They will next believe (if they be, in the words of Captain Bobadil,
"so generously minded") in the transatlantic trance-speakers "who
professed to speak from direct inspiration", Mrs. Cora Hatch, Mrs.
Henderson, and Miss Emma Hardinge; and they will believe in those
eminent ladies having "spoken on Sundays to five hundred thousand
hearers"--small audiences, by the way, compared with the intelligent
concourse recently assembled in the city of New York, to do honour
to the Nuptials of General the Honourable T. Barnum Thumb. At about
this stage of their spiritual education they may take the
opportunity of believing in "letters from a distinguished gentleman
of New York, in which the frequent appearance of the gentleman's
deceased wife and of Dr. Franklin, to him and other well-known
friends, are unquestionably unequalled in the annals of the
marvellous". Why these modest appearances should seem at all out of
the common way to Mr. Howitt (who would be in a state of flaming
indignation if we thought them so), we could not imagine, until we
found on reading further, "it is solemnly stated that the witnesses
have not only seen but touched these spirits, and handled the
clothes and hair of Franklin".
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