The impression produced by this thoroughly authenticated recital is a strong argument in favor of a continued connection after death of the human soul with the world in which we live. There was a man whose whole existence was absorbed by one great and all-pervading passion; it brought ruin to his body and disabled his mind from correcting the vagaries of his fancy. He died in this state, with a sense of grievous wrong and intense thirst of revenge uppermost in his mind. Then follow a number of magic phenomena, witnessed, for several years, by thousands of attached friends and curious observers, defying the vigilance of soldiers and the acuteness of police agents. These disturbances, at first bearing the stamp of willful annoyance, gradually assume a milder form, as if expressive of softening indignation; they become weaker and less frequent, and finally cease altogether, suggestive of the peace which the poor erring soul had at last found, by infinite mercy and goodness, when safely entering the desired haven. On the other hand--for contrasts meet here as well as elsewhere--these phenomena have been frequently ascribed to purely physical causes, and in a number of cases the final explanation has confirmed this suggestion. A hypochondriac artist, for instance, was nightly disturbed by a low but furious knocking in his bed, which was heard by others as well as by himself. He prayed, he caused priests to come to his bedside, he had masses read in his behalf, but all remained in vain. Then came a plain, sensible friend, who, half in jest and half in earnest, covered his big toe with a brass wire which he dipped into an alkaline solution, and behold, the knockings ceased and never returned! (Dupotel, "Animal Magn.") In another case a somnambulistic woman frightened herself as well as others by most violent knockings whenever she was disappointed or thwarted; her physician, suspecting the cause, finally gave her antispasmodic remedies, and it soon appeared that in her nervous spasms the muscles had been vibrating forcibly enough to produce these disturbances. Since these discoveries it has been found that almost anybody may produce such knockings--which stand in a suspicious relationship to spirit-rappings--by exerting certain muscles of the leg; some men, who have practised this trick for scientific purposes, like Professor Schiff, of Florence, are able to imitate almost all the various knockings generally ascribed to ghosts and spirits. The public performances of Mr. Chauncey Burr, in New York, gave very striking illustrations of this power, and a Mr. Shadrach Barnes rapped with his toes to perfection.