"They can draw a little as well as model; they can trim bonnets, yes, really quite well; they are not unfamiliar with the key-boards of piano and organ; and, best of all,--I had really forgotten to enumerate this accomplishment,--they can move tables and chairs; they can draw pain from your head; they can put you into a trance,--they are, in fact, magnetic hands." "It seems, then, that you are a Spiritualist." "Far from it; by what power I do the few things which form the _repertoire_ of my manifestations, as the mediums call them, I do not know any more than you." "Will you give me a _séance_?" "Indeed; no." "And because--" "Because it tires me, and I am rather afraid of my own power. Some one once compared me to a child who had got hold of an electric battery which he did not understand, and with which he unwittingly produced inexplicable phenomena, not devoid of danger to himself." "You are really in earnest then, and believe in these manifestations?" "Perfectly so; and I am rather cowardly about exploring them to their source, as I have seen so many strong minds unhinged by study of this subject. I certainly object to the vulgar theory, that the spirits of those who have gone before us have nothing better to do than to tip tables and dip their hands in pails of paraffine which accommodating mediums prepare for them." "You do not believe in mediums, then?" "I believe no manifestation to be genuine which comes from a professional medium. That they often have real power, I do not doubt; but so soon as it is a question of earning their living, they must inevitably fall back upon fraud. But we are growing quite serious about this subject which I never like to talk of for fear of being misunderstood." "But I am really interested in what you say--" "Never mind; here is your portrait, which is not flattered, I frankly confess; but is it a little like you?" "If I know my face at all, it is wonderfully good. Would that you had deigned to model it in a less perishable material!" "Oh, no! this is infinitely better, it is so much more appropriate-- "Thanks for the compliment; but why, if I may ask, should you consider butter to be particularly suitable to me?" "Not to you personally, but to humanity. Is it not stupid to carve bronze fac-similes of that which is as perishable as the grass?" "But had it not been for this stupidity, how should we know the features of Cæsar?" "And would it greatly matter?" "I think so; but a young lady who so cruelly assures me that butter is the only material in which my humble features deserve to be reproduced--"