The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-03-27

evangelist anu iutSfpiS So'oNA O-
There is the type Indian girl; the type
aged and decayed Indian brave; the in
variable apparition of twin rag babies at
the door of the dark cabinet; there is that
fine old fraud of sailor spirit who goes
about in ''the dark CIRCLE" bawling
hoarsely through speaking trumpet, II
am pirate king" and sure enough he IS,
for there never was pirate king
who robbed his way through the
world so easily and with such lawless sue
cess as the average Undertaking. medium
who is ready to show your dead mother
in-law, if that should happen to be your
eccentric taste. for q reasonable consider
alton, say from 81 to S., which includes
the expense of the wild barbaric music of
an asthmatic accordion, to the sound OF
which your dear departed will come down
from heaven, like Apollo, with all her
beads and bangles rafting on her shout
ders, or rise up from hades as black and
grim as any of the DEVILS pack that chased
Tan O'Shanter and his mare.
A Philadelphia commission, which in
cluded DR.. S. Weir Mitchell and the late
Professor Joseph Leidy, Investigated
spiritism in 1887, and reported that they
found all the mediums, including "Dr."
Slade, very commonplace impostors and
tricksters. The only person who mysti-
fed the commission was q professional
juggler. who defed their powers of
natural solution, and finally explained in
detail his ayowed imposition.
If professional juggler, avowing his
intent to impose and deceive the senses of
intelligent men, can do more wonderful
and inexplicable things than the whole
wonder workers. what an utterly baseless
fabric of visionary folly and fraud is the
whole structure of modern spiritualism
that rests its claim for credence upon So
called material phenomena. And yet
spiritualism survived this report, because
the charlatans who make handsome
living out of it were cunning enough in
its early day to wrap their fraud
in the robes of religion, and after
that there is no effective appeal to science.
The superstition and credulity that is the
shield of all other religions is the armor
of spiritualism.
1t is absolutely useless to expose spirit
medium, for even when he confesses
fraud, as Rogers did the other day in Chi
cago, the infatuated believers in spiritual
Ism refuse to define him as swindler; he
is only tobessed" by an evil-minded, ILL
conditioned spirit, inimical to the cause,
who had materialized the trumpery found
on him and who afterward compelled him
to make false confession.
Verify, what fools we mortals be. The
Indian that worships wood; the African
that worships stone are not more pitiable
objects than the inane, infatuated, cre-
dulous white Americans who believe in
the genuineness of spirit communica-
ton" and naturalization" upon evidence
that would not be sufficient to hang q
dog. Luther R. Marsh, an able lawyer,
who believes in spirit portraits despite
the proof that he was duped by Diss De
Bar; the late Robert Dale Owen, are illus
trations. of Intelligent credulity." Lady
Tichborne, the family physician, and the
family solicitor, all persons of education,
intelligence and high character, were
positive that Arthur Orion was the long
lost Sir Roger Tichborne. Ali these per-
sons had known the real Sir Roger in his
youth, and swore to the genuineness of
an impostor's claim.
If the case had not gone to the courts,
the impostor would have stolen a great
estate and title. The court admitted the
good character, the intelligence and edu-
cation, the sincerity of the mother, the
family physician and family solicitor, but
the court did not forget that educated in
telligence is not infallible, that able
men are sometimes prejudiced by
their faith, are not seldom credulous,
are not always gifted with the cool,
judicial faculty. The court reached the
conclusion that Sir Roger Tichborne was
dead, and after that conclusion was
reached it was no use to plead in answer
that deluded mother of honest heart and
educated intelligence, her upright, intelli-
gent solicitor and her physician had all
three sworn that they had recognized in
the impostor Orion the long lost Sir Roger
Tichborne. Individual intelligence, sim
certify and uprightness is not sufficient to
make the world swallow as a scientific fact
that which has been proved to be radically
incredible because non-existent.