SURROUNDED BY SPIRIT FRIENDS.

223

she seemed to see a dead body carried off by these comrades, who were enveloped in a dense cloud of smoke. Mayflower appeared a girl of fourteen or fifteen, of a fair complexion, dark hair and eyes. She looked as if she were encompassed with a rainbow, and was a bright, beautiful creature, but more attracted to the earth than some of the others in the shining throng. The effect of her music upon the other spirits was very marked. They seemed to enjoy it, and their feelings were indicated by a great increase in the brilliancy of the light about them.

We

The members of our circle of the evening were each attended by his or her special friends, who showed affection in embraces, loving appeals, the laying of crowns of flowers upon our heads, and of emblematic floral devices of various kinds upon our laps. Some seemed to her to kneel at the knees of their friends, and gaze up into their faces with eager, hungry looks, as if they would force a sense of their presence through the impenetrable walls of flesh in which they were still held captive. mortals, like our spirit-friends, were also surrounded by our special and peculiar spheres of light, varying in brilliancy, color, and transparency, in degree with our moral elevation. Along the united hands of the front rank ran a chain of electricity or some other fluid, like lightning, reddish-yellow in color, with bubbles of light coming up here and there, and then bursting, and the even flow of the stream interfered with and made to zigzag by the unequal personal magnetic force of the several sitters.

In "The Storm at Sea" she saw Dix holding what seemed a bunch of reeds, that vibrated as a stream of

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DIX, AS A MUSICIAN.

electricity or other bright fluid ran through them. When he imitated the pumping of water, it seemed as if he forced two masses of electricity together, handling the subtle agent as if it were a solid substance. She could see him stretching out his hands and gathering it from the air to condense and compact it, as one might gather light snow and form the feathery flakes into a solid ball. He was never idle, but passed from one employment to another with indomitable perseverance, now playing the violin, and anon imitating the whistling of wind or the swash of water, according as the exigencies of the performance seemed to demand.

But, of a sudden, the beatific vision of the clairvoyant is rudely terminated by the lighting of the smoky candle, whose feeble gleam, struggling through the obscurity of the room, replaces the noonday brightness of her opened heavens.

A

CHAPTER XV.

PHILOSOPHICAL TESTS.

MONG other tests that I desired to apply to Honto, was one to satisfy myself whether she possessed

the superhuman power of self-levitation. I accordingly procured a small table-gong, which could be rung by dropping a weight of half an ounce upon the handle from the height of one inch, and took it to Chittenden with me. One evening, when a favorable opportunity offered, I requested the spirit to step upon the handle without ringing the gong, which I had previously placed on the platform at a convenient point for observation. She assented, but before trusting herself upon the frail knob examined it with characteristic caution and curiosity. She finally gathered up her skirts, and, placing the ball of her right foot upon it, stepped up and bore her whole weight upon it without disturbing the clapper. The experiment was repeated twice at my request. I then asked her to step on it and cause the bell to ring after she stood fairly upon the knob. She did so. Her success seemed to amuse her greatly, and by clapping her hands and in other ways, she testified

226

HONTO AND THE GONG.

her satisfaction. She advanced her hand towards the unfamiliar object with the caution that one would feel in laying hold of something hot, but finally mustered courage to take it up and ring it over and over again, laughing and dancing like a child pleased with a new toy. Her usual performance with the shawls and gauzes then followed, and she strutted up and down the platform with a long piece of the latter material wrapped around her, as though she were a belle promenading in a new mantilla for the public admiration. Just before she was about to bid us adieu, I asked her to place the gong on the railing directly in front of me and ring it, so that I might distinctly see her hand pressing down the knob. She bowed compliance, and putting the article where I designated, retired for a moment into the cabinet, perhaps to gain strength, and then returning, lifted her skirt again, rang the bell with her left foot, and ran out, kissing her hand to us. The wire to which the knob of the gong is attached, is about as thick as a broom straw, and I regarded the experiment as of great importance, until I afterwards found that, by stepping very cautiously, and bearing on very gradually, I could make the knob sustain my own weight. But I could not ring the bell after I stood upon the knob, nor step on it as briskly as she did, without causing it to sound. She was dressed, this evening, in a new white costume throughout.

My reference to her retiring into the cabinet for the purpose of gaining renewed strength from her medium, recalls to mind an account I saw in the London Spiritualist, some time ago, of an experience of Sir Charles