The Humbugs of the World · Part II · Chapter 2 17 (2/2)

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 “electromagnetic 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 Mr. Hall, of the Portland Evening Courier, had announced his new discovery in spiritual science, several of the Portland spiritualists had a private “sitting” with the boy. While he sat with his hands upon the arm of one of their number, they tied a rope to his wrists, and around the person’s arm, covering his hands in the way I have before described. After some wriggling and twisting (the usual amount of “nervousness,”) the bell washeard to ring behind the clotheshorse. The boy’s right hand was then examined, and it was found to be stained with some colored matter that had previously been put upon the handle of the bell. As the boy’s wrists were still tied, and the rope remained upon the man’s arm, the “transfer” theory was considered to be established as a fact, and the previous exposure shown to be not only no exposure at all, but a “stepping-stone to a grand truth in spiritual science.” Again and again did these persistent and infatuated spiritualists try what they call the “transfer test,” varying with each experiment the coloring-material used, and every time the bell was rung the medium’s right hand was found out to be stained with what had been put upon the bell-handle. By having a little slack-rope between his wrist and the man’s arm, it was not a difficult matter for the medium, while his “nervousness” was being manifested, to get hold of the bell and ring it, and to make sounds upon the strings of the dulcimer or guitar, with a drumstick that the “manager” had placed at a convenient distance from his (the boy’s) hand.

The Portland Daily Press, in noticing a lecture against Spiritualism, recently delivered by Dr. Von Vleck, in that city, says:⁠—“He (Dr. V. V.) performed the principal feats of the Allen boy, with his hands tied to the arm of the person with whom he was in communication.”

Horace Greeley says that if a man will be a consummate jackass and fool, he is not aware of anything in the Constitution to prevent it. I believe Mr. Greeley is right; and I think no one can reasonably be expected to exercise common sense unless he is known to possess it. It is quite natural, therefore, that many of the spiritualists, lacking common sense, should pretend to have something better.