Daniel Dunglas Home in testifying in July, 1869, as reported in the _London Times_, told of an incident which had occurred several years previous. “We were,” he said, “in a large room in the Salon de Quatorze. The Emperor and Empress were present,--I am now telling the story as I heard the Emperor tell it,--a table was moved, then a hand was seen to come. It was a very beautifully formed hand. There were pencils on the table. It lifted, not the one next to it, but the one on the far side. We heard the sound of writing, and saw it writing on fine note paper. The hand passed before me and went to the Emperor, and he kissed the hand. It went to the Empress; she withdrew from its touch, and the hand followed her. The Emperor said, ‘Do not be frightened,’ and she kissed it too. The hand seemed to be like a person thinking and as if it were saying, ‘Why should I?’ It came back to me. It had written the word ‘Napoleon’ and it remains written now. The writing was the autograph of the Emperor Napoleon I, who had an exceedingly beautiful hand.” Mr. Home also said that the Emperor of Russia as well as the Emperor Napoleon, had seen hands and had taken hold of them, “when they seemed to float away into thin air.” Such are the things Spiritualists are expected to believe and do believe. I could continue to recite incidents _ad infinitum_, _ad nauseam_, but I believe the reader can form his own judgment from the above. It is the kind of material which drives people insane for when some poor, sick, human being is just on the verge of recovery such nonsensical utterances often overthrow reason. Is it any wonder that the population of our insane asylums is swelled with “followers” who have attempted to believe these things? CHAPTER XV MAGICIANS AS DETECTORS OF FRAUD The alacrity with which Spiritualists seize upon letters or other statements of magicians that they believe the so-called spirit manifestations which they have witnessed were not accomplished by means of legerdemain but were attributable to supernatural or occult powers has astonished me and while I intend to refute them I want to call attention at the same time to the incompetence of the opinion of the ordinary magician with a knowledge of two or three experiments in Spiritualism who stands up and claims that he can duplicate the experiments of any medium who ever lived. My personal opinion is that notwithstanding the fact that innumerable exposures have been successfully made, such fact is no proof that any investigator, legerdemain artist or otherwise, is fully capable of fathoming each and every effect produced. Some magicians with a knowledge of pseudo-Spiritualistic effects imagine that they have all they need to qualify them as investigators, and should anything transpire at a seance which they cannot explain they are mystified into temporary belief and write letters or make statements which they are quite likely to regret as the years roll on.[125]