"I will now state a few facts, and conclude. 1. Wood is an excellent conductor of sounds. A small worm, called at the south a sawyer, and sought for angling, can be heard three yards, as it gnaws between the wood and bark of a fallen pine; and the slightest scratch of a pin, on the end of an isolated mast, sixty feet long, can be heard distinctly. "2. In mesmeric operations, we well know that individuals _can be made to hear and see things that never occurred or existed_, and yet the subjects remain unconscious that they have been made the _subjects of mesmeric hallucination_! "3. Persons highly observant and susceptible can, by their eye and feeling, when they put themselves into a semi-abnormal condition, tell, in many instances nine times out of ten, who is and who is not a believer, _and what is in the mind of the inquirer_. "4. Mediums are invariably of this character. "5. In matters of faith, friendship, love, or the spirit world, many are willing to be deceived; and when they fall into the hands of the shrewd and designing, who can appear the impersonation of truth, virtue, honesty, and even piety itself, they are emphatically _humbugged_, and give their money and their testimony to confirm the fraud. "Lastly. Many are so sincere and honest in their intentions, that it is not in their hearts to believe that some of our most respectable men, even clergymen, would lend their names to sustain any thing but what they had believed and tested as a reality, and therefore themselves believe. "Now, Mr. Editor, from all that I have seen and know of these spiritual communications, as 'rappings,' and from all these facts, I am free to declare, that I believe them an arrant humbug, and one, too, of the most pernicious tendency. They can all be traced to a human agency, as either mechanical or mesmeric, alone or combined; and I will give my right hand to any medium whose operation and device I cannot fully discover, trace, and demonstrate, as deducible from either the one or both of these sources, _and from no other_."