abode of Mrs. Hayes, of 176
Grand Street, for his initiatory consultation.

With the mysterious psychological phenomena denominated by those
who profess to know them best, "clairvoyant manifestations,"
Johannes had nothing to do, and was content, as every one of the
uninitiated must perforce be, to accept the say-so of the
spiritualistic journals that there are such phenomena and that
they are unexplained and mysterious. No outside unbelievers in
Spiritualism and the kindred arts may ever know anything of
clairvoyant developments and demonstrations, save such one-sided
varnished statements as the journals that deal in that sort of
commodities choose to lay before the world. Every man must be
spiritually wound up to concert pitch before he is in a condition
to receive the highest revelations of the clairvoyant speculators.
So that, whether the clairvoyance that is sold for money be a
spurious or a superfine article few can tell. Certain it is that
it is the same sort of stuff that has ever been retailed to the
public under the name of clairvoyance, ever since the discovery
of that remunerative humbug. It is more than likely that the
twaddle of Mrs. Hayes, Mrs. Seymour, and the rest of the
fortune-telling crew, would be repudiated by Andrew Jackson Davis
and the rest of the spiritualistic firstchoppers, but it is none
the less true that these gifted women sell their pretended
knowledge of spirits and spiritual persons and things, with as
much pretentiousness to unerring truth, as that veritable seer
himself, and at a much lower price.

The clairvoyant department of modern witchcraft is necessarily
carried on by a partnership, and one which is not identical with
the legendary league with the devil. Two visible persons
constitute the firm, for it takes a double team to do the work,
and if the amiable gentleman just referred to makes a third in
the concern, he is a silent partner who merely furnishes capital,
while his name is not known in the business. The whole theory of
clairvoyance as applied to fortune-telling and other branches of
cheap necromancy, seems to be somewhat like this.

A strong-minded person, generally a man with a _physique_ like a
Centre-Market butcher boy, obtains by some means possession of an
extra soul or two, or spirit, or whatever else that intangible
thing may be called. These spirits are always second-rate
articles, not good enough to be put into vigorous and strong
bodies, and which have be