Spiritualism began in 1848 with the humble and entirely fraudulent phenomena of raps. Within three years there were hundreds of mediums in the United States, and a dollar per sitter was the customary fee for assisting at one of the services of the new religion. It soon became widely known that raps could be produced by very earthly means, and in any case the rivalry of mediums was bound to develop new "phenomena." As in all other professions, originality paid; and as the wonderful discovery was quickly made that darkness favoured the intensity and variety of the phenomena, the spirit power began to break upon humanity in a bewildering variety of forms. In this chapter we will examine a number of these accomplishments which our departed fellows have learned on the Elysian fields. D. D. Home is still the classical exponent of some of these accomplishments. Indeed, there is one of his phenomena which no medium of our time has the courage to reproduce, and, since this phenomenon is expressly endorsed by Sir William Barrett in his recent work, _On the Threshold of the Unseen_ (1917), we shall be accused of timidity and unfairness if we omit to consider it. It is said that on several well-authenticated occasions--so Sir W. Barrett assures the public--Home took burning coals in his hands, thrust his hands into the blazing fire, or even put his face among the live coals. What is the evidence which Sir W. Barrett, knowing that the general public has no leisure to investigate these things, endorses as satisfactory? The reader who has patience enough to consider these extraordinary claims in detail will find the evidence collected and examined in Mr. Podmore's _Newer Spiritualism_ (chapters i and ii). It is just as weak and unsatisfactory as the evidence for Home's levitations, which we have already examined. The first witness is a lady, Mrs. Hall, who had the advantage of a profound belief that Home could do anything whatever, and that the idea of fraud was worse than preposterous in connection with so holy a man. Home's demure expression and constant utterances of piety and virtue, which seem to Mr. Podmore "inconceivably nauseous," made a deep impression on Mrs. Hall and the other ladies whom Home used generally to have next to him when he was performing his wonders. Now, this lady tells us that on July 5, 1869, he took a large live coal from the fire, put it on her husband's head, and drew his white hair over it. He left it there for four or five minutes, and then gave it to Mrs. Hall to hold. She says that it was "still red in parts," but she was not burned.