THE fable of the fox who lost his tail, has always appeared to me to be especially applicable to converts of any kind. The fox, I am prone to fancy, was by no means an impostor. On the contrarythe wish being, as with most of us, father to the thought-he had wrought himself into a conviction that the absence of the caudal extremity conferred all sorts of recondite advantages on the Reynards who were fortunate enough to have undergone an experience similar to his own. Still, lurking in the vulpine mind there was always an uncomfortable doubt whether, after all, he had not committed an act of egregious folly when he parted with his tail; and, in order to remove this painful suspicion from his own mind, he felt

longing for the company of other untailed foxes. Nobody can go through life without meeting specimens of the foxwithout-a-tail order. I number many such amongst my friends; and, when they advise me, as they have done frequently, to join the caudicidal faith, I have always a latent feeling that, unknown to themselves, they are less anxious for the improvement of my moral or religious nature than they are to increase the number of persons who cannot gibe at them for not being as other foxes are. If you have not got a tail yourself, what a luxury it must be to look around you and see none but tailless friends!

So, my experience has been that the first thing a convert to any new discovery or delusion sets his heart upon is to lead his friends to the same conclusion as himself. Whether your particular hobby is Banting or David Urquhart, Turkish baths or Homoeopathy, Women's rights or Spiritualism, you feel a burning zeal to see others strengthening your own faltering faith by the mere fact of their adhesion to

your theory. Acquaintances of mine, whose general interest in my welfare, whether moral or material, I take to be of the most ordinary kind, have shown at many periods an otherwise unaccountable desire to persuade me that they are right, and that I and the rest of the world are wrong. It is to this feeling I attribute the frequent attempts that have been made to convert me to Spiritualism. It is not that any special value is attached to my conversion; but that, if I were converted, I should not be able to annoy my tailless friends with the possession of a tail, more or less ragged I admit, but still a tail of the ordinary description. It was only the other day that I was invited by a friend of mine, a fervent convert to Spiritualism, to witness one of the earliest séances of the Davenport Brothers. I was assured that even the most obdurate scepticism must be convinced by the performances of these gentlemen. I was not convinced; and I wish to explain why I was not. But, before speaking of what I saw or did not see, let me say something of the state of mind under which I observed these manifestations: speaking of myself, in as far as I can, as of an impartial spectator. I admit, at first starting, that I am not prepared to say there is nothing whatever in Spiritualism. My private impression is that the whole matter is a delusion and an absurdity, but this impression is not with me an absolute conviction. I have had the pleasure of knowing many men of considerable power of mind, of very different dispositions, and of shrewd common sense in other respects, who firmly believe that Mr. Hume floats about the air in an arm-chair, and that Mr. Foster's arm is habitually subject to the operation phers. The ve speak of do be

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which, to my mind, requires explanation. Whether I believe or disbelieve, I find a difficulty to grapple with. Of the two sole possible solutions to the difficulty, I prefer to think that my friends are duped, sooner than fancy that banjos are played without hands and that tables dance of their own free will and pleasure. I can even go further than this, and admit frankly that a certain series of experiments might convince me of the truth of these manifestations. It is perfectly absurd, according to my notions, for any man to say that nothing could convince him of any proposition that can be named. I can imagine an amount of evidence that could make any reasonable person believe in sirens and griffins; and, of all arguments, the à priori reasoning against Spiritualism always seems to me the weakest. sidering that we have absolutely no knowledge whatever what a disembodied spirit is likely to do or say, under any conceivable circumstances, it is childish to argue that the agency, whatever it may be, which plays "Polly Perkins" out of time on the accordion, cannot be a spirit, because a spirit could never condescend to so vulgar an exhibition. To make a clean breast of it altogether, I will say that the spiritualist theory appears to be not an altogether inadmissible one. That mortal life is only one of many phases through which the soul has to pass, that a process of development continues after death, and that the unseen world is closely connected with the seen and tangible one; all seem to me hypotheses for which much can be said. Revelation itself tells us nothing of the conditions under which the spirit will exist after leaving the body; and all speculation on the subject is speculation only. But, speculation for speculation, the spiritualist one has a good deal in its favour. The cause, then, of my disbelief in Spiritualism—that is, in the practical manifestations of spiritual agencies-is not that the theory is untenable in itself, or that no amount of evidence could ever convince me of the truth of these manifestations. My difficulty is, that I can

discover no sufficient proof of any kind to cause me to disregard the testimony of all the experience I have acquired during life. From the days of babyhood the truth that becomes most strongly impressed upon us by our hourly experience is that of the law of gravitation. When, therefore, we are told that this law is disproved in such a case as that of Mr. Hume, we are justified in asking for the strongest evidence to induce us to credit the assertion.

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Now, that any evidence of the kind I allude to is forthcoming in the case of the Davenport Brothers, I beg to deny. Very full accounts have appeared already in the daily newspapers as to the performances of these gentlemen. The nature of the "séance" is already known, doubtless, to all who take an interest in such subjects. For my purpose, therefore, it will be enough to recapitulate the appearances, which-granting the premises demanded by the performerswere undoubtedly supernatural. Brothers Davenport, then, on the occasion when I was present, were placed in a wardrobe, tied hand and foot; the doors of this chest were then closed; forthwith hands were seen appearing at a small aperture in the centre of the wardrobe; and these hands were not only seen, but were felt by persons who approached the wardrobe. Instruments placed inside the chest were undoubtedly played upon by somebody, and were chucked out of the aperture I have spoken of; and, finally, the two brothers, who went into the cupboard bound, were found untied when the doors were open; while, on another occasion, they went in loose, and were found tied to their seats on the doors being thrown open.

These were the main experiments that I witnessed. About their having been performed I can entertain no manner of doubt, unless I distrust the evidence of my own senses. There are, as far as I can see, but four ways in which these phenomena can be explained. First, by some optical or mechanical contrivance, the senses of the spectators may have been deluded, and we did not see what we fancy we saw. Secondly, the Daven

ports may have been unloosed by some confederate. Thirdly, they may have untied themselves. Or, lastly, they may, as they assert, be gifted with some supernatural faculty which enables them to defy the ordinary laws of matter. This is their own interpretation. Whether they are released from their fetters by the hands of spirits they do not profess to explain. All they declare is, that by some unseen agency, for which they cannot account, they are so delivered. Now to me the first of these hypotheses is as untenable as the last. The room in which the experiment was performed was a public concert-room, in which there was no possibility of any intricate machinery being erected without discovery; and, if I am to believe anything in the world, I must believe that I saw and touched the two Davenports, sitting bound up with cords, when the doors of the wardrobe were closed, and found them untied when the doors were opened. I am compelled, therefore, to have resort to one of the two other suppositions in order to account for what I saw.

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I do not profess to explain how the trick, if it was one, was performed, There never was a man who had less talent for conjuring than myself. might go every night of my life to see the Wizard of the North, and I am convinced I should die without having the slightest conception of how Miss Anderson comes out of a flat portfolio. I have had the money-passing trick explained to me a dozen times over, but still, each time I see it, it puzzles me again. I therefore utterly and entirely repudiate the assertion that I am bound to believe in the Brothers Davenport any more than I do in the supernatural faculties of Robert Houdin or Wiljalba Frikell. My point is that, quite apart from the intrinsic improbability of a tambourine playing of its own accord, there was everything in the exhibition I witnessed to favour the impression that the performance was a mere conjuring trick of no very high order. It is unpleasant to have to imply the suspicion that the Davenport Brothers and their comrades are practising a hoax upon the

public; but they cannot reasonably be indignant at the imputation. If you profess to perform a miracle, you have no right to grumble if people, to whom the power of working miracles has not been vouchsafed, conceive that the supposition of your making fools of them is not untenable. Of the performers themselves I know nothing; their very names were unknown to me till I was asked to attend the séance. As far as mere looks go, the Davenport Brothers have that bright, keen, open, Yankee look which to me is always a prepossessing one; the gentleman who acts as the showman to the exhibition is, I am given to understand, a Southern clergyman, and is certainly a man of fair intelligence. Now, supposing the two lads, if I may call them so, though I believe they are men of five-and-twenty or thereabouts, can get their hands loosed, or can have them untied by others, the whole marvel of the performance vanishes at once. Absolutely nothing was done at the exhibition I was present at, which could not have been done with perfect ease supposing the cords to be undone. The socalled spiritual hands, which appeared at the aperture in the wardrobe and touched the bystanders, never advanced to a greater distance than an arm's length from the folding doors; and the music played upon the instruments placed inside the cupboard-though a lady sitting near me described it as seraphic-was exactly of the quality I remember to have heard in a country fair abroad from a musician who played on three instruments at once.

I think, therefore, all but the most confirmed believers will admit that, if it can be shown the Davenport Brothers can slip their hands out of the ropes, there is nothing supernatural, or even extraordinary, to explain in the exhibition. How the cords are slipped I do not profess to explain; but I observed a whole host of circumstances which seem almost purposely designed to suggest the idea of trickery. Two persons are required to perform the experiment. Moreover, three companions of the Brothers Davenport are always present

throughout the exhibition. As these gentlemen must have seen it hundreds of times, it is strange they should be entranced even by the charms of seraphic melody. Yet, for no particular reason that I could learn, they hung about the room, taking no visible part in the performance. Then the manner in which the brothers were fastened up appeared to me needlessly elaborate; there was such a complication of knots and loops that I should have found it impossible to put my finger at once on the point where I ought to have cut the cord, if I had wished to set the brothers free. The two performers were kept most carefully concealed while the process of fastening and unfastening was conducted by their attendant sprites. For some cause or other the spirits will not condescend to appear unless the person they operate on is secluded from the view of all spectators. Knowing nothing about spirits, I do not pretend to say they may not feel uncomfortable in the light; but I do say that, if they have the slightest desire to manifest their presence to unbelievers, their antipathy to light is singularly unfortunate. Even though the doors of the wardrobe were carefully closed and a small curtain hung behind the opening in the centre door, yet the room was darkened so that we could hardly see. On the occasions where the brothers are bound to chairs the most complete darkness is insisted upon as a sine qua non of the experiment being performed at all; and the spectators are expressly warned that, if anybody is rash enough to strike a light or turn on the gas unexpectedly, it is possible, not to say probable, that the spirits, in their indignation, may hit him over the head with a violin. For my own part, it is, I think, more than probable that such might be the case; and, as I have no desire to have my head broken in the pursuit of science, turning on the light is the last thing I should think of doing. In order, however, to make assurance doubly sure, one of the gentlemen who accompany the brothers always, so I am told, insists on lighting the gas jets himself. Long experience has, doubtless,

taught him the exact moment at which light may be poured upon the scene without affecting the success of the spiritual agencies at work. Then, also, there is another fact which came under my notice, somewhat perplexing, I should think, to a convert whose faith still was weak. An offer was made that one of the company should seat himself inside the wardrobe between the brothers. The offer was accepted by a gentleman in whose good faith I have perfect confidence. He declared-and I do not doubt his word for one moment-that the instant the doors were closed he felt hands passing over his face and pulling his hair. Now, for no imaginable reason I could discover, this gentleman's hands were tied down to his seat before the doors were closed; so that, supposing his companions got their hands loose by any means or other, it was impossible for him, being in perfect darkness, to know whether their hands were unfastened or not. Of course, if he had had the free use of his own hands, he might have put them out, and caught hold of the hand that passed over his face; but this he was precluded from doing. The spirits, it seems, object to operating inside a cupboard where everybody has not got his hands securely bound. The likes and dislikes of the spiritual world were not the only obstacles in the way of my arriving at satisfactory testimony, as a humble inquirer after truth. I asked the spokesman of the party whether the same results would follow if, instead of the Brothers Davenport being bound with cords, they were fastened with simple iron fetters secured by Bramah locks. I was informed that the same results would, doubtless, be manifested -nay, had frequently been manifested in America; but that, as fetters were considered a stigma of infamy, the brothers had a natural and invincible repugnance to wearing them. The line, in fact, must be drawn somewhere, and so it was drawn at cords! Let me add, in conclusion, one other fact which also seemed to me to warrant a not unjustifiable scepticism in the unconverted heart. Inside the wardrobe there was

a heavy trumpet: this trumpet was placed on the flooring of the cupboard, close to the feet of one of the brothers, whose legs, I should fairly add, were apparently bound tightly underneath the bench.

The door facing him was no sooner closed than the trumpet was thrown violently out of the centre door, which was still open, as if it had been propelled by a sudden kick. One of the spectators asked whether the same feat would take place if the trumpet, instead of being close to the feet of either of the brothers, was placed in the centre of the wardrobe, an arm's length, I should say, from either of them. The question was answered in the affirmative; and, after a lapse of three or four minutes, all the doors of the wardrobe being quite closed throughout the whole of the period, the trumpet was certainly tossed out of the aperture I have so often spoken of. Now, in the one case, the slightest loosening of the ropes would have enabled the medium to kick out the trumpet with his toe; in the other, it was impossible for him to touch it unless one arm at least was set freean operation which certainly would require a longer period. As I am anxious to state the case as fairly as I can, I think it right to add that, after the cords were unbound, I certainly saw blue marks on the wrists of the Brothers Davenport similar to what would have been caused by the pressure of the rope. On the other hand, supposing the cords were loose, I think the same marks might be produced by pressing the hand very tightly against

the rope.

The result, then, of my observation amounted to this :-I saw a certain operation performed which, granting the premises asked of me, was opposed to the whole experience of my life. I was requested to believe that this operation was performed by some unknown and undiscovered force. At the same time, the whole performance was simple to an extraordinary degree, if I supposed that, by some mechanism I could not discover, the Brothers Davenport were

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either not really fastened, or else had got their hands out of the cords. The question, therefore, resolved itself simply into this: Was it more likely I should be unable to discover a trick of sleight of hand, or that a supernatural operation should be performed at the price of ten guineas an hour, lights included? a rational man, I could not fairly be expected to adopt any but the first solution; and, as I have stated, I was the more confirmed in my view from the fact that every surrounding circumstance favoured the idea of contrivance. Unless I can detect the truth, I am not justified in stating positively that the performers impose upon the spectators; but I am justified in disbelieving that I witnessed a miracle while the operation remains so open to suspicion as it does at present,

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In arguing about this matter with converts, I have been told frequently that I am unphilosophical in denying the existence of a spiritualist force, and that I might as well deny the possibility of electricity or magnetism. My answer is that I should most certainly disbelieve one and the other, if they rested on such evidence as that on which these manifestations are supposed to rest. it were impossible to send a telegram from London to Paris without there being somebody in either capital who knew beforehand exactly what the message was going to be, I should most assuredly suspect that telegraphy was not real. If the magnet would never turn to the north unless the sun was visible and the compass in the hands of a mariner who never would show the needle till it was fixed in the right quarter, I should look on the magnet as a clumsy trick. In both cases I should be wrong; but yet my disbelief would have been perfectly justifiable. So in like manner I may be mistaken about Spiritualism but I am justified in not believing in it till I am shown some evidence similar to that which convinces me of the existence of magnetism and electricity. There are plenty of odd things in the world-in fact, all life is a mystery; and it would