ould be likely to mar any results to be
expected from them; and, in short, if only for the sake of those who
wished to continue their experiences, it was necessary that I should
withdraw from them. That was the last occasion on which I took part in a
seance under Mr. Hume's mediumship. My mother continued her sittings at
the house of Mr. Powers, and it is fair to record that she there
witnessed material phenomena--some of them closely allied to phenomena
only explainable on Spiritualistic theories--of even a more
extraordinary nature than any which had occurred at my house; in which
neither she, nor Mr. Powers or any of his family, nor any of the others
of the party, were able to detect any imposture. And I believe I may add
that Mr. Powers fully believed in the genuineness of the phenomena
witnessed. It is also perhaps fair to state that had the answer to my
question been "On board the steamboat going from London to Ostend," the
reply would have been correct. How far it is possible to suppose that
the word "Ostend" may have been the _first_ word of an answer about
to be completed in that sense if it had not been interrupted, I leave to
the judgment of the reader.

For some time after this Powers used to recount to me the marvels which
were witnessed at his house. He was not pleased with the medium as an
inmate in other respects: he did not form a favorable opinion of his
moral character. I am speaking of matters now many years old, and I
might not have considered it necessary to record these impressions of a
very specially upright and honest man with regard to one who is still
before the public were it not that they go to increase the value of Mr.
Powers's testimony to the genuineness of the phenomena which he
witnessed, by showing that his judgment upon the subject was at least in
no degree warped by any prejudice in favor of the miracle-worker.

Meantime, the sculptor, still in the modest tenement which he occupied
for so many years in the Via Romana, was growing in fame and reputation
from day to day. A visit to the Studio Powers--or Pousse, as the
ciceroni and valets-de-place called it--was an obligatory part of the
tourist's regular work in "doing" Florence. A large family was, during
those prosperous and laborious years, growing up around him--sons and
daughters, most of whom he lived to see settled in life and to be justly
proud of. Death did not altogether pass his threshold by, but he knocked
there but once o