Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1876-03-28
An Experiment.
From the NY, world. 2lst.I

A ~ OASObV 10 bbuDUOTu
believer and investigator. He is
also President Of the Theosophical
Society. But, unlike most of his
precursors in Spiritism, he is in
telligible and means business. For
this reason, if for no other, he is
entitled To be heard, now that the
gibberish of the rest of them has
subsidized.
And subsided it certainly has.
The swiftest glance over American
"Spiritualism" reveals a curious
and complete decline. What, one
asks, has become of the multilo-
quent crowd of seers and sooth-
sayers who seemed to have been
raped into life by the toes and
knuckles of Kate Fox2 Where
are the weird people who held
conventions, who proclaimed the
new Evangelium of an immortal
bedlam, and jerked, pounded, jab-
bered and otherwise demonstra-
ted the indestructibility of the
soul, by table-legs and hired cos
tunes? Their apostles are gone,
their Sunday-night temples are
desolate. Andrew Jackson Davis
has settled permanently into the
superior condition of silence.
Judge Edmonds' book is out of
print. Robert Dale Owen, the
most patient, the most credulous,
the most sincere of their pam
.phieteers, is dumb on the other
side of disaster. Katie King was
dissipated by her own confession;
and the Eddy family, the Fay
brothers and the Petty boys, who
had a mission to establish the i'm
mortality of the soul with ropes
and side.shows, have failed and
been exposed SO often that there
is no longer any money in that
lighter branch Of business. Even
Home has leviated out of the
reach of the senses; and as for
the sibyls, lecturers, dreamers,
fakirs, trance drivellers, prognos-
ticators and clairvoyant women,
whose chief claim to be oracles
and wonder workers was based
upon a disordered nervous system,
they have settled into the fortune
telling business, and figure main :
lyand modestly in the astrologers'
column Of the daily newspaper.
Where, one might reasonably
ask, with some CONSERVATION, in
reviewing this decline, is, then,
the immortality of the soul, if in
deed one had ever based its proof
upon the erratic dynamics of these
people ? tits true Mr.. Foster sits
somewhere up town, or did quite
'ecently, shufiing his slips Of pa
per' jauntily in behalf of the life
berea fter. So, too, Nine. Coralie
De SoTigne, descendant of the
Priests o. Isis, still RECEIVERS stolen
property and " foretells future
events" from her eyrie in Prince
street (ring the fourth bell,) Civ
ing, it is automatically stated, spe'
cial attention to lucky numbers.
But these are unaggressive de-
bris of the grand army whose war
whoop was heard ten years ago
A desolate conviction takes pos
session of us that "Spiritualism'
as a popular movement is "peter
ing out" 1t is in vain that We
ask for Planchette. The country
orders for spirit photographs re,
main untitled, and she glori6eC
bodies of materializers, like tha'
carnal mama of the gods which
fell in Kentucky, turn out to b.
the commonest frog-spawn.
Nothing remains to us, then
! ,ut HenrYS Olcott, the Presiden'
Of the T6eosophical Society, ans
be purposes to make a final tes
of s., >iritualism by taking a well
| known American medium, DR.
Slade, t,O Russia, there to be scien
ti6cally examined.
We understand the theosophis
chat this effort. is to be made il
! behalf of science, and to recover
if possible, the lost art of conmu
ming with the dead--an art whie
.r.e loat vvbAn the nrio,aleBs treas