267. “Some weeks afterward, when he was forgotten, the medium’s hand wrote, ‘Mr. A. P., U. St. Rox.—I have used your card.’ ‘Natty,’ said I, ‘as you left the earth when very young, I would like to know how you learned the English language.’ He answered, ‘My mother knew it, I think;’ and asked, ‘Will you let my mamma come?’ ‘Certainly, with pleasure.’ And the following was written: 268. “‘My friend, you must not be angry with my darling boy. It ofttimes grieves me to have him, so pure, use such wild phrases. I am your friend, as a soldier in the cause. ELIZABETH Y-—-.’ 269. “Very often this little bright spark comes out with something unexpected, amusing, or witty; but at all times he manifests a very marked disposition to be obliging and kind. Once, when his communication seemed to be closed, I said, ‘You are not going, Natty?’ ‘Yes—gone—don’t you see the dust fly?’ ‘Where,’ I asked, ‘do you pick up such phrases?’ ‘Hear ‘um.’ 270. “On another occasion he said, ‘My friend, you must not put on a long face when you come to talk with supposed ghosts. You must not believe all they tell you to. You must not go to the end of the world and jump off, because they tell you to.’ 271. “When once I said to him, ‘How do you go to work, Natty, to use a medium’s hand?’ He said, ‘Why, you see, we just passes a chain of light around the wrist, and that sets it to shaking. The next operation is to make it write, of course. Sometimes the words are allowed to pass through the brains. We now have such a power over this medium, that we can make her shake awfully.’ ‘Try my wrist, Natty,’ said a lady who was present. ‘Dear, beloved aunty, I’ve got a peck of love for you, but I can’t make you trace my purified thoughts on the clean paper.’” For those who endeavour to get rid of the evidence of respectable witnesses, such as Mr. Putnam, by representing them as dupes, and the media as impostors, it may be well to quote the following passage from the same publication: (Page 44.) 272. “Within the last fourteen months I have seen twenty-two or three different mediums—all but four of them private ones—taking no pecuniary compensation; and more than half of them are our own citizens, several of whom are now present in this assembly. I have spent very many hours in their presence. Have seen them at their homes—at my own home—and in the parlours of neighbours and friends. I have met and watched them in the broadest sunlight and at evening. Every desirable opportunity has been furnished me for detecting machinery, jugglery, or imposture, and I have faithfully, but in vain, strove to find something mundane a sufficient cause for all these wonders. That trick or humbug is sometimes attempted by pretenders to uncommon susceptibilities, no one will have a wish to deny. But very many of the mediums, private ones, are as much above these things as are the very best persons among the witnesses.