I don't know of
anybody's asking this question, but its importance is extreme and
obvious. For if things like this are going to happen, the ladies will be
afraid to sleep alone in the house if so much as a sewing-machine or
apple-corer be about, and will not dare take solitary walks along any
stream where there is a water power.

A couple of miscellaneous anecdotes may not inappropriately be appended
to this story of monstrous delusion.

Once a "writing medium" was producing sentences in various foreign
languages. One of these was Arabic. An enthusiastic youth, a
half-believer, after inspecting the wondrous scroll, handed it to his
seat-mate, a professor (as it happened) in one of our oldest colleges,
and a man of real learning. The professor scrutinized the document. What
was the youth's delight to hear him at last observe gravely, "It is a
kind of Arabic, sure enough!"

"What kind?" asked the young man with intense interest.

"Gum-arabic," said the professor.

The spirit of the prophet Daniel came one night into the apartment of a
medium named Fowler, and right before his eyes, he said, wrote down some
marks on a piece of paper. These were shown to the Reverend George Bush,
Professor of Hebrew in the New-York University, who said that they were
"a few verses from the last chapter of Daniel" and were learnedly
written. Bush was a spiritualist as well as a professor of Hebrew, and
he ought to have known better than to indorse spirit-Hebrew; for shortly
there came others, who, to use a rustic phrase, "took the rag off the
Bush." These inconvenient personages were three or four persons of
learning: one a Jew, who proved that the document was an attempt to copy
the verses in question, by some one so ignorant of Hebrew as not to know
that it is written backward, that is, from right to left.

During the last few months, a "boy medium," by the name of Henry B.
Allen, thirteen years of age, has been astonishing people in various
parts of the country by "Physical Manifestations in the Light." The
exhibitions of this precocious youngster have been "managed" by a Dr.
Randall, who also lectures upon Spiritualism, expounding its "beautiful
philosophy." For a number of weeks this couple held forth in Boston,
sometimes giving several seances during the day, not more than thirty
being allowed to attend at one time, each of whom were required to pay
an admission fee of one dollar.

"The Banner of Light" fully indorsed this Alle