"'Mr. Splitfoot,' (the imaginary person who was supposed to make the noises), 'do as I do;' clapping her hands. The sound instantly followed her with the same number of raps; when she stopped, the sound ceased for a short time. Then Margaret said in sport: 'Now, do just as I do; count one, two, three, four,' striking one hand against the other at the same time, and the raps came as before. * * * I then thought I could put a test that no one in the place could answer. I asked the noises to rap my children's ages, successively. Instantly, each one of my children's ages was given correctly, pausing between them sufficiently long to individualize them until the seventh, at which a longer pause was made, and then three more emphatic raps were given, corresponding to the age of the little one that died, which was my youngest child. I then asked: 'Is this a human being that answers my questions so correctly?' There was no rap. I asked: 'Is it a spirit? If so, make two raps,' which were instantly given as soon as the request was made. I then said: 'If it is an injured spirit, make two raps,' which were instantly made, causing the house to tremble. I asked: 'Were you injured in this house?' The answer was given as before. 'Is the person living that injured you?' Answer by raps in the same manner. I ascertained by the same method that it was a man, aged thirty-one years; that he had been murdered in this house; and his remains were buried in the cellar; that his family consisted of a wife and five children, two sons and three daughters, all living at the time of his death, but that his wife had since died." Then the supposed spirit was asked if it would continue to "rap" if the neighbors were called in to listen. The answer was affirmative. And so they were called in. This caused the commencement of that great excitement which so soon spread from neighborhood to village, from the village to the near-by city of Rochester, and thence all over the country. * * * * * Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane says at the present time: "The apple-dropping trick appeared to us small children so simple and innocent, that we could only wonder that any one attached so great an importance to the sounds we produced. Only think of our ages at that time, and then ask, if you will, how we could have even the shade of a realization of the real meaning of this deception! "This lying book of Mrs. Underhill's, notwithstanding its abominable object, does give some slight inkling of the truth here and there. "It is thus that the wicked confound themselves. "She quotes, as you see here, what she says to be my mother's words: 'The children who slept in the other bed in the room, heard the rapping and tried to make similar sounds by snapping their fingers.'