PAGE. What Planchette is and does (with review of Facts and Phenomena) 63 The Press on Planchette (with further details of Phenomena) 67 Theory First--That the Board is moved by the hands that rest 70 upon it Theory Second--"It is Electricity or Magnetism" 71 Proof that Electricity has nothing to do with it 78 Theory Third--The Devil Theory 79 Theory of a Floating Ambient Mentality 81 "_To Daimonion_"--The Demon 83 "It is some principle of nature as yet unknown" 85 Theory of the Agency of Departed Spirits 85 PLANCHETTE'S OWN THEORY 89 The Rational Difficulty 92 The Medium--The Doctrine of Spheres 93 The Moral and Religious Difficulty 98 What this Modern Development is, and what is to come of it 102 Conclusion 105 How to work Planchette 106 SPIRITUALISM. History of Spiritualism 107 Scriptural Views 110 Communion of Saints 112 DR. DODDRIDGE'S DREAM. Pages 123-125. SALEM WITCHCRAFT. THE PLACE. The name of the village of Salem is as familiar to Americans as that of any provincial town in England or France is to Englishmen and Frenchmen; yet, when uttered in the hearing of Europeans, it carries us back two or three centuries, and suggests an image, however faint and transient, of the life of the Pilgrim Fathers, who gave that sacred name to the place of their chosen habitation. If we were on the spot to-day, we should see a modern American seaport, with an interest of its own, but by no means a romantic one. At present Salem is suffering its share of the adversity which has fallen upon the shipping trade, while it is still mourning the loss of some of its noblest citizens in the late civil war. No community in the Republic paid its tribute of patriotic sacrifice more generously; and there were doubtless occasions when its citizens remembered the early days of glory, when their fathers helped to chase the retreating British, on the first shedding of blood in the war of Independence. But now they have enough to think of under the pressure of the hour. Their trade is paralyzed under the operation of the tariff; their shipping is rotting in port, except so much of it as is sold to foreigners; there is much poverty in low places and dread of further commercial adversity among the chief citizens, but there is the same vigorous pursuit of intellectual interests and pleasures, throughout the society of the place, that there always is wherever any number of New Englanders