evening, with the “assistance,” as the French say, of a rather numerous and very varied circle.  For, as may easily be supposed, all our friends were anxious to witness the new marvels, and we, desirous only of as many eyes and as many minds as might be for the better watching and discussion of the phenomena, welcomed all comers to the extent of the capacity of our room and table.  I have no intention of troubling my present readers with any detailed rehearsal of the phenomena which presented themselves.  The testimony which my observations during this period enabled me to offer has already more than once been given to the world in print, and the catalogue of similar and yet more extraordinary experiences has become too long, and the witnesses to them too numerous and too well known to the public, for such details to have any further interest at the present day.  I feel bound, however, to state that no amount of suspicious watching which I was able to exercise in my house, and which Powers was able to exercise in his, enabled us to discover any smallest degree of imposture, or fair grounds for suspecting imposture, as regards the physical or material phenomena which were witnessed.  Such is my testimony, and such was that of Powers, who, by his aptitude for inventing and understanding mechanical contrivances of all kinds, was a man specially well fitted for the task of watching the performance of such wonders.  I have spoken here, it will be observed, altogether of the material and physical phenomena witnessed.  As to what are called the spiritual manifestations, Powers was perhaps not an entirely unbiased estimator of these.  He was an eminently sincere, earnest and zealous Swedenborgian, and several of the leading tenets and dogmas of the Swedenborgian faith are calculated to make such communications with the world of spirits as Spiritualists claim to experience much less startling, less strange to the mind and more acceptable, than they usually appear to other people.  To a Swedenborgian who is perfectly convinced that the spirits of the departed are ever around him and interested in his welfare, it does not seem a very strange or extraordinary thing that these visitors should under certain circumstances be able to express the interest which they always feel.  Powers regarded all the professed manifestations of spiritual communications from that stand-point, and was enabled to accept them therefore somewhat more easily than another person might have done.  Yet, despite such predisposing proclivities, and though he was disposed to think a great variety of professed communications from the world of spirits to have been genuinely what they purported to be, the habitual uprightness and truthfulness of Powers’s mind led him, as I believe I am justified in saying, to the conclusion that in the case which I am about to mention, at least, there was ground for very strong suspicion of the honesty of the medium.  The circumstances of the case were as follows: