The learned professors, being thus challenged, could do no less than accept, and a meeting was arranged, which took place at the Phelps House. Indeed, for the next fortnight we may be said to have surrendered our whole time to investigations, our rooms being open freely and gratuitously to meetings of the public, or of committees appointed by them, consisting of gentlemen selected from "the pick" of Buffalo. The three doctors had the first evening in their own hands; though there were present Mr. Rogers, the proprietor of the hotel, and I think two or three gentlemen friendly to us, and many other promiscuous gentlemen. I remember particularly the presence of two steamboat men (idle, of course, at that season), Captains Rounds and Walker. This is fixed in my recollection because of a little incident in regard to which I have never been sure which of them was the (kindly) guilty party. They both felt a pity--natural to good and kindly men--for two young creatures thus baited, as it were by cruel enemies; and as we, Maggie and I, sat together on a sofa, and after long waiting no raps came, one of them rested his arm on the back of the sofa and actually, with his knuckles, made behind me three raps which were not a bad imitation. Perhaps he was not more than half conscious of what he did, like the boy who denied that he had whistled in school and said "it whistled itself." But I knew the raps not to be genuine; while the kindness of heart of the author of them at such a moment of trial excited in me something perhaps a little hysterical, for I cried, or rather sobbed out--"O, for pity's sake, don't do that. If God and the good Spirits have deserted us we will abide the consequences; but don't let there be any false rapping." Good Mr. Rogers was so much moved and excited (he had been before wiping streams of perspiration from his forehead) that he staggered as he stood, and some friends assisted him out of the room; and I understood that he actually fainted. But the good Spirits had inspired me well; for I was afterward told that it produced the best effect on all present. From this I presume that I must except the doctors, whom professional dignity and pride committed to their new theory; and who, probably under the materialistic bigotry of modern science, were all in arms against us and the Spirits. The spontaneous genuineness of it was clear evidence that there was nothing but honesty in us, whatever mystery might be under these strange manifestations--mysterious to ourselves first and most of all.