As an evidence of the implicit faith put in these people by their
dupes, it may be mentioned that many applications have been made
to Judge Welsh, of this city, and to the other judges, for
warrants of arrest against respectable persons, for theft, the
only grounds of suspicion against them being, that some
clairvoyant had said that the property had been stolen by a
person of such and such a height, with hair and eyes of this or
that color, and that the suspected person happened to answer the
description. Of course, all such applications for legal process
have been refused by the magistrates, and the applicants
dismissed with a severe rebuke.
Mrs. Seymour was an intimate friend of Mrs. Cunningham, of the
Burdell-murder notoriety, and was a witness in that memorable
trial.
The Cash Customer had an interview with this woman, which he thus
describes:
Another Clairvoyant, who is not much in particular.
If a man be desirous of knowing what sort of a moral character he
bears in the spirit-world, and what style of society his
disembodied soul will circulate in, or if he desires to know the
particulars of the after-death behavior of any of his acquaintances,
of course he will find it to his interest to marry a “medium” of
average respectability, and in good practice, and so save the
expense of frequent consultations. The “rapping” and “table-tipping”
communications from the spirit-world are hardly satisfactory. It
is, very likely, pleasant for a man to be on speaking terms with
his bedroom furniture, to spend an agreeable hour occasionally in
conversation with his washhand-stand, to enjoy a spirited
argument with his bedstead and rocking-chair, or to receive now
and then a confidential communication from his bootjack, but on
the whole, these upholstery dialogues do not satisfy the
“yearnings of the soul after the infinite.” The powers of speech
of a washhand-stand are circumscribed, bedsteads and rocking-chairs
are seldom equal to a sustained conversation, and the most
talkative bootjack has not a sufficient command of language to
make itself agreeable for any great length of time. The logic of
a poker may sometimes be convincing, but it is not generally
agreeable; and the rhetoric of uneducated coal-scuttles is hardly
elegant enough to pass the criticism of a refined taste. It is
therefore much more satisfactory as well as economical, for a
person who desires to enjoy his daily chat with the Spirits, to
get a “speaking medium” to translate the eloquence of all parties
and make the thing pleasant. Even then, confidential communications
must be very guarded, and on this account the person who invents
some means by which every man can be his own medium, will win an
equal immortality with the author of that invaluable book, “Every
Man his own Washerwoman.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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