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 séances 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 Allen boy, and gave lengthy accounts of his manifestations. The arrangements for his exhibition were very simple. A dulcimer, guitar, bell, and small drum being placed on a sofa or several chairs set against the wall, a clothes-horse was set in front of them and covered with a blanket, which came to the floor. To obtain “manifestations,” a person was required to take off his coat and sit with his back to the clothes-horse. The medium then took a seat close to, and facing the investigator’s left side, and grasped the left arm of the latter on the under side, above the elbow, with his (the medium’s) right hand and near the wrist with the other hand. The “manager” then covered with a coat, the arms and left shoulder of the medium including the left arm of the investigator. The medium soon commenced to wriggle and twist—the “manager” said he was always nervous under “influence”—and worked the coat away from the position in which it had been placed. Taking his right hand from the investigator’s arm, he readjusted the coat, and availed himself of that opportunity to get the investigator’s wrist between his (the medium’s) left arm and knee. That brought his left hand in such a position that with it he could grasp the investigator’s arm where he had previously grasped it with his right hand. With the latter he could then reach around the edge of the clothes-horse and make a noise on the instruments. With the drumsticks he thumped on the dulcimer. Taking the guitar by the neck, he could vibrate the strings and show the body of the instrument above the clothes-horse, without any one seeing his hand! All persons present were so seated that they could not see behind the clothes-horse, or have a view of the medium’s right shoulder. When asked why people were not allowed to occupy such a position, that they could have a fair view of the instruments when sounded, the “manager” replied that he did not exactly know, but presumed it was because the magnetic emanations from the eyes of the beholders would prevent the spirits being able to move the instruments at all! What was claimed to be a spirit-hand was often shown above the clothes-horse, where it flickered for an instant and was withdrawn; but it was invariably a right hand with the wrist toward the medium. When the person sitting with the medium was asked if the hands of the latter had constantly hold of his arm, he replied in the affirmative. Of course, he felt what he supposed to be both the medium’s hands; but as I before explained, the pressure on his wrist was from the medium’s left arm—the left hand of whom, by means of a very accommodating crook in the elbow, was grasping the investigator’s arm where the medium’s right hand was supposed to be.
From Boston the Allen boy went to Portland, Maine, where he succeeded “astonishingly,” till some gentleman applied the lampblack test to his assumed mediumship, whereupon he “came to grief.”
The following is copied from the “Portland Daily Press,” of March 21.
“EXPOSED.—The ‘wonderful’ spiritual manifestations of the ‘boy-medium,’ Master Henry B. Allen, in charge of Doctor J. H. Randall, of Boston, were brought to a sad end last evening by the impertinent curiosity and wicked doings of some of the gentlemen present at the seance at Congress Hall.
“As usual, one of the company present was selected to sit at the side of the boy, and allowed his hand and arm to be held by both hands of the boy while the manifestations were going on. The boy seized hold of the gentleman’s wrist with his left hand, and his shoulder, or near it, with the right hand. The manifestations then began, and among them was one trick of pulling the gentleman’s hair.
“Immediately after this trick was performed, the hand of the boy was discovered to be very black—from lampblack, of the best quality, with which the gentleman had dressed his head on purpose to detect whose was the ‘spirit-hand’ that pulled his hair. His shirt-sleeve, upon which the boy immediately replaced his hand after pulling his hair, was also black where the hand had been placed. The gentleman stated the facts to the company present, and the seance broke up. Dr. Randall refunded the fifty cents admission fee to those present.”
The spiritualists of the city were somewhat staggered by this exposé, but soon rallied as one of their number announced a new discovery in spiritual science. Here it is, as stated by himself:
“Whatever the electrical or ‘spirit-hand’ touches, will inevitably be transferred to the hand of the medium in every instance, unless something occurs to prevent the full operation of the law by which this result is produced. The spirit-hand being composed in part of the magnetic elements drawn from the medium, when it is dissolved again, and the magnetic fluid returns whence it came, it must of necessity carry with it whatever material substance it has touched, and leave it deposited upon the surface or material hand of the medium. This is a scientific question. How many innocent mediums have been wronged? and the invisible have permitted it, until we should discover that it was the natural result of a natural law.”
What a great discovery! and how lucidly it is set forth! The author (who, by the way, is editor of the “Portland Evening Courier”) of this new discovery, was not so modest but that he hastened to announce and claim full credit for it in the columns of the “Banner of Light”—the editor of which journal congratulates him on having done so much for the cause of spiritualism! Those skeptics who were present when the lampblack was “transferred” from the gentleman’s hair to the medium’s hand, rashly concluded that the boy was an impostor. It remained for Mr. Hall—that is the philosopher’s name—to make the “electro-magnetic transfer” discovery. The Allen boy ought ever to hold him in grateful remembrance for coming to his rescue at such a critical period, when the spirits would not vouchsafe an explanation that would exculpate him from the grievous charge of imposture. Mr. Hall deserves a leather medal now, and a soapstone monument when he is dead.
A person, whose initials are the same as the gentleman’s named above, once lived in Aroostook, Maine, and was in the habit of attending “spiritual circles,” in which he was sometimes influenced as a “personating medium,” and to represent the symptoms of the disease which caused the controlling spirit’s translation to another sphere. It having been reported in Aroostook that a certain well-known individual, living further east, had died of cholera, a desire was expressed at the next “circle” to have him “manifest” himself. The medium above referred to got “under influence,” and personated, with an exhibition of all the symptoms of cholera, the gentleman who was reported to have died of that disease. So faithful to the supposed facts was the representation, that the medium had to be cared for as if he was himself a veritable cholera-patient. Several days after, the man who was “personated” appeared in Aroostook, alive and well, never having been attacked with the cholera. The local papers gave a graphic account of the “manifestation” soon after it occurred.
But to return to the Allen boy. After his exposure by means of the lampblack test, and