ying
affection, tender counsel, wise instruction, and prescient warning. The
spirits indeed were gone; and as one by one the depressed party
separated and passed out into the silent moonlit streets of Rochester,
all and each of them felt as if some great light had suddenly gone out,
and life was changed to them. There was a mighty blank in space and a
shadow everywhere, but spirit light came no more to illuminate the thick
darkness.

A fortnight passed away, during which the former investigators called
constantly on the Fox family to enquire if their spirit friends had
returned. For the first few days a stoical negative was their only
reply; after this, they began more and more fully to recognise the loss
they had sustained. The wise counsellors were gone; the sources of
strange strength and superhuman consolation were cut off. The tender,
loving, wonderful presence no more flitted around their steps, cheered
their meals, encouraged them in their human weakness, or guided them in
their blindness. And these most wonderful and providential beings their
own waywardness had driven from them. At last, then, they met their
enquiring friends with showers of tears, choking sobs, and expressions
of the bitterest self-reproach and regret.

On the twelfth day of this great heart-dearth, Mr. W. E. Capron, being
in Rochester on business, called at the house of Mrs. Fish, with Mr.
George Willets, a member of the Society of Friends, and one of their
earliest spiritual investigators. On receiving the usual sorrowful reply
that "the spirits had left them," Mr. Capron said: "Perhaps they will
rap for us if not for you." They then entered the hall and put the usual
question if the spirits would rap for them, in answer to which, and to
the unspeakable delight of all present, they were greeted with a perfect
shower of the much-lamented sounds.

Once more the spirits urged them to make the manifestations public.
Again they reiterated the charge with solemn earnestness, and despite of
the mediums' continued aversion to the task imposed upon them, the fear
of a fresh and final bereavement of the inestimable boon of spirit
communion prevented their continued resistance to the course proposed.

When the persons who were called upon to aid the mediums and take
somewhat prominent parts in the work urged the awkwardness of the
positions assigned them, the spirits only replied, "Your triumph will be
so much the greater." There is no doubt that t