"Look at the _Herald_ of this morning. There is an account of a suicide which causes some excitement. Your sister's[6] name is mentioned in the inquest of the coroner. Oh, how much I wish that you would quit _this life of dreary sameness and unsuspected deceit_. We live in this world only for the good and noble. How crushing it must be to occupy with them a position of ambiguous respect!" Dr. Kane, a short time afterwards, described Maggie as follows: "But it is that strange mixture of child and woman, of simplicity and cunning, of passionate impulse and extreme self-control, that has made you a curious study. Maggie, you are very pretty, very childlike, very deceitful, but to me as readable as my grandmother's Bible." "And again he said: 'When I think of you, dear darling, _wasting your time and youth and conscience for a few paltry dollars_, and think of the crowds who come nightly to hear of the wild stories of the frigid North, I sometimes feel that we are not so far removed after all. My brain and your body are each the sources of attraction, and I confess that there is not so much difference.'" Never for an instant did the manly and robust intellect of Dr. Kane stoop to the level of even a partial belief in the pretended wonders of "Spiritualism." The allusions made to it in his letters, when not grave or indignant, are full of a certain contemptuous playfulness, well calculated to reprove the conscious deceitfulness practised by the childish Maggie, while not offending the natural pride which was yet apart of her imperfectly formed character. When the doctor was in Boston, he wrote to her sister Katie: "Well, now for talk. Boston is a funny place, and 'the spirits' have friends here. You would be surprised if I told you what I have heard. * * * There are some things that I have seen which I think would pain you. Maggie would only laugh at them; but with me it gave cause for sadness. I saw a young man with a fine forehead and expressive face, but a countenance deeply tinged with melancholy, seize the hand of this 'medium,' whose name--as I never tell other's secrets--I cannot tell you. He begged her to answer a question which I could not hear. Instantly she rapped, and his face assumed a positive agony; the rapping continued; his pain increased; I leaned forward, feeling an utter detestation for the woman who could inflict such torment; but it was too late. A single rap came and he fell senseless in a fit. This I saw with my own eyes.