"I really ought to apologize," said Colonel Prowley, upon opening the hall-door for my admittance, on the afternoon of the second Wednesday in April, and this after repeated summons had been sounded by the brazen knocker,--"I ought to apologize for keeping you here so long; but there has been so much knocking about the house of late, and our cook and housemaid having turned out to be such excellent mediums, taking just as much interest in their circle down-stairs as we do in ours in the parlor, and then Mrs. Colfodder being so positive that it was either Sir Joseph Barley or Roger Williams,--though I am sure neither of them ever knocked half so satisfactorily before, and besides"---- "My dear Sir," interrupted I, "no excuse is necessary. I have seen enough of 'the spirits' to know how they put aside all conventionalities. I should have accompanied Dr. Burge to the hotel, had I anticipated disturbing the circle which, I infer, is at present in session." "You would have grieved me very much by doing so," rejoined the kind old gentleman. "Dr. Burge dines with me to-morrow, and I confess--not yet calling myself a convert to these miracles which are now vouchsafed in Foxden--it would not be amiss to rid my premises of the amiable magicians congregated in my parlor before a minister were invited to enter. But a layman, as I take it, might witness these thaumaturgical matters without scandal,--nay, perchance you may help me to that wholesome credence in their reality which my celestial visitants so unceasingly demand." Colonel Prowley was in the state of mind not unusual to many well-meaning, unoccupied people, when this modern necromancy was thrust upon them by those pecuniarily or socially interested in its advocacy. The upheaval to the air of that dark inward nature which is ever working in us,--the startling proof of that loudly proclaimed, faintly realized truth, that this mind, so pervading every fibre of the body, is yet separate in its essence,--the novel gratification of the petty vanities and petty questionings which beset undecided men,--what wonder that persons not accustomed to sound analysis of evidence should be beguiled by these subtilest adaptations to their conditions, and hold dalliance with the feeble shades that imposture or enthusiasm vended about the towns? Historical personages--a nerveless mimicry of the conventional stage-representation of them--stalked the Colonel's parlor. Departed friends, Indians _a discretion_, local celebrities, Deacon Golly, who in the year '90 took the ten first shares in the Wrexford Turnpike, the very Pelatiah Brimble from whom "Brimble's Corner" had taken its name, the identical Timson forever immortal in "Timson's Common,"--these defunct worthies were audibly, visibly, or tangibly present, pecking at great subjects in ghostly feebleness, swimming in Tupperic dilutions of cheapest wisdom, and finally inducing in their patrons strange derangements of mind and body.