The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1874-11-17

hind me, listened with eagerness and was
delighted. Honto suddenly disappeared
behind the curtain. The whole fraud was
now revealed to me. False in one, falsein
all. "Honto" was Mr.. Eddy dressed up, and
very cheaply dressed. / heard very little
about William Eddy, being bound in the
cabinet, but 1 know that it rs customary for
to be tied in a chair in the cabinet, but
this was a matter in which l felt no inter
est l came to Chittenden in order to IN
vestigate what was new and peculiar to the
EJdys. The old trick of cutting loose from
handouts and hard knots around the hands
was to me entirely familiar. 1t is we'll
enough known with those who have to deal
with the insane. with prisoners, and with
men in workshops, that a certain proportion,
POSSIBLY one in fifty or q in ahundred, can
not be confined by handouts or any
sort OF tying. Some persons are physiolog-
.ically SO Timber that they can make the
hand smaller than the wrist. When a man
is so constituted it is no use to- handcuff
him or to tie him. The Eddy family be-
long to this class. All that they do IN
their DARK seances can be thus explained.
There is in New York a Clergyman who can
bend his hands back wards until they lie fiat
on the arm. That man has mistaken his
calling; he ought to. have been a medium.
M ~ ,THERING TEST.
The ring test, which is a very old one,w was
not used that night. Col. Olcott had been
very much impressed by it, and with his
profound ignorance of the subject, and his
strong faith in spiritualism, especially in the
Eddy family, I can not wonder. To tax an
iron ring and put it on the hand of the
subject operated on is a very old
trick of the Davenport Brothers and
other travelling showmen, and can
readily enough be lone by those who are
sufficiently flexible in their organization
and adroit and practised in manipulation.
1t only requires darkness, or at least that
the subject operated IN should not see what
was going on. In this test | felt no interest
because I understood it and could explain it,
and L wished while there to waste no time
on tricks that had already been fully ex-
posed by myself or others. Those who wish
to try the experiment of benumbing the
arm and will follow these sugges
tons may soon learn to succeed.
Let a friend bare his arm up
as near as possible to the shoulder; make
your hands cold by dipping them a little
not necessary, but cold assists in benumbing
the sensation.) Now clasp both hands
firmly on the bare arm of the person you
are operating on; press with great vigor the
hand that is on the upper arm-by the COM
bined effect of cold and pressure the nerves
of sense are benumbed. If now, when the
person on whom you are operating closes his
eyes, or if a shawl be thrown over the
arm so hat he can not see, you quickly and
without agitation or without touching him
remove the lower hand be will not know it.
By a little practice any one can do TINS. II
the person on whom you are operating sits
at your right, as in the light seance of Hora-
ito Eddy, you should cross your hands on
his arm so that the arm which you free will
be your right arm. In regard to what has
been said about the different national
tiles that appear to be represented at
tire materializing seances and the various
languages spoken, 1 can only say that a very
low order of genius is required to obtain
command of a few words in different dam
guages and so to mutter them that credulous
spiritualists will be happy; and how very
easy indeed is it, in the darkness of a room,
to arrange the shawls or other cheap
trumpery in such a way as to suit any Wis
itor, whether he be from Circassia or Africa.
Those who are so credulous as to think they
see a lame friend of mine limping towards
me u.s..
IN THE DIM LIGHT,
and believe me when 1 tell them hat 1 see
them, find it very easy to see all sorts ofcos-
TUNES, hear all sorts of languages, and see
every night the faces of dear, departed
friends. The Eddys are very careful not to
bring up the spirits of departed friends until
they have found out that their riends on
earth are credulous fools. Mr.. - has
boarded there all summer, and he sees his
mother every night. Some will reply to
what / have said that hundreds and hun
dreds of people have visited the Eddys, and
been astonished and pleased, and have not
suspected trickery. My reply to this Is, that
a million ciphers are worth. nc more than
one cipher; a million fools see no more than
one fool: a million boys can send a stone a
little farther than one boy alone,
but 8 one strong boy may hurl
a stone farther than millions of
weak ones. The great majority of those
who have visited the Eddys are so credu-I
lous, so simple minded, so u~nscientiic, and
so thoroughly filed with sp~iritualism that
they can not see nor understand, do and not
wish to if they could; and If they should at
tempt to investigate it, in case they should
suspect, they have not the proper physiologi-
cal knowledge to enable them todetect fraud,
and the possibility of detecting that
portion of the trickery which depends
on physiological peculiarities makes them
believe not only that but all the rest. Thus
it is that skeptics sometimes come away
convinced. Skepticism could no more AXE
the place of reason and physiological knowl-
edge than can honesty or good intentions.
A blind man will not see any more after
looking at an object ten years than he did
the first minute. The spiritualists and
some of the skeptics who visit the Eddys are
intellectually blind.
The new essays of John Stuart Mill do
not receive a very cordial reception in Eng
land. The Pail Mall Gazstte says of them
that ''the final judgment on these essays