“‘Bah!’ said Mrs. Carr, ‘I deem the whole thing silly, besides being one of the most contemptible humbugs ever ran after by a pack of silly people--I was going to say--fools: I am convinced there is really nothing in it, and that all this stuff about moving furniture, and ghosts, and other spectral gentry, is but the product of heated fancy, if not of heads and hearts devoid of truth, principle, and moral rectitude; stories got up for swindling purposes, and to gull that credulous pack of ninnies known as “The Public,”--and a precious set they are, to be sure! Who believes, for instance, a tithe of the reputed wonders of the famous American “Miracle Circle,” or that they are anything more than clever tricks played off by a set of waggish fellows on a gullible community of Yankees, having in view the ultimate object of exposing and exploding the whole so-called spiritual mysteries? I don’t, I’m sure.’ “Poor lady! She little dreamed under what cruel circumstances she was doomed so soon to verify the truth of the Latin motto, “‘Nemo mortalium, omnibus horis sapit,’ so meaningly quoted to myself by Ravalette. Little did she then dream, in the plenitude of intellect, that not many days would elapse ere she admitted all she now so mockingly and scornfully derided and laughed at, and that ere long she would cower in the very extremity of terror and mental dread, before these very mysteries she now so dogmatically denied. “Her husband took upon himself the task of answering her, thus relieving us guests of the always unpleasant office of holding a wordy contest with a woman. He said: