[5] I think from _Punch_. CHAPTER V. SPIRITUALISM. "Prosaic after death, our spirits then Invent machinery to talk with men; * * * * * And Shakespeare's spirit visits earth to tell How he and Washington are very well; And Lindley Murray, from the body free, Can't make his verbs and nominatives agree; Ben Franklin raps an idiotic dream, And Webster scrawls vile twaddle by the ream; That splendid knave, Lord Bacon, has turned fool, And Penn's great soul is busy keeping school. Well may the living poet heave a sigh To think his spirit, stooping from the sky When he is dead, can rap at mortal call, Bad rhymes and wretched metre on a wall! Well may the hero shudder in despair, Whose soul can choose to animate a chair; And the great statesman, sinking in the tomb, To rise, and wheel a table round a room!" [Sidenote: _Spiritualism--A Memorable Meeting on the Subject_.] One night we had a most amusing spiritualistic meeting at the rooms where the Society usually met, somewhere near the British Museum. It was a night appointed for a very great gathering to hear Richard speak on Spiritualism. The Spiritualists in 1878 were as anxious to claim him as one of their Chiefs, as the Agnostics were in 1891-2, after his death. Richard was the honestest, most truthful man I ever knew; whatever he said he believed, but he believed a great deal more than he said. He was such a many-sided man, that one individual could not understand him; they could only see the one light presented to their eye, and could not imagine the others. He was so anxious to get to the highest of the high, that he studied everything, and amongst others every religion, and when he thought he knew it he took the good out of that religion, and practised it. Now, he thought that if several manifestations which we had witnessed could be pushed further, and especially one of which he was one of seven, that we should have a closer connection with the other world, and for I cannot tell how many years we pursued this phantom, and the more we saw the more puzzled we got; for it never came up either to a Roman Catholic miracle, nor the Sufi's mysticism, which he had practised so long in the East. And in practical England, where there was generally so much money in the case, there was three-quarters of a pound of humbug or jugglery to one ounce of spiritual matter; and Richard at last became convinced that we were on the verge of a new science, which any one who had time and power to grasp this will-o'-the-wisp could turn to good practical account, just as in old days with steam, railways, telegraph, telephones, and electricity in all its branches. At times he and I together got very near something, he being the power, and I the medium (this he called the sixth sense), and then we lost all trace and gave it up. I was not