"
"Let us change the subject," said Sir Joseph, dryly; "I have no wish to
test your powers in that direction; and so long as I don't give up the
ghost, I suppose you must."
"I would only say this," observed the Colonel,--"that in your book upon
America I hope you will not fail to declare, that, in folly, deception,
and unmitigated humbug, our Foxden spirits exceed all others ever seen
or heard."
"Sir Joseph Barley would be a foolish chronicler to commit himself to
any such statement," said Dr. Burge, who seemed to feel it his duty to
speak the moral _tag_ to our little Fast-Day interlude. "I cannot allow
that these Foxden manifestations are one whit more silly or equivocal
than many I have seen elsewhere. This shamming the ghost of somebody
still alive is no uncommon deception: several cases of the sort have
come under my recent observation. And it is well that they sometimes
occur; for they must cause reflection in all who are not victims of a
mental disorder which seems to confound the reasoning powers of
man,--causing its subjects to accept as teachers phantoms of their
morbid imaginations, or deceiving intelligences from without. To all, I
say, but such as these, an imposition of the sort here noticed must send
reflections of our total inability to identify any pretended spirit
merely because he flatters our vanity, or talks what may seem _to us_
good morality or sound sense.
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