I, my wife, and sister-in-law detected unmistakably the girl’s clumsy attempts at legerdemain, but knew poor old Kirkup far too well to make any attempt to convict her. But as we walked home with our minds full of the subject, we said, “Let us try whether we can produce any effect upon a table, since that seems the regulation first step in these mysteries; and, at least, we shall have the certainty of not being befooled by trickery.” So, on reaching home, we took a table--rather a remarkable one. It was small, not above eighteen or twenty inches across the top of it. But it was _very_ much heavier than any ordinary table of that size, the stem of it being a massive bit of ancient chestnut-wood carving, which I had adapted to that purpose. Well, in a minute or two the table began to move very unmistakably. We were startled, and began to think that the ladies’ dresses must have, unconsciously to them, pressed against it. We stood back therefore, taking care that nothing but the tips of our fingers touched the table. It still moved! We said that some unconscious exertion of muscular force must have caused the movement, and finally we suspended our fingers about an inch or so above the surface of the table, taking the utmost care to touch it in no way whatever. The table still turned, and that to such an extent that, entirely untouched, it turned itself over, and fell to the ground. I can only observe of this, as the little boy said who was accused of relating an impossibility as a fact, “I don’t say it is possible, I only say it is true!” In Kirkup’s case his entire and never-varying conviction of the truthfulness of Miss Imogene’s material manifestations and spiritual revelations was the more remarkable in that he had for many years--for all his life, for aught I know to the contrary--entertained and professed the most thorough persuasion of the futility and absurdity of all belief that the soul of man survived material death. His tenets on this subject are the more strongly impressed on my memory by an absurd incident that occurred to my present wife in connection with his materialistic theories. He and she were one day talking upon the subject, as they sat _tête-à-tête_ on opposite sides of a table. Now Kirkup was very deaf--worse by a great deal than I am--and my wife failing to make him hear a question she put to him, and having no other writing materials at hand, hastily drew a card from her card-case, and pencilled on the back of it: “What are your grounds for assurance that the visible death of the body is the death of the spirit also?” He read, and addressed himself to reply, letting the card fall on the table between them, which she, thinking only of the matter in discussion, mechanically put back into her card-case, and--left at the next house at which she happened to be making a morning call!