rn, and one where 'the sive and the wecht dancit throw
the hous'. {123b}

A clasped knife opened in the pocket of Christina Shaw, and her
glove falling, it was lifted by a hand invisible to several persons
present. One is reminded of the nursery rhyme,--'the dish it ran
after the spoon'. In the presence of Home, even a bookcase is said
to have forgotten itself, and committed the most deplorable
excesses. In the article of Mr. Myers, already cited, we find a
table which jumps by the bedside of a dying man. {124} A handbag of
Miss Power's flies from an arm-chair, and hides under a table; raps
are heard; all this when Miss Power is alone. Mr. H. W. Gore Graham
sees a table move about. A heavy table of Mr. G. A. Armstrong's
rises high in the air. A tea-table 'runs after' Professor
Alexander, and 'attempts to hem me in,' this was at Rio de Janeiro,
in the Davis family, where raps 'ranged from hardly perceptible
ticks up to resounding blows, such as might be struck by a wooden
mallet'. A Mr. H. falls into convulsions, during which all sorts of
things fly about. All these stories closely correspond to the tales
in Increase Mather's Remarkable Providences in New England, in which
the phenomena sometimes occur in the presence of an epileptic and
convulsed boy, about 1680. To take one classic French case, Segrais
declares that a M. Patris was lodged in the Chateau d'Egmont. At
dinner-time, he went into the room of a friend, whom he found lost
in the utmost astonishment. A huge book, Cardan's De Subtilitate,
had flown at him across the room, and the leaves had turned, under
invisible fingers! There are plenty of bogles in that book. M.
Patris laughed at this tale, and went into the gallery, when a large
chair, so heavy that two men could scarcely lift it, shook itself
and came at him. He remonstrated, and the chair returned to its
usual position. 'This made a deep impression on M. Patris, and
contributed in no slight degree to make him a converted character'--
a le faire devenir devot. {125a}

Tales like this, with that odd uniformity of tone and detail which
makes them curious, might be collected from old literature to any
extent. Thus, among the sounds usually called 'rappings,' Mr.
Crookes mentions, as matter within his own experience, 'a cracking
like that heard when a frictional machine is at work'. Now, as may
be read in Southey's Life of Wesley and in Clarke's Memoirs of the
Wesleys, this was the very n