The first intimation we had of the thunderbolt which was being forged to be hurled upon us by the Buffalo doctors, from what they seemed to consider as an Olympic height of professional authority, was a visit which I received one morning from Dr. T. M. Foote, formerly U. S. Minister to Bogota, and at this time editor of _The Buffalo Commercial Advertiser_. He professed to come as our friend, and with a gentle blandness and confidential tone advised me to leave Buffalo at once, suggesting that the first train would leave in about two hours; that the whole thing was now found out and exposed, and that he came to save us from being mobbed out of the city. I suppose now that our oily friend in his own evil heart imagined us to be really frauds, and that I would probably be frightened into flight; or, at any rate, give evidence of conscious guilt in the mode of receiving such a friendly warning. For a moment or two I scarcely understood his meaning; but then I asked, with my best haughtiness, what right he had to come to my door, at our private hours, without sending up his card; and I stepped back into my room, shutting and locking the door in his face, and at once rang the bell, more violently than was perhaps lady-like, but so as to bring the porter very promptly to the door, near which my visitor was still standing. I told the porter to beg Mr. Rogers, the good and kind proprietor of the house, to step up, and to him I complained that _that man_ had dared to come to my door, within my private hours, without first sending up his card for permission; that he had insulted me, and that I begged he might never be admitted again under any circumstances. Of course I knew well enough who "that man" was, for he had often been at our rooms, and had entertained us with stories of the tricks of legerdemain he had witnessed in South America. He was here an important and potent personage, being an ex-diplomatist and editor of an evening paper. From his other title, I suppose he must once have also been of the same profession as the three M.D.'s whose attack on us was already in type in his columns, as I soon afterward knew by the news-boys' cries of "The Rochester Knockings! Great Exposure of the Rochester Knockings!" If the Rochester knockings were an imposture, nobody was more imposed upon by them than myself, and nobody could have had a greater interest in learning how they were produced. I therefore sent out to buy a copy of _The Commercial Advertiser_ of February 18, 1851, still damp from the press, in which I read the following authoritative scientific account of the way in which, for now nearly three years, my little sisters and myself had been wearing out our knee-bones to impose upon the world, our family, and ourselves! And this is what I read: "TO THE EDITOR OF _The Commercial Advertiser_: