the end they learned, they said, that in 1848 there would be a great discovery of material wealth—gold was discovered in California in that year—and a most generous outpour of spirit-communications. The modern reader will not take the prediction very seriously, as it was revealed by the Shakers only after 1848, but we must assume that the other part of the statement has some sort of foundation.
Mrs. Hardinge is more entitled to our confidence in regard to the next instance, because there are police-court records to confirm the sequel of it.[1] A Dr. Larkin, of Wrentham (Mass.), took up mesmeric healing in 1837. Part of this practice was, as I said, to throw sensitive women into a supposed state of trance (or "mesmerise" them), and Dr. Larkin found an excellent subject in a servant-girl named Mary Jane. It is one of those cases of abnormal psychology which we cannot linger here to analyse. The important point is that the girl, in the state of trance, announced herself to be under the control of the spirits of dead humans. The chief control was the spirit of a dead sailor, and the language which issued from the lips of Mary Jane was so very nautical, and unlike her usual speech, that the shuddering hearers were convinced. Loud raps on the furniture and the floor were heard. Chairs and tables moved mysteriously about. When the "spirits" went on in 1846 to put the girl's limbs repeatedly out of joint, the devilry was too much for pious neighbours. In the autumn of 1847, they appointed a committee to
- ↑ History of Modern American Spiritualism (1870), pp. 157-62.
