to me, how am I to
know, or to find out, who it is but by asking? If it be not the Spirit
that I name, will it not, if it has a shred of honesty, set me right?
What hinders it from telling me just who it is? If it be the Spirit of
my great-grandmother, it can be surely no satisfaction to her, after all
the bother of materialization, to hold converse with me as the Spirit of
Sally in our Alley; and if she be, in every sense of the word, a
'spirity' old lady, she will instantly undeceive me, and 'let me know
who I am talking to.' But why should I anticipate deceit at Spiritual
hands? If William Shakespeare can appear to me, why not Fair Rosamund?
Hereupon a Spiritualist may maintain that if the Spirit said she was
Fair Rosamund, and displayed a familiarity with the incidents of that
frail woman's life and death, she probably was Fair Rosamund. So be it.
I yield, and will go farther, and hereafter find no more difficulty,
than in her case, in Tennyson's Olivia, Marie St. Clair, and in the
heroes and heroines of Scheherezade's Tho