SPIRITUALISM AND TABLE MOVING.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2710, 14 December 1882, Page 3

SPIRITUALISM AND TABLE MOVING.

To the Editor of the Globe.

Sir, —As Artemus Ward would put it, I have lately gone into the speritool bizness. In company with a few other honest seekers after the truth I have been the victim of two "circles." A young man with a threelegged card table and a cast in his eye played the oracle on me, the first time by clumsily tossing about that inoffensive and useful article of furniture—a table—by tilting it first off one leg and then off another, and twisting it about so that I began to feel uneasy for the furniture dealer that had unsuspectingly lent it. But somehow or other, owing to the dogged obstinacy of the circle in asking questions, the young man with the cast in his eye didn't expect the "raps," or the replies of the table were considerably "mixed," and finding the answer "No" coming when it should have been '' Yes," the circle was cruel enough to say the young man had "played it low down on 'em." Like all true philosophers that youthful sjjerrit bore the base aspersion with a sweetly calm indifference. At circle No. 2 things went a shade better. Besides ns few sceptics there were three woefully serious and devout young spirit mediums of the male persuasion present. This time we had a fine solid upstanding table to operate on. We tried hard. We sang all the new and popular hymns of the day at 11 o'clock at night, but the table remained perverse. We tried Moody and Sankey on it, Watts and Wesley, and didn't "let up" short of hammering the "Old Hundred" into as many pieces; but the centre piece of mahogany budded not an inch. Starting with the light of a kerosene lamp at full, t wejran it down to zero, and pave the room ns much weirdness as the dying flicker of the midnight oil can be guilty of. All with the same unsatisfactory result. But just as some of us were about

to give vent to our irreverent feelings, a young spiritualist weighing about as much as two fifties of flour, including a head something larger than is usually found opposite the pointed end of a pin, got 'em bad, andjset to brandishing his arms about unmercifully beating the air and the mahogany alternately. The conductor, a prematurely serious visaged young person, also of the male order, kindly interrogated the singular phenomenon, when, to the wonder of us all, no less a celebrity than the once famous Garibaldi announced himself to have taken the unwarrantable liberty of assuming for the nonce the hundredweight of flesh, bones, blood and wearing apparel of the person just referred to. No explanation of the whereabouts of the rightful owner of the mortal remains was vouchsafed, nor would the old Italian General condescend to make known the purport of his joke. He seemed disposed tobe rough, butthat was easilyaccounted ior. The business of generals, great generals, they say is that way you know. My first impulse, I confess was to kick him out for using an otherwise well disposed entertainer so badly, but before impulses could be given effect to, the lady of the house apprehending some worse thing might befall the frail tene ment the old general had thrust himself into, stepped towards it, and would have laid it gently down on the carpet, had not the rightful owner that moment opportunely returned to consciousness. We all warmly congratulated him, everybody looked at him. then at each other, and without as much as giving a knowing wink to indicate a suspicion of the shut eye flavor in the manfestation, everybody retired to sip some of the purest mocha, and eat cakes in the next room. Perhaps, Mr Editor, some of your many readers can account for the phenomenon. If theyjean, it is more than lies in the finite powers of Low Spibits. Lyttelton, December 12th, 1882.