“Ravalette continued: ‘Mesmerism’s day has gone by. Already it is found to be impossible to produce the same effects with it as were produced a few years ago, while the bastard thing that now goes by its name, is of such a nature and character that it speedily either disgusts all sensible people, or very soon lands its friends into a deep quagmire of such alkaline properties, that all the little common sense they had at starting gets thoroughly mixed therewith, and forms a compound which they carry back, instead of what they brought; and when they get home again, they peddle it out as “Divine Philosophy,” when in fact it is an excellent article of soap--regular _savon extraordinaire_, warranted to extract brains, decency, money, and everything else worth having, from all who meddle with it--it _washes_ so very clean. If your railway does not accomplish this, yet in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred of journeys that terminate differently, it lands its passengers in the populous Town of Fantasy, in the which all things look real, but are as hollow and as substanceless as mere Forms can be, and that is next to nothing. In fact, most of the popular clairvoyance may be said to resemble an edifice having “‘Rich windows that exclude the light, And passages that lead to nothing.’ There are, of course, a few, very few exceptions to the rule, but the rule obtains vastly. “‘The sentimentalities of a puling, hysteric girl, half afflicted with catochus, and the other half love-sick--as most modern clairvoyants are--count small in the list of Fact-truths, and the mad ravings of crack-brained somnambules of the other gender go for hardly as much, for the first has at least a degree of poetry about her, but the latter none at all. No, no, friend, do not place too great reliance on the ability of Magnetism to aid your researches, for you will run a narrow chance of disappointment, and regret when too late that from Nature’s stable you selected the very worst animal of the lot; one that is ring-boned, lame, spavined, and very baulky withal. Take my advice, and choose a better.’