My healing, though complete in the end, was not instantaneous.  The habit of the trance, I found, had really impaired the action of my will.  I experienced a periodic tendency to return to it, which I have been able to overcome only by the most vigorous efforts.  I found it prudent, indeed, to banish from my mind, as far as was possible, all subjects, all memories, connected with Spiritualism.  In this work I was aided by Agnes, who now possessed my entire confidence, and who willingly took upon herself the guidance of my mind at those seasons when my own governing faculties flagged.  Gradually my mental health returned, and I am now beyond all danger of ever again being led into such fatal dissipations.  The writing of this narrative, in fact, has been a test of my ability to overlook and describe my experience without being touched by its past delusions.  If some portions of it should not be wholly intelligible to the reader, the defect lies in the very nature of the subject.

It will be noticed that I have given but a partial explanation of the spiritual phenomena.  Of the genuineness of the physical manifestations I am fully convinced, and I can account for them only by the supposition of some subtile agency whereby the human will operates upon inert matter.  Clairvoyance is a sufficient explanation of the utterances of the Mediums,—­at least of those which I have heard; but there is, as I have said before, something in the background,—­which I feel too indistinctly to describe, yet which I know to be Evil.  I do not wonder at, though I lament, the prevalence of the belief in Spiritualism.  In a few individual cases it may have been productive of good, but its general tendency is evil.  There are probably but few Stiltons among its apostles, few Miss Fetterses among its Mediums; but the condition which accompanies the trance, as I have shown, inevitably removes the wholesome check which holds our baser passions in subjection.  The Medium is at the mercy of any evil will, and the impressions received from a corrupt mind are always liable to be accepted by innocent believers as revelations from the spirits of the holy dead.  I shall shock many honest souls by this confession, but I hope and believe that it may awaken and enlighten others.  Its publication is necessary, as an expiation for some of the evil which has been done through my own instrumentality.

I learned, two days afterwards, that Stilton (who was not seriously damaged by my blow) had gone to New York, taking Miss Fetters with him.  Her ignorant, weak-minded father was entirely satisfied with the proceeding.  Mrs. Stilton, helpless and heart-broken, remained at the house where our circle had met, with her only child, a boy of three years of age, who, fortunately, inherited her weakness rather than his father’s power.  Agnes, on learning this, insisted on having her removed from associations which were at once unhappy and dangerous.  We went together to see her, and, after much persuasion, and many painful scenes which I shall not recapitulate, succeeded in sending her to her father, a farmer in Connecticut.  She still remains there, hoping for the day when her guilty husband shall return and be instantly forgiven.