irit-world are hardly satisfactory. It
is, very likely, pleasant for a man to be on speaking terms with
his bedroom furniture, to spend an agreeable hour occasionally in
conversation with his washhand-stand, to enjoy a spirited
argument with his bedstead and rocking-chair, or to receive now
and then a confidential communication from his bootjack, but on
the whole, these upholstery dialogues do not satisfy the
"yearnings of the soul after the infinite." The powers of speech
of a washhand-stand are circumscribed, bedsteads and rocking-chairs
are seldom equal to a sustained conversation, and the most
talkative bootjack has not a sufficient command of language to
make itself agreeable for any great length of time. The logic of
a poker may sometimes be convincing, but it is not generally
agreeable; and the rhetoric of uneducated coal-scuttles is hardly
elegant enough to pass the criticism of a refined taste. It is
therefore much more satisfactory as well as economical, for a
person who desires to enjoy his daily chat with the Spirits, to
get a "speaking medium" to translate the eloquence of all parties
and make the thing pleasant. Even then, confidential communications
must be very guarded, and on this account the person who invents
some means by which every man can be his own medium, will win an
equal immortality with the author of that invaluable book, "Every
Man his own Washerwoman."

Johannes had been thinking over the spiritual subject, of course
with a view to profitable matrimony, for he thought he could
manage to turn an intimacy with the spirits to good pecuniary
account, and inveigle those incorporeal gentlemen into doing
something for those of their friends who are yet bothered with
bodies.

He knew that there are in New York, plenty of spiritualists in
such constant communication with their acquaintances on the
"other side of Jordan," that they know the bill of fare with
which those seventh-heaveners are served every day, and whenever
their jolly ghostships sit down to a pleasant game of whist, they
send word to their earthly relatives by "medium" every fresh
deal, what the new trump is, who hold the honors, and how the
game stands generally.

So close a familiarity with superior beings as this, could be
easily turned to practical account and made to pay handsomely, by
a Spiritualist with a utilitarian turn of mind. If he could but
get his spirits into proper subjection how useful would they not
be in the