The Humbugs of the World by P. T. Barnum (best contemporary novels .TXT) 📕

It is scarcely necessary to make comments on such horrible nonsense as this. I may recur to the subject in future, should it appear expedient. At present I must drop the subject of female men.

At the head of the “Message Department” is a standing advertisement, which reads as follows:

“Our free circles are held at No. 158 Washington Street, Room No. 4 (upstairs,) on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. The circle-room will be open for visitors at two o’clock; services commence at precisely three o’clock, after which time no one will be admitted. Donations solicited.”

On the days and at the hour mentioned in the above advertisement, quite an audience assembles to hear the messages Mrs. C. may have to deliver. If a stranger present should request a message from one of his spirit-friends, he would be told that a large number ofspirits were seeking to communicate through that “instrument,” and each must await his turn! Having read obituary notices in the files of old newspapers, and the published list of those recently killed in battle, the medium has data for any number of “messages.” She talks in the style that she imagines the person whom she attempts to personate would use, being one of the doctrines of spiritualism that a person’s character and feelings are not changed by death. To make the humbug more complete, she narrates imaginary incidents, asserting them to have occurred in the Earth-experience of the spirit who purports to have possession of her at the same time she is speaking. Mediums in various parts of the country furnish her with the names of and facts relative to different deceased people of their acquaintance, and those names and facts are used by her in supplying the “Message Department” of the Banner of Light.

If the assumed “mediumship” of this woman was not an imposture, some of the many people who have visited her for the purpose of getting communications from their spirit-friends would have been gratified. In most of the “messages” published in the Banner, the spirits purporting to give them, express a great desire to have their mortal friends receive them; but those mortals who seek to obtain through Mrs. Conant satisfactory messages from their spirit-friends, are not gratified⁠—the medium not being posted. The mediums are as much opposed to “new tests” as a noncommittal politician.

Time and again have leading spiritualists, in various parts of the country, endorsed as “spiritual manifestations,” what was subsequently proved to be an imposture.

Several years ago, a man by the name of Paine created a great sensation in Worcester, MA, by causing a table to move “without contact,” he claiming that it was done by spirits through his “mediumship.” He subsequently came to New York, and exhibited the “manifestation” at the house of a spiritualist⁠—where he boarded⁠—in the upper part of the city. A great many spiritualists and not a few “skeptics” went to see his performance. Paine was a very soft-spoken, “good sort of a fellow,” and appeared to be quite sincere in his claims to “mediumship.” He received no fee from those who witnessed his exhibition; and that fact, in connection with others, tended to disarm people of suspicion. His séances were held in the evening, and each visitor was received by him at the door, and immediately conducted to a seat next the wall of the room.

The visitors all in and seated, Mr. Paine took a seat with the rest in the “circle.” In the middle of the room a small table had previously been placed, and the gas had been turned partly off, leaving just enough light to make objects look ghostly.

In order to get “harmonized,” singing was indulged in for a short time by members of the “circle.” Soon a number of raps would be heard in the direction of the table, and one side of that piece of furniture would be seen to rise about an inch from the floor. Some very naturally wanted to rush to the table and investigate the matter more closely, but Paine forbade that⁠—the necessary “conditions” must be observed, he said, or there would be no further manifestation of spirit-power. As there was no one nearer to the table than six or eight feet, the fact of its moving, very naturally astonished the skeptics present. Several “seeing mediums” who attended Mr. Paine’s séances, were able to see the spirits⁠—so they declared⁠—who moved the table. One was described as a “big Injun,” who cut various capers, and appeared to be much delighted with the turn of affairs. Believers were wonderfully well-pleased to know that at last a medium was “developed” through whom the inhabitants of another world could manifest their presence to mortals in such a way that no one could gainsay the fact. The “invisibles” freely responded, by raps on the table, to various questions asked by those in the “circle.” They thumped time to lively tunes, and seemed to have a decidedly good time of it in their particular way. When the séance was concluded, Mr. Paine freely permitted an examination of his table.

In the Sunday Spiritual Conferences, then held in Clinton Hall, leading spiritualists gave an account of the “manifestations of the spirits” through Mr. Paine, and, as believers, congratulated themselves upon the existence of such “indubitable facts.” The spiritualist in whose house this exhibition of table-moving “without contact” took place, was well known as a man of strict honesty; and it was reasonably presumed that no mechanical contrivance could be used without his cognizance, in thus moving a piece of his furniture⁠—for the table belonged to him⁠—and that he would countenance a deception was out of the question.

There were in the city three gentlemen who had, for some time, been known as spiritualists; but they were, at the period of Paine’s debut as a medium in New York, very skeptical with regard to “physical manifestations.” They had, a short time before, detected the Davenports and other professed mediums in the practice