Little tailor Greenwood, a man of stern good sense, when out of liquor, has held me on his lap many a day and told me where he had seen the ghost of his dead and buried wife, and once or twice when he took me to look at the spot, I saw her too. There was a wild, bad sort of young fellow in our village, who, by common belief and consent, had frequently seen the devil in person at a certain known spot, and had sold himself to Satan for a fixed price, which was regularly paid in installments of good English silver and gold. I knew the fellow well, and had seen the devil riding on his shoulders at times. Such ghostism was the common faith of the air I breathed, and so became a part of my blood and being. There is a truth behind these shadows, and every soul must pass the cloudy region on its way thereto, some time or other in its career. As I grew older, and searched for the causes of things, I found that the ghosts of the woods and the twilight were invariably the products say, of some veritable human light, struck by natural hands, somewhere on the planet, in sufficient proximity to the vision, though unseen at the time, to produce the shadow or shimmering in question; or say, the effect of a passing cloud, or a falling star, striking across the outline of a tangible treetop, fence-rail, stone wall, or something of the kind; found that Guppy's having sold himself to to the devil was simply a piece of ribald, incarnate, human deviltry, without any actual cloven foot in the bargain that one could truly grab with a fearless hand; found that old witch Palmer had been driven, like so many souls before and since her day, out of the daylight of social life into night and darkness, by a cruel want of sympathy on the part of her and their own; found that the tailor, like others, got his visions in his least practical, least sober and least healthy moods, and that my young eyes had simply caught the figures of his and others resurrected sympathies; found, in a word, that from the earliest mornings of time till now, love had ever resurrected its dead to palpable visibility more or less clear according to the nature of the soul and the eyes engaged in the work, and that in all finely sensitive persons there was and is the power of catching and reproducing these insubstantial materializations; found, too, that the dreamer had tried to live by dreaming, as the poet by singing, and the prophet by preaching justice, and the thief by stealing, and the honest worker in all lines by the sweat of his brow and the ache of the brain. For all this, when, on repeated occasions, the spiritualists of Southwell urged me to visit their seances, I went, always protesting, "I will believe nothing, nor cease to abuse you till you do your wonders in the daylight, or leave enough gas on to enable a pair of moderately keen eyes to see what is really going on about them." Still I went to several darkened seances, and, horrible yellings and moanings, and nasal raspings called singing, the playing of a cracked accordeon in a butchered sort of way by some lying materialized ghost in the dark and the imagined mysterious untying of certain mechanics, who supposed they were mediums, and who had been tied to their chairs before the lights were put out, with much other noise and contemptible humbuggery formed the entertainment of these advanced minds. They were the lowest, basest places and occasions my feet had ever touched in this world, or ever can again. It was too stupid a lie to be refuted. The wild faith of the lowest negro Christians, with all the indecent behavior ever practiced at their rudest camp-meetings-and I have been in the midst of these as well—were a shining heaven, fit for the most fastidious scientific ladies and gentlemen, compared with this stew and sty of brutalism, called a seance of the advanced philosophers. It was sheer falsehood sunk in the gutter, and without other name or destiny. But there came a time when a choice medium, a regular travelling professional, Ida, they called her, came to Southwell accompanied by her reputed father. The father was a born Yankee of the wiry sort, thin, muscular, clear-eyed, shrewd, but plain as a farm-hand, with no pretension to anything out of the ordinary run of the cornfield and kitchen. And really there was nothing extraordinary about him. He had learned his part and recited it just right, to make the impression he desired to make. His work was to superintend the business arrangements for Ida's seances, to fix the cabinet, to secure an audience, introduce his daughter, give a sketch of her early life, tell how the chairs and tables had first yielded to her magnetic touch-better the potato pot; we will at least say so much here and now; this done with, the father remarked, how or why the strange things you will probably see here to-night are done, by what agency, human, ghostly, devilish or divine, it is not for us to say; you will see and then can judge for yourselves. Here at last was a veritable spiritual performance to be done in the broad face of the gaslight; in a dark cabinet it is true, but the lights outside were kept on full head, and I found myself in the crowd of investigators. her father took some bands of ordinary mula and tied them first around each wrist, apparently so tight that there was no getting out of it, then tied the two hands together, then sewed the bands thus tied, to make the good tying doubly sure. This work the committee examined, and pronounced favorably thereon. Then a band of the same sort of stuff was tied around Ida's neck so tight that her hand could not get out, and no mistake on this point. Ida now stepped into the cabinet, and the neck band was tied to a staple in the back of it, so there was not much chance for neck movements of any sort. Later, the ankles were tied separately, and then together, as the hands had been, and the ends of the white cora left hanging outside the door of the cabinet, so that any slightest motion of the feet could be detected. There was no detectable motion. Tie door of the cabinet was now shut, the father being outside on the pulpit platform, within two or three feet of the cabinet, and the performance began. Ida was no sooner got in, well tied, and the dor shut, than a strong male spirit-voice began to tak from the inside to the father on the outside. T. however smart and convincing to others, had it.or no effect on me. There was a great deal of conversation between Ida's spirit-companion and her actual tangible Yankee father, standing there in the gaslight, the observed of all. In a word, Ida might readily have cultivated her voice to the pitch of the voice that appeared to come fr within the cabinet, or said male Yankee mgt have ventriloquized his voice so as to make appear to have come from within; and to be truf there was nothing remarkable to it or about it. Later, Ida was firmly gagged by a piece of wood in her mouth, and yet the same conversation went on; this seemed stranger and stronger; but st 'l, to a sane soul, there was simply nothing in it at all. Another part of the programme was more per plexing. An ordinary cane was placed or posed through the pidgeon-hole from the outside inside, and was apparently, judging from the action and results, immediately seized on the inside by Ida's guardian ghost, who in the same loud, masisi ze tone announced that he was ready; and the yong man on the committee found that though he pretty hard he could not get the stick out or away from the strong arm that held it on the i side. He really did not jerk it or pull it with all Ida stood with her back to the audience, while his might, but gave it a good strong pul d Our seance was held in what had once been a Methodist church, but was then a spiritualists' hall, pews and pulpit still intact. It is now a carpenter's shop, and some actual human work going on there day by day-another instance of the base uses to which the average highest things may come. On the evening in question the pulpit had been removed and a box, about four feet wide by six feet high, called a cabinet, had taken its place. In the front of the cabinet, facing the audience, was a door large enough to admit an ordinary sized person, and above the middle of the door, a little hole, something larger than an ordinary sized hole in a pigeon box, with a curtain across it on the inside. Before the performance began the door was opened and the cabinet free to general inspection. I looked through it and convinced myself that there was no false door or slide or anything of the sort in connection with the show. I had preached on the same spot, knew the ground, and was moreover in no mood to be easily deceived. As the time for commencing approached, and when a fair audience had assembled, Ida and her father came in and quietly walked up the right-hand aisle as you enter. It is years ago now, but I remember every step and motion as though it were yesterday. The father we have already briefly sketched. Ida was of medium woman's height, a young girl about nineteen, or perhaps older, with dark-brown, nearly black hair, a good round, strong head, regular features, dark hazel eyes, and fair skin, of rather coarse texture; dressed in a green silk, with black velvet body-trimmings, short skirt, showing a fine ankle and neat foot, with a firm and faintly sort of tread. Altogether a person that curious young men, clergymen or others, of inquiring mind, would not object to examining if put on a committee of examination. I, however, determined to keep off all committees the first night, and use my general observation from a front pew. led shook the cabinet, and the plucky ghost did not On reaching home, after musing over the enterlet go. The excitement was now at fever-pitch, intense, but quiet, throughout the church. The place tingled with animal magnetism. Had one been barefoot, with due faith, it might not have been difficult to have walked the air. Ida and her father were having it all their own way, and sweeping the crowd with them, I among the number. Now and then a spiritualist leader or two would come between the acts, and ask me what I thought of it; but I meant work and kept steady down to it till the close of the show. The final scene was as follows: A pocket-knife was borrowed from some one in the audience, and the door of the cabinet opened, Ida and her tyings examined, the knife put in her lap, and she, tied hand and foot, and gagged. The door was no sooner closed again than the rough voice inside announced that the work was done, and the door was opened, all in less time than it has taken to read the last dozen words. Ida was untied, or rather the bands were cut from her hands and feet and neck, and she stepped out upon the platform as free as before she first entered the cabinet. She had, as we said, carried the house with her. She was a smart girl and deserved the quarter dollars she earned. Neither she nor her father swore a ghost did it, but that was implied and understood, and is just where the whole villainy of the advanced philosophers comes in. Be as smart as you please, but do not use your smartness and trickery as a catspaw to scratch or trifle with the soul's undying hopes of immortality, or with the countless sacred ties that death has broken only to purify and change. The bands thus cut from Ida's hands and feet were thrown, or handed to the audience for examination. I was as good as convinced; but while the rags were being handled, I remembered for a moment a flash that had come across my eyes while the father was tying Ida's hands. I saw, actually saw, a slight sliding into her hand, a little ply of the muslin, enough for mischief if that were intended, but in the overwhelming evidence of the evening I had forgotten the point until these muslin handcuffs and ankle ribbons were handed around. The recollection no sooner seized me than I quickly took the rags after others had done with them, put them in my pocket and went quietly home. The sequel was as follows: tainment for a few moments, I took the rag handcuffs out of my pocket, and, quick as a flash it struck me that one of them looked, say a halfinch longer than the other. My eye is good for the sixteenth of an inch at a distance of ten feet; and this was very plain and suggestive. I compared the two and found, by actual measurement, one band was a little longer than the other, and looked omniously mischievous. I at once got a needle and thread and sewed the larger band endto-end where it had been cut, and after pressing my left hand around with my right a few times to modify the knuckels a little, I took this resewed handcuff and found that I could quite easily slide it over my hand, which though not immense, was decidedly larger and less pliable than Ida's. I need not say that to my mind, in a moment the ghost vanished into thinnest air once more and that I held the palpable lie of the show safely in my own hand. The sewing could be made and doubtless was made to help rather than hinder the free motion of Ida's right hand. The stick was placed at such an angle as to give the advantage to the holder inside the cabinet, so that nothing short of pulling the box down with a crash, which no polite committee man would do, could get it away from a moderately strong hand, such as Ida possessed. The gag was doubtless removable by this secret wristband, and I thus again had a choice of explanations for the male voice of the ghost within, or apparently within. Though now well on to midnight, I was strongly tempted to visit the headquarters of the medium, at my friend, Mr. Bragton's house, and challenge the crowd with my explanation. I, however, concluded that prudence was here, as usual, the better part of valor, and deferred all that till next morning. That night my sleep was not sound or sweet. Materialized spirits, some of the dead and some of the living, seemed, nay, actually as spirits go, were constantly haunting my bedroom, some crouching and looking fierce, in the corners, others, bad and good, rushing over my head, staring, visible, horrid or beautiful as such things are wont to appear to a disturbed brainal action and a disordered stomach. But on waking each time, I rubbed my eyes and glared at the ghosts as wildly as they could or dared glare, and every hideous and beautiful spectre cringed and vanished in an instant. Next morning after break pretty strong and positive, and in this sphere inmensely antagonizing to such a person as Ala Now, her faith is necessary in order to secure the presence and power of her guardian and helg spirit. You and your action might possibly turb that faith and ruffle the calm, trustful cond.tions necessary to success.” ise 'Granted," I said; "but, above all, my sewag and tying would probably so affect Ida's ha. 18 that they could not budge one inch, and you and others who profess to be seeking the truth wo..! no longer be able to live under the sickening fluence and humbuggery of a contemptible hood. I need hardly add that the test was rut allowed me, or suggest that an honest test never has been allowed a capable person without its hav ing been discovered that the faith of moderu spit 1ualism is the heart of a lie, decorated with quak rhetoric and other questionable and disgusting natural refuse and poisonous weeds; that in v and all practical cases, as in the Charley R work of crime, and spiritualism has dabbon Bragton got pale in the face, shook his garment, and raved. I said, "It is useless to get angry about it, Mr. Bragton; you have reason to know that I am and have been as desirous for the truth as the next man." Then taking the muslin hand-case, when some mystery was shrouded in a recuffs out of my pocket again, I said, "There are the rags that Ida was tied with last night. I discovered that one was a little larger than the other, you see," showing him the larger one, "and that I can, as you perceive," going through the opera- | tion before his eyes, "pretty easily push that over my hand, or pull my hand out of it, and am prepared to bet you $100 to $50 that through that hole Ida did all her work last evening. Further, I am prepared to bet you or the showman $100 to $5 that if you will let me tie and sew and gag Ida this evening, neither she nor any ghost of hers or yours shall be able to do a single trick of the performance of last evening. And further, that if I lose the bet I will, in addition, preach spiritualisin to you free for the next twelve months, and, to the utmost of my power, for the the rest of my life." "Pretty strong language for a preacher, you may say. True; but this is the way I talked to him, and meant every word. Bragton got whiter and madder, and raved louder; but he did not bet. "Mr. Merlin," said he, "you are enough of a philosopher to know that departed spirits, as well as human beings can exert their power, freely and to the full, only under certain favorable and helpful homogeneous affinitizing conditions. Your nature is Doubtless some people are more magnetic others, and the power of of intuition is as dire ent in any hundred or thousand persors as t manners and noses; and intuition gone crazy having reached an abnormal state, beccaies we call second sight, and takes some one of a thin sand ways of expressing itself, according to s habits and bent of the individual misled. there are many will-o'-the-wisps in the head as in the dismal swamps. Modern spirtua simply a fresh hanging out of the old rags et Witch of Endor. It is a disease, and rit as ence or religion. It is hallucination gore : business, with the lowest form of trickery : over it as a veil; but perhaps it will be b let it die than attempt its cure, THE SINGING POETS. BY MRS. J. M. CHURCH. AMONG the many picturesque figures of the Middle Ages, that of the Troubadour appears as the most perfect embodiment of elegant leisure, and a triumph of dreamy romance over practical matter-of-fact. A poet, a musician, and a gentleman, he is not to be confounded with the handorgan man of the present, nor the wandering minstrel of the past, whose highest ambition was a warm nook in some one else's chimney corner. The Troubadour never bartered his songs for gain; almost invariably of noble, and sometimes of royal birth, he "touched his guitar" in honor of his ladye-love, or to pleasure his aristocratic friends. The songs of these courtly minstrels plash musically through the records of two hundred years, beginning almost with the raid of William the Norman into England. Either in jest or in earnest, these Petrarchs of the guitar sang always to some particular Laura, the "mistress of their heart;" sometimes, perhaps, merely as members of the House address all their remarks to the Speaker-but oftener in passionate earnest, that involved the most unfortunate consequences, as the lady of their choice was almost sure to be the bride of another. In spite, however, of their faults and excesses, posterity owes a meed of gratitude to the Troubadours as the pioneers of cultivation, the first breakers-up of that rough soil inherited from turbulent, half-civilized forefathers; and it has been justly written of them: "Appearing on the horizon as morning stars of a new civilization, just as the thick mists of the dark ages of our era had rolled away from France, these poets stand forth as utterly unconnected with the past; and are therefore the first literary representatives of modern European society, as distinguished from the ancient societies of Greece and Rome." The poets who followed them, though superior in learning and in depth of thought, were in debted to the Troubadours for much of their inspiration; but so few of the productions of these "poets of chivalry" remain to the present age that the plagiarism cannot be directly traced. The first Troubadour of whom any record has been preserved was William, Count of Poictiers, and Duke of Aquitaine. He flourished at the close of the eleventh century, and his education seemed to have been sadly neglected in the department of morals and manners. On being reproved for his evil doings by the Bishop of Poictiers, and threatened with excommunication if he persisted in his course, he proved, more to his own satisfaction than that of the Bishop, that his sword was as mighty as his pen; and although the Prelate managed to finish the sentence of excommunication, he narrowly escaped being finished himself, and was only saved by the reflection of the enraged poet that it would be doing his enemy too great a kindness to send his soul to Paradise. So, instead, he sent his body into exile. After this little episode, the aristocratic Troubadour became a valiant crusader; and on his return from the Holy Land he wrote numerous poems on his favorite subjects of love and war. Several of these productions remain entire, and are much admired for their grace and beauty. Richard of England, the lion-hearted, was an accomplished Troubadour. The stern warrior beguiled his leisure hours with the composition of love sonnets, in which he excelled; but only two of his poetical efforts have been rescued from oblivion. One of these is the celebrated ditty through which his faithful Blondel discovered the whereabouts of the royal captive; and the king's reply to his musical venture thrilled the singer's heart with the well-known words: "No nymph my heart can wound I'd rather hatred bear, Than love with others share." The other poem was written in prison; and the first verse will give some idea of its eloquent appeal to the faithless summer friends who left their sovereign to languish in captivity: "No wretched captive of this prison speaks, Unless with pain and bitterness of soul, |