“It probably was not,” said Mr. Stilton.  “I am convinced that all malicious spirits are at work to interrupt the communications from the higher spheres.  We were thus deceived by one professing to be Benjamin Franklin, who drew for us the plan of a machine for splitting shingles, which we had fabricated and patented at considerable expense.  On trial, however, it proved to be a miserable failure, a complete mockery.  When the spirit was again summoned, he refused to speak, but shook the table to express his malicious laughter, went off, and has never since returned.  My friend, we know but the alphabet of Spiritualism, the mere A B C; we can no more expect to master the immortal language in a day than a child to read Plato after learning his letters.”

Many of those who had been interested in the usual phenomena gradually dropped off, tired, and perhaps a little ashamed, in the reaction following their excitement; but there were continual accessions to our ranks, and we formed, at last, a distinct clan or community.  Indeed, the number of secret believers in Spiritualism would never be suspected by the uninitiated.  In the sect, however, as in Masonry and the Catholic Church, there are circles within circles,—­concentric rings, whence you can look outwards, but not inwards, and where he alone who stands at the centre is able to perceive everything.  Such an inner circle was at last formed in our town.  Its object, according to Stilton, with whom the plan originated, was to obtain a purer spiritual atmosphere, by the exclusion of all but Mediums and those non-mediumistic believers in whose presence the spirits felt at ease, and thus invite communications from the farther and purer spheres.

In fact, the result seemed to justify the plan.  The character of the trance, as I had frequently observed, is vitiated by the consciousness that disbelievers are present.  The more perfect the atmosphere of credulity, the more satisfactory the manifestations.  The expectant company, the dim light, the conviction that a wonderful revelation was about to dawn upon us, excited my imagination, and my trance was really a sort of delirium, in which I spoke with a passion and an eloquence I had never before exhibited.  The fear, which had previously haunted me, at times, of giving my brain and tongue into the control of an unknown, power, was forgotten; yet, more than ever, I was conscious of some strong controlling influence, and experienced a reckless pleasure in permitting myself to be governed by it.  “Prepare,” I concluded, (I quote from the report in the “Revelations,”) “prepare, sons of men, for the dawning day!  Prepare for the second and perfect regeneration of man!  For the prison-chambers have been broken into, and the light from the interior shall illuminate the external!  Ye shall enjoy spiritual and passional freedom; your guides shall no longer be the despotism of ignorant laws, nor the whip of an imaginary conscience,—­but the natural impulses of your nature, which are the melody of Life, and the natural affinities, which are its harmony!  The reflections from the upper spheres shall irradiate the lower, and Death is the triumphal arch through which we pass from glory to glory!”