to this day, of the knife which had been inserted to extract the pencil, which, in its enforced outward passage, had left behind, in its scratches on the wood, a tell-tale trail of dust which the microscope revealed to be of the same substance as the pencil.  The Spirits had not taken even the precaution to wipe the broad knife clean from rust or dirt.  The slates are preserved in our sad museum of specimens of misdirected ingenuity.

We are continually confronted with statements wherein the narrator claims a Spiritual solution as the only possible one of the enigma involved in the phenomena, as he observed them.

To all such statements we have, first, the plain and ready answer, that we do not attempt to pass judgment on manifestations which we ourselves have not observed.  All that we can vouch for is the result of our own observation.  More cannot be demanded of us.

Secondly, experience has shown us that with every possible desire on the part of Spiritualists to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, concerning marvelous phenomena, it is extremely difficult to do so.  Be it distinctly understood that we do not for an instant impute wilful perversion of the truth.  All that we mean is that, for two reasons, it is likely that the marvels of Spiritualism will be, by believers in them, incorrectly and insufficiently reported.

The first reason is to be found in the mental condition of the observer; if he be excited or deeply moved his account cannot but be affected, and essential details will surely be distorted.

For a second reason, note how hard it is to give a truthful account of any common, everyday occurrence.  The difficulty is increased a hundred-fold, when what we would tell, partakes of the wonderful.  Who can truthfully describe a juggler’s trick?  Who would hesitate to affirm that a watch, which never left the eye-sight for an instant, was broken by the juggler on an anvil; or that a handkerchief was burned before our eyes?  We all know the juggler does not break the watch, and does not burn the handkerchief.  We watched most closely the juggler’s right hand, while the trick was done with his left.  The one minute circumstance has been omitted that would have converted the trick into no-trick.  It is likely to be the same in the accounts of most of the wonderful phenomena of Spiritualism.

For these two reasons, we laid down for ourselves at the start that in cases demanding close observation we would endeavor to have as many members as possible of the Commission present at every seance.  In dealing with phenomena, where all ordinary methods of investigation are excluded, we perceived clearly that our best resource lay in having the largest possible number of observers.