University of Virginia Library

AMONG THE SPIRITS.

There was a séance in town a few nights
since. As I was making for it, in company
with the reporter of an evening paper, he said
he had seen a gambler named Gus Graham
shot down in a town in Illinois years ago by a
mob, and as he was probably the only person
in San Francisco who knew of the circumstance,
he thought he would “give the spirits Graham
to chaw on awhile.” [N. B.—This young creature
is a Democrat, and speaks with the native
strength and inelegance of his tribe.] In the
course of the show he wrote his old pal's name
on a slip of paper, and folded it up tightly and
put it in a hat which was passed around, and
which already had about five hundred similar
documents in it. The pile was dumped on the
table, and the medium began to take them up
one by one and lay them aside, asking, “Is

this spirit present? or this? or this?” About
one in fifty would rap, and the person who sent
up the name would rise in his place and question
the defunct. At last a spirit seized the
medium's hand and wrote “Gus Graham”
backward. Then the medium went skirmishing
through the papers for the corresponding
name. And that old sport knew his card by
the back! When the medium came to it, after
picking up fifty others, he rapped! A committeeman
unfolded the paper, and it was the right
one. I sent for it and got it. It was all right.
However, I suppose all Democrats are on sociable
terms with the devil. The young man
got up and asked:

“Did you die in '51? '52? '53? '54?—”

Ghost—“Rap, rap, rap.”

“Did you die of cholera? diarrhea? dysentery?
dog-bite? small-pox? violent death?—”

“Rap, rap, rap.”

“Were you hanged? drowned? stabbed?
shot?—”

“Rap, rap, rap.”

“Did you die in Mississippi? Kentucky?
New-York? Sandwich Islands? Texas? Illinois?—”

“Rap, rap, rap.”

“In Adams county? Madison? Randolph?—”

“Rap, rap, rap.”

It was no use trying to catch the departed
gambler. He knew his hand, and played it
like a major.

About this time a couple of Germans stepped
forward, an elderly man and a spry young fellow,
cocked and primed for a sensation. They
wrote some names. Then young Ollendorff
said something which sounded like—

“Ist ein geist hieraus?” [Bursts of laughter
from the audience.]

Three raps—signifying that there was a geist
hieraus.

“Vollen sie schriehen?” [More laughter.]

Three raps.

“Finzig stollen, linsowfterowlickterhairowfterfrowleineruhackfolderol?”

Incredible as it may seem, the spirit cheerfully
answered Yes to that astonishing proposition.

The audience grew more and more boisterously
mirthful with every fresh question, and
they were informed that the performance could

not go on in the midst of so much levity. They
became quiet.

The German ghost didn't appear to know
any thing at all—couldn't answer the simplest
questions. Young Ollendorff finally stated
some numbers, and tried to get at the time
of the spirit's death; it appeared to be considerably
mixed as to whether it died in
1811 or 1812, which was reasonable enough,
as it had been so long ago. At last it wrote
“12.”

Tableau! Young Ollendorff sprang to his
feet in a state of consuming excitement. He
exclaimed:

“Laties und shentlemen! I write de name
fon a man vot lifs! Speerit-rabbing dells me
he ties in yahr eighteen hoondred und dwelf,
but he yoos as live und helty as—”

The Medium—“Sit down, sir!”

Ollendorff—“But I vant to—”

Medium—“You are not here to make
speeches, sir—sit down!” [Mr. O. had squared
himself for an oration.]

Mr. O. “But de speerit cheat!—dere is no
such speerit—” [All this time applause and
laughter by turns from the audience.]

Medium—“Take your seat, sir, and I will
explain this matter.”

And she explained. And in that explanation
she let off a blast which was so terrific that
I half expected to see young Ollendorff shot up
through the roof. She said he had come up
there with fraud and deceit and cheating in his
heart, and a kindred spirit had come from the
land of shadows to commune with him! She
was terribly bitter. She said in substance,
though not in words, that perdition was full of
just such fellows as Ollendorff, and they were
ready on the slightest pretext to rush in and
assume any body's name, and rap and write
and lie and swindle with a perfect looseness
whenever they could rope in a living affinity
like poor Ollendorff to communicate with!
[Great applause and laughter.]

Ollendorff stood his ground with good pluck,
and was going to open his batteries again, when
a storm of cries arose all over the house, “Get
down! Go on! Clear out! Speak on—we'll
hear you! Climb down from that platform!
Stay where you are! Vamose! Stick to your
post—say your say!”

The medium rose up and said if Ollendorff

remained, she would not. She recognized no
one's right to come there and insult her by
practicing a deception upon her, and attempting
to bring ridicule upon so solemn a thing as her
religious belief. The audience then became
quiet, and the subjugated Ollendorff retired
from the platform.

The other German raised a spirit, questioned
it at some length in his own language, and said
the answers were correct. The medium claimed
to be entirely unacquainted with the German
language.

Just then a gentleman called me to the edge
of the platform and asked me if I were a
Spiritualist. I said I was not. He asked me
if I were prejudiced. I said not more than any
other unbeliever; but I could not believe in a
thing which I could not understand, and I had
not seen any thing yet that I could by any possibility
cipher out. He said, then, that he didn't
think I was the cause of the diffidence shown
by the spirits, but he knew there was an antagonistic
influence around that table somewhere;
he had noticed it from the first; there
was a painful negative current passing to his
sensitive organization from that direction constantly.

I told him I guessed it was that other
fellow; and I said, Blame a man who was all
the time shedding these infernal negative currents!
This appeared to satisfy the mind of
the inquiring fanatic, and he sat down.

I had a very dear friend, who, I had heard,
had gone to the spirit-land, or perdition, or some
of those places, and I desired to know something
concerning him. There was something so
awful, though, about talking with living, sinful
lips to the ghostly dead, that I could hardly
bring myself to rise and speak. But at last I
got tremblingly up and said with a low and
trembling voice:

“Is the spirit of John Smith present?”

(You never can depend on these Smiths; you
call for one, and the whole tribe will come clattering
out of hell to answer you.)

“Whack! whack! whack! whack!”

Bless me! I believe all the dead and damned
John Smiths between San Francisco and perdition
boarded that poor little table at once! I
was considerably set back—stunned, I may
say. The audience urged me to go on, however,
and I said:

“What did you die of?”

The Smiths answered to every disease and
casualty that men can die of.

“Where did you die?”

They answered Yes to every locality I could
name while my geography held out.

“Are you happy where you are?”

There was a vigorous and unanimous “No!”
from the late Smiths.

“Is it warm there?”

An educated Smith seized the medium's hand
and wrote:

“It's no name for it.”

“Did you leave any Smiths in that place
when you came away!”

“Dead loads of them!”

I fancied I heard the shadowy Smiths
chuckle at this feeble joke—the rare joke that
there could be live loads of Smiths where all
are dead.

“How many Smiths are present?”

“Eighteen millions—the procession now
reaches from here to the other side of China.”

“Then there are many Smiths in the kingdom
of the lost?”

“The Prince Apollyon calls all new comers
Smith on general principles; and continues to

do so until he is corrected, if he chances to be
mistaken.”

“What do lost spirits call their dread
abode?”

“They call it the Smithsonian Institute.”

I got hold of the right Smith at last—the particular
Smith I was after—my dear, lost, lamented
friend—and learned that he died a violent
death. I feared as much. He said his
wife talked him to death. Poor wretch!

By and by up started another Smith. A gentleman
in the audience said that this was his
Smith. So he questioned him, and this Smith
said he too died by violence. He had been a
good deal tangled in his religious belief, and was
a sort of a cross between a Universalist and a
Unitarian; has got straightened out and
changed his opinions since he left here; said
he was perfectly happy. We proceeded to
question this talkative and frolicsome old parson.
Among spirits I judge he is the gayest
of the gay. He said he had no tangible body;
a bullet could pass through him and never make
a hole; rain could pass through him as through
vapor, and not discommode him in the least,
(so I suppose he don't know enough to come

in when it rains—or don't care enough;) says
heaven and hell are simply mental conditions;
spirits in the former have happy and contented
minds, and those in the latter are torn by remorse
of conscience; says as far as he is concerned,
he is all right—he is happy; would not
say whether he was a very good or a very bad
man on earth, (the shrewd old water-proof nonentity!
I asked the question so that I might
average my own chances for his luck in the
other world, but he saw my drift;) says he has
an occupation there—puts in his time teaching
and being taught; says there are spheres —
grades of perfection—he is making very good
progress — has been promoted a sphere or so
since his matriculation; (I said mentally, “Go
slow, old man, go slow, you have got all eternity
before you,” and he replied not;) he don't
know how many spheres there are, (but I suppose
there must be millions, because if a man
goes galloping through them at the rate this
old Universalist is doing, he will get through
an infinitude of them by the time he has been
there as long as old Sesostris and those ancient
mummies; and there is no estimating how high
he will get in even the infancy of eternity — I
am afraid the old man is scouring along rather
too fast for the style of his surroundings, and
the length of time he has got on his hands;)
says spirits can not feel heat or cold, (which
militates somewhat against all my notions of
orthodox damnation—fire and brimstone;) says
spirits commune with each other by thought—
they have no language; says the distinctions
of sex are preserved there—and so forth and
so on.

The old parson wrote and talked for an hour,
and showed by his quick, shrewd, intelligent
replies, that he had not been sitting up nights
in the other world for nothing; he had been
prying into every thing worth knowing, and
finding out every thing he possibly could—as
he said himself—when he did not understand a
thing he hunted up a spirit who could explain
it, consequently he is pretty thoroughly posted.
And for his accommodating conduct and his
uniform courtesy to me, I sincerely hope he
will continue to progress at his present velocity
until he lands on the very roof of the highest
sphere of all, and thus achieves perfection.