The spirit-rapper; an autobiography

------------------------------------------------------------------------ Transcriber’s Note: This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects. Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_. Footnotes have been moved to follow the paragraphs in which they are referenced. Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation. THE SPIRIT-RAPPER. THE SPIRIT-RAPPER; AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. BY O. A. BROWNSON, AUTHOR OF “CHARLES ELWOOD.” BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY. LONDON: CHARLES DOLMAN. M.DCCC.LIV. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1854, by LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY. In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PREFACE. If the critics undertake to determine, by any recognized rules of art, to what class of literary productions the following unpretending work belongs, I think they will be sorely puzzled. I am sure I am puzzled myself to say what it is. It is not a novel; it is not a romance; it is not a biography of a real individual; it is not a dissertation, an essay, or a regular treatise; and yet it perhaps has some elements of them all, thrown together in just such a way as best suited my convenience, or my purpose. I wanted to write a book, easy to write and not precisely hard to read, on the new superstition, or old superstition under a new name, exciting just now no little attention at home and abroad; and I chose such a literary form as I—not, properly speaking, a literary man—could best manage, and which would afford me the most facilities for bringing distinctly before the reader the various points to which I wished to direct his attention. If the critics think that I have chosen badly, they are at liberty to bestow upon the author as much of the castigation which, in his capacity of Reviewer, he has for many years been in the habit of bestowing upon others, as they think proper. I have thought it but fair to give those whom I may have offended by my own criticisms in another place, an opportunity to pay their debts and wipe off old scores. The book, though affecting some degree of levity, is serious in its aims, and truthful in its statements. There is no fiction in it, save its machinery. What is given as fact, is fact, or at least so regarded by the author. The facts narrated, or strictly analogous facts, I have either seen myself, or given on what I regard as ample evidence. The theory presented as their explanation, and the reasoning by which it is sustained, speak for themselves, and are left to the judgment of the reader. The connection of spirit-rapping, or the spirit-manifestations, with modern philanthropy, visionary reforms, socialism, and revolutionism, is not an imagination of my own. It is historical, and asserted by the Spiritists, or Spiritualists themselves, as any one may satisfy himself who can have the patience to look through their Library. I have endeavored to be scrupulously exact in all my statements and representations in this respect. The shafts which the author shoots at random may perhaps hit some well-meaning persons who get crotchets in their heads, or astride of hobbies; but they are not poisoned with malice, and will titillate the skin, rather than penetrate the flesh. I have not aimed at originality, or at displaying my erudition in the Black Art. I have certainly read some on the subject, and at one period of my life made myself acquainted with more “deviltry” than ever did or ever will do me any good. I have however drawn very little from “forbidden” sources. In writing, I have used freely a recent French work, from which I have taken the larger portion of my facts, and many of my arguments, although I had previously studied the subject for myself, had learned the same facts, with one or two exceptions, from other sources, and had adopted the same solution. The work I refer to is entitled, _Pneumatologie des Esprits et de leurs Manifestations fluidiques_. By the Marquis Etudes de M——. Paris, 1853. There are some views, not unimportant, in this work, which I am not prepared to accept; but, upon the whole, it is the only really sensible and scientific work I have seen on the subject, and I freely confess that I have done little more than transfer its substance to my pages. The volume when it was begun was intended to be published anonymously, but my publishers have preferred to issue it with the name of the author. I think they have judged unwisely, but as they ought to know their own trade better than I, and as there is nothing in it that I am particularly ashamed of or unwilling to avow, I cheerfully comply with their request, and send it out with my name, to make or mar its fortune. If it tend in any degree to throw light on the dark facts of history, to check superstition, to rebuke unreasoning scepticism, and to recall the age to faith in the Gospel of our Lord, the purpose, the serious purpose, for which it was written will be answered, and I shall be content, whatever reception it may otherwise meet from the public. THE AUTHOR. BOSTON, August 11, 1854. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE FIRST LESSON 1 CHAPTER II. GUESSES 10 CHAPTER III. FURTHER EXPERIMENTS 22 CHAPTER IV. AN EXPLOSION 33 CHAPTER V. SOME PROGRESS 46 CHAPTER VI. TABLE TURNING 61 CHAPTER VII. A LESSON IN PHILANTHROPY 71 CHAPTER VIII. A LESSON IN WORLD-REFORM 91 CHAPTER IX. THE CONSPIRACY 112 CHAPTER X. MR. COTTON IS PUZZLED 133 CHAPTER XI. WORTH CONSIDERING 154 CHAPTER XII. A MISSIONARY TOUR 173 CHAPTER XIII. THE TOUR CONTINUED 184 CHAPTER XIV. ROME AND THE REVOLUTION 199 CHAPTER XV. THE ULTERIOR PROJECT 218 CHAPTER XVI. A REBUFF 239 CHAPTER XVII. A GLEAM OF HOPE 245 CHAPTER XVIII. RELIGIOUS MONOMANIA 257 CHAPTER XIX. MESMERISM INSUFFICIENT 275 CHAPTER XX. SHEER DEVILTRY 290 CHAPTER XXI. SPIRIT-MANIFESTATIONS 303 CHAPTER XXII. SUPERSTITION 316 CHAPTER XXIII. DIFFICULTIES 329 CHAPTER XXIV. LEFT IN THE LURCH 347 CHAPTER XXV. CONCLUSIONS 363 CHAPTER XXVI. CONVERSION 387 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE SPIRIT-RAPPER. CHAPTER I. THE FIRST LESSON. My days are numbered; I am drawing near to the close of my earthly pilgrimage, and I must soon take my final departure,—whither, I dread to think. But before I go I would leave a brief record of some incidents in my worse than unprofitable life. A few who have known me, and will have the charity to breathe a prayer at my grave, may be glad to possess it; and others of my countrymen, who know not what to think of the marvellous phenomena daily and hourly exhibited in their midst, or are vainly striving to explain them on natural principles, may find it neither uninteresting nor uninstructive. Of my exterior life I have not much to record, for though few have played a more active or important part in the great events of the past few years, my name has rarely been connected with them before the public. I was born in a small town in Western New York. My parents were honest agriculturists from Connecticut, and descended from ancestors who, with Hooker, founded the colony of Hartford. They were among the early settlers of what used to be called the “Holland Purchase,” and, till emigrating to the new world west of the Genesee, were rigid Puritans. Like most emigrants from the land of “steady habits,” they were intelligent, moral, industrious, and economical, and, as a matter of course, soon prospered in this world’s goods, and became able to give their only son the best education the State could furnish, and to leave him a competent estate. I made my preparatory studies at Batavia, and entered, at seventeen, the Freshman class of Union College, Schenectady. I remained at college four years, a diligent, if not a brilliant student, and graduated at the close with the highest standing, and the general love and esteem of my classmates. My early predilection was for the mathematical and physical sciences. The moral and intellectual sciences were not much to my taste. I took no great interest in them. They struck me as vague, uncertain, and unprofitable. I preferred what M. Comte has since called _Positive Philosophy_. I soon mastered mathematics, mechanics, and physics, as far as they were taught in our college, but I found my greatest delight in chemistry, which, by its subtle analyses, seemed to promise me an approach to the vital principle and to the essences of things. On leaving college I studied—not very profoundly—medicine, and took my degree, less with a view to professional practice, in which I never engaged, than with a view to general science. After taking my degree as