The power of _imitation_ among mediums is various, but distinct. Some draw _maps_, purporting to come from a deceased schoolmate. Others draw _likenesses_; others speak in voices imitating the dead--but they can imitate the living just as well; others hear sounds--the voice of a wife, or child, or friend. Walter Scott relates the case of an English gentleman who was ill, and was told by his physician that he had lived in London too long, and _lived too fast_; and advised him to retire to the country and ruralize. One of his troubles was, that a set of _green_ dressed dancers would enter his drawing room, go through their evolutions, and retire. He knew it was an illusion, but could not resist the annoyance, or the impressions made on him. He returned to his country seat, and, in a few weeks, got rid of his visitors. He concluded to remain out of town, and sent to London for the furniture of his old parlor, to be placed in his country house; but when it came, and was arranged in the room, the _corps de ballet_, dressed in _green_, all rushed into the room, _exclaiming_, "Here we are all again!" He had associated in his mind the furniture and the dancing apparitions, and when it returned, they came with it, and, as he thought, _spoke with voices_. We recollect of reading in a medical paper, published in Boston, an account of a man who believed his house to be haunted by the devil, in consequence of which he resolved to vacate it and remove into the country. His goods were packed into a wagon, and he was just upon the point of starting with his load, when to his surprise he heard a voice, seemingly among the goods, crying out, "We are all going together." "If that is the case," said the man, "I will unload again; for if I am _to have_ the devil's company, it may as well be in one place as another." The excessive use of wine will induce a state of the brain, in which the person thinks he hears voices and sees spirits; but on close examination it will be found that it is the work of the abnormal powers, developed in the brain by stimulating agents or intense thinking. It will be recollected that Swedenborg, after eating a late, heavy supper, heard a voice crying out to him in terrible accents, "Eat not so much." (See chap. 5.) Such phenomena may unravel the voice Judge Edwards heard. His long-continued meditation on death, with night, solitude, loneliness, and grief, had so impressed him that he thought he heard a sound in exact imitation of the voice of his wife. In the case related by Scott, hearing was not only affected, but the organ of color was involved in the hallucination, and the _green figures_ were as plain before him as real persons. This is always one of the phenomena of ghost-seeing that the seer associates with the spectre, namely, _form_ and _color_, _voice_ and _action_.