The Death-Blow to Spiritualism Part 5

"MRS. MARGARET FOX KANE,

"DEAR MADAM:

"Hundreds of thousands have believed through you and you alone.

Hundreds of thousands eagerly ask you whether all the glorious light that they fancied you have given them, was but the false flicker of a common dip-candle of fraud.

"If, as you say, you were forced to pursue this imposture from childhood, I can forgive you, and I am sure that G.o.d will; for he turns not back the truly repentant. I will not upbraid you. I am sure you have suffered as much as any penalty, human or divine, could cause you to suffer. The disclosures that you make take from me all that I cherished most. There is nothing left for me now but to hope for the reality of that repose which death promises us.

"It is perhaps better that the delusion should be at last swept away by one single word, and that word 'fraud.'

"I know that the pursuit of this shadowy belief has wrought upon my brain and that I am no longer my old self. Money I have spent in thousands and thousands of dollars within a few short years to propitiate the 'mediumistic' intelligence. It is true that never once have I received a message or the token of a word that did not leave a still unsatisfied longing in my heart, a feeling that it was not really my loved one after all, who was speaking to me, or if it was my loved one, that he was changed, that I hardly knew him and that he hardly knew me. Oh! how I have hated the thought that used to come to me sometimes, in spite of myself, that it was not really he. But that must have been the true intuition. It is better that the delusion is past, after all, for had I kept on in that way, I am sure I should have gone mad. The constant seeking, the frequent pretended response, its unsatisfying meaning, the sense of distance and change between me and my loved one--oh! it has been horrible, horrible!

"He who is dying of thirst and has the sweet cup ever s.n.a.t.c.hed from his lips, just as the first drop touches them--he alone can know what in actual things is the similitude of this spiritualistic torture.

"G.o.d bless you, for I think that you now speak the truth. You have my forgiveness at least, and I believe that thousands of others will forgive you, for the atonement made in season wipes out much of the stain of the early sin.

"Yours sincerely, "ANNA SUZANNE."

To these letters and to hundreds of others which Mrs. Kane and her sister Mrs. Jencken have received, this volume is their response.

But besides this, they have appeared in public on the platform, as an earnest of their present sincerity, and will probably continue so to appear in various parts of this country and Europe.

On the 21st of October, 1888, Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane first fulfilled her intention of publicly denouncing, with her own lips, Spiritualism and its attendant trickery. She appeared at the Academy of Music in New York before a large and distinguished audience, and without reservation demonstrated the falsity of all that she had done in the past in the guise of spiritualistic "mediums.h.i.+p."

The ordeal was a severe one. The great nervous strain under which she had labored rendered her mind highly excitable, and the large number of spiritualists in the house tried to create a disturbance, or a traitorous diversion which would break the force of her renunciation. In this they utterly failed, however, thanks to the superior character of a majority of her auditors.

The moral effect of the exposure could not have been greater.

Mrs. Kane stood before the footlights trembling with intense feeling, and made the following most solemn abjuration of Spiritualism, while Mrs.

Catharine Fox Jencken sat in a neighboring box and gave a.s.sent by her presence to all that she said:

"That I have been chiefly instrumental in perpetrating the fraud of Spiritualism upon a too confiding public, most of you doubtless know.

"The greatest sorrow of my life has been that this is true, and though it has come late in my day, I am now prepared to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,--so help me G.o.d!

"There are probably many here who will scorn me for the deception I have practiced, yet did they know the true history of my unhappy past, the living agony and shame that it has been to me, they would pity, not reproach.

"The imposition which I have so long maintained began in my early childhood, when, with character and mind still unformed, I was unable to distinguish between right and wrong.

"I repented it in my maturity. I have lived through years of silence, through intimidation, scorn and bitter adversity, concealing as best I might, the consciousness of my guilt. Now, thanks to G.o.d and my awakened conscience, I am at last able to reveal the fatal truth, the exact truth of this hideous fraud which has withered so many hearts and has blighted so many hopeful lives.

"I am here to-night as one of the founders of Spiritualism, to denounce it as an absolute falsehood from beginning to end, as the flimsiest of superst.i.tions, the most wicked blasphemy known to the world.

"I ask only your kind attention and forgiveness, and as I may prove myself worthy by the step I am now taking, may you extend to me your helping hands and sustain me in the better path I have chosen."

The demonstration of the method by which the "rappings" were produced was a perfect success, as is best shown by the following succinct account, which formed a part of the article on the subject published by the New York _World_ on the following morning:

A plain wooden stool or table, resting upon four short legs, and having the properties of a sounding board, was placed in front of her. Removing her shoe, she placed her right foot upon this table.

The entire house became breathlessly still, and was rewarded by a number of little short, sharp raps--those mysterious sounds which have for more than forty years frightened and bewildered hundreds of thousands of people in this country and Europe. A committee, consisting of three physicians taken from the audience, then ascended to the stage, and having made an examination of her foot during the progress of the "rappings," unhesitatingly agreed that the sounds were made by the action of the first joint of her large toe.

Only the most hopelessly prejudiced and bigoted fanatics of Spiritualism could withstand the irresistable force of this common-place explanation and exhibition of how "spirit rappings" are produced. The demonstration was perfect and complete, and if "spirit rappings" find any credence in this community hereafter, it would seem a wise precaution on the part of the authorities to begin the enlargement of the State's insane asylums without any delay.

III. HISTORY.

CHAPTER VI.

ORIGIN OF THE FRAUD.

There are spiritualists who pretend that so-called "spirit rappings"

originated long before the Hydesville disturbances took place. These declarations, however, are of no value as actual evidence.

In any event, there is no claim that in their cause and general character these manifestations, so-called, were very different from similar ones of the present day.

The "rappings" produced by the "Fox Sisters" are certainly the first of which there is an authentic account. They began in a little rustic cottage at a place called Hydesville, in the town of Arcadia, near Newark, Wayne County, New York. Here John D. Fox and his wife Margaret dwelt with their two daughters, Margaret and Catherine. Two other children, Ann Leah and David S., lived elsewhere. There was sometimes a fifth member of the household, also a child. This was Elizabeth Fish, the daughter of Leah, and therefore the niece of Margaret and Catherine. She was seven years older than the elder of the two latter.

The elder Fox and his wife had not been always united since their marriage. They were separated for a number of years. The three older children, Ann Leah, Maria and David S., were conceived before this separation took place, and Margaret and Catherine afterwards. The two broods had distinctive characteristics. The father, in the interval, is said to have become addicted to intemperate habits. The taint of heredity may excuse much in the younger generation that sprang from a weakness of will-power and made them the too easy victims of colder and more mercenary natures. To many it is well known that they are still incapable of guarding their interests in a business way, and that they have always been too largely at the mercy of any one who could acquire an influence over them.

Margaretta, or Margaret, Fox, as she always signs herself, was born in the year 1840, and Catherine Fox a year and a half later. The eldest sister Leah was born twenty-three years before the former. The little girls, one eight years old and the other six and a half, had rarely seen this sister prior to the beginning of the spiritualistic movement. She knew nothing of it until the popular excitement over the "rappings" had almost reached its climax. Very early in life she had married a man named Fish, who had deserted her, and she was supporting herself at this time in the city of Rochester by teaching the rudiments of music. David S. Fox, son of John and Margaret Fox, lived about two miles from the home of his father in Arcadia.

Maggie and Katie Fox were as full of petty devilment as any two children of their age ever were. They delighted to tease their excellent old mother, who by all who knew her is described as simple, gentle and true-hearted. In their antics, they would resort to all sorts of ingenious devices, and bed-time witnessed almost invariably the gayest of larks. One of their frequent amus.e.m.e.nts was to plague their niece, Elizabeth, who slept in the same bed with them, by kicking and tickling her, and by frightening her at almost any hour of the night out of sound sleep.

Their riotous fancy soon hit upon the plan of bobbing apples up and down on the floor in their bedchamber, as a means of scaring Elizabeth and of puzzling their mother without much risk of detection. They tied strings to the stems of the apples, and thus let them hang down beside the bed. The noise of dropping them more or less quickly upon the floor resembled almost anything that the imagination chose to liken it to, from raps on the front door to slippered foot-falls on the narrow stairway. Whenever a search was made for the cause of the noises, the apples were easily hauled up into the bed and hidden in the bedclothes, where no one would think of looking for them, at least at that stage of the investigation.

The plan had everything in it to charm a juvenile mischief-maker. It succeeded admirably. It was not till the wonder which was caused by these strange "knockings" had extended beyond the humble Fox household, that the suggestion of any other means of affording to that growing feeling its daily food of seeming evidence came to the roguish youngsters.

The family had moved into the house at Hydesville on December 11, 1847.

The mother began to hear strange sounds almost from that date--strange because they occurred with great frequency and were oddly repeated. The children slept in what was called the East Room; the parents in an adjoining chamber. At all hours of the night, almost, the sounds were heard; but it happened that they always occurred when one or both of the children were wide awake. The mother, in a statement which has been published as one of the so-called proofs of the genuineness of these manifestations, says that the sounds could with difficulty be located.

"Sometimes it seemed as if the furniture was moved; but on examination we found everything in order. The children had become so alarmed that I thought best to have them sleep in the room with us. * * * On the night of the first disturbance we all got up and lighted a candle and searched the house, the noises continuing during the time, and being heard near the same place."

How natural it was that little children, being averse to sleeping away from their elders in a dark room in a lone country neighborhood, should take advantage of a pretext such as this to get their bed placed nearer to that of their parents! Such, indeed, was the immediate result.

The third night of the "rappings" was the 31st of March, 1848. Mrs. Fox says:

"_The children who slept in the other bed in the room heard the rappings and tried to make similar sounds with their fingers._

"Katie exclaimed:

"'Mr. Splitfoot,' (the imaginary person who was supposed to make the noises), 'do as I do;' clapping her hands. The sound instantly followed her with the same number of raps; when she stopped, the sound ceased for a short time. Then Margaret said in sport: 'Now, do just as I do; count one, two, three, four,' striking one hand against the other at the same time, and the raps came as before. * * * I then thought I could put a test that no one in the place could answer. I asked the noises to rap my children's ages, successively. Instantly, each one of my children's ages was given correctly, pausing between them sufficiently long to individualize them until the seventh, at which a longer pause was made, and then three more emphatic raps were given, corresponding to the age of the little one that died, which was my youngest child. I then asked: 'Is this a human being that answers my questions so correctly?' There was no rap. I asked: 'Is it a spirit? If so, make two raps,' which were instantly given as soon as the request was made. I then said: 'If it is an injured spirit, make two raps,' which were instantly made, causing the house to tremble. I asked: 'Were you injured in this house?' The answer was given as before. 'Is the person living that injured you?' Answer by raps in the same manner. I ascertained by the same method that it was a man, aged thirty-one years; that he had been murdered in this house; and his remains were buried in the cellar; that his family consisted of a wife and five children, two sons and three daughters, all living at the time of his death, but that his wife had since died."

Then the supposed spirit was asked if it would continue to "rap" if the neighbors were called in to listen. The answer was affirmative.

And so they were called in.