After a while, one Spear--a "Reverend Mr. Spear"--who was mixed up, it appears, with the machinery-part of the business, and who was a medium himself, transmitted to the lady a request from the spirits that she would visit said Spear at High Rock on a certain day. She did so, of course; and while there was unexpectedly taken with the pains of childbirth, which the spiritualist authorities say, were "internal"--where should they be, pray?--and "of the spirit rather than of the physical nature; but were, nevertheless, quite as uncontrollable as those of the latter, and not less severe." The labor proceeded. It lasted two hours. As it went on, lo and behold! one part and another part of the machinery began to move! And when, at the end of the two hours, the parturition was safely over, all the machinery was going! The lady had given birth to a Motive Force. Does anybody suppose I am manufacturing this story? Not a bit of it. It is all told at length in a book published by a spiritualist; and probably a good many of my readers will remember about it. Well, the baby had to be nursed--fact! This superhumanly silly female actually went through the motions of nursing the motive force for some weeks. Though how the thing sucked--Excuse me, ladies; I would not discuss such delicate subjects did not the interests of truth require it. If I had been the physician, at any rate, I think I should have recommended to hire a healthy female steam-engine for a wet nurse to this young motive force; say a locomotive, for instance. I feel sure the thing would have lived if it could have had a gauge-faucet or something of that sort to draw on. But the medical folks in charge chose to permit the mother to nurse the child, and she not being able to supply proper nutriment, the poor little innocent faded--if that word be appropriate for what couldn't be seen,--and finally "gin eout;" and the machinery, after some abortive joggles and turns, stood hopelessly still. This story is true--that is, it is true that the story was told, the pretences were gone through, and the birth was actually believed by a good many people. Some of them were prodigiously enthusiastic about it, and called the invisible brat the New Motive Power, the Physical Savior, Heaven's Last Best Gift to Man, the New Creation, the Great Spiritual Revelation of the Age, the Philosopher's Stone, the Act of all Acts, and so on, and so forth. The great question of all was, Who was the daddy? I don't know of anybody's asking this question, but its importance is extreme and obvious. For if things like this are going to happen, the ladies will be afraid to sleep alone in the house if so much as a sewing-machine or apple-corer be about, and will not dare take solitary walks along any stream where there is a water power. A couple of miscellaneous anecdotes may not inappropriately be appended to this story of monstrous delusion.