"I am going to expose the very root of corruption in this spiritualistic ulcer. You talk about Mormonism! Do you know that there is something behind the shadowy mask of Spiritualism that the public can hardly guess at? I am stating now what I know, not because I actually participated in it, for I would never be a party to such promiscuous nastiness, but because I had plenty of opportunity, as you may imagine, of verifying it. Under the name of this dreadful, this horrible hypocrisy--Spiritualism--everything that is improper, bad and immoral is practiced. They go even so far as to have what they call 'spiritual children!' They pretend to something like the immaculate conception! Could anything be more blasphemous, more disgusting, more thinly deceptive than that? In London I went in disguise to a quiet séance at the house of a wealthy man, and I saw a so-called materialization. The effect was produced with the aid of luminous paper, the lustre of which was reflected upon the operator. The figure thus displayed was that of a woman--was virtually nude, being enveloped in transparent gauze, the face alone being concealed. This was one of those séances to which the privileged non-believing friends of believing spiritualists could have access. But there are other séances, where none but the most tried and trusted are admitted, and where there are shameless goings on that vie with the secret Saturnalia of the Romans. I could not describe these things to you, because I would not." Thus, the only one of the "Fox Sisters" who still adhered to the imposture practiced for over forty years, and the only spiritualist who could deny the statements of Margaret Fox Kane with anything approaching to authority, found her safest and most fitting defense in the kindly shelter of silence. This quasi-confession was not needed to complete the conviction in intelligent minds that Spiritualism was, in its inception, and is now, a fraud and a lie. But the significance of the negative circumstance is none the less worthy of note. CHAPTER III. A SECOND BLOW. Barely had the professional spiritualists a breathing-spell--after the shock of Mrs. Kane's confession--when a new blow fell upon them. Mrs. Catherine Fox Jencken arrived from Europe, and though ignorant until landing, of the grave step her sister Margaret had taken, at once announced her intention of joining and sustaining her in the complete exposure of Spiritualism in all its phases of deception and hypocrisy. This news staggered the spiritualistic world.