‘Mama, mama!’”
The effect of this on the woman was unpleasant. She stared about her for
a moment, and exclaiming, “I come--I am coming, Alfy!” fell in hysterics
on the floor.
Two or three persons raised her, and aided her into an adjoining room;
but the rest remained at the table, as though well accustomed to like
scenes.
After this several of the strangers were called upon to write the names
of the dead with whom they wished to communicate. The names were spelled
out by the agency of affirmative knocks when the correct letters were
touched by the applicant, who was furnished with an alphabet-card upon
which he tapped the letters in turn, the medium, meanwhile, scanning his
face very keenly. With some, the names were readily made out. With one,
a stolid personage of disbelieving type, every attempt failed, until at
last the spirits signified by knocks that he was a disturbing agency,
and that while he remained all our efforts would fail. Upon this some of
the company proposed that he should leave; of which invitation he took
advantage, with a skeptical sneer at the whole performance.
As he left us, the sergeant leaned over and whispered to the medium, who
next addressed himself to me. “Sister Euphemia,” he said, indicating the
lady with large eyes, “will act as your medium. I am unable to do more.
These things exhaust my nervous system.”
“Sister Euphemia,” said the doctor, “will aid us. Think, if you please,
sir, of a spirit, and she will endeavor to summon it to our circle.”
Upon this a wild idea came into my head. I answered: “I am thinking as
you directed me to do.”
The medium sat with her arms folded, looking steadily at the center
of the table. For a few moments there was silence. Then a series of
irregular knocks began. “Are you present?” said the medium.
The affirmative raps were twice given.
“I should think,” said the doctor, “that there were two spirits
present.”
His words sent a thrill through my heart.
“Are there two?” he questioned.
A double rap.
“Yes, two,” said the medium. “Will it please the spirits to make us
conscious of their names in this world?”
A single knock. “No.”
“Will it please them to say how they are called in the world of
spirits?”
Again came the irregular raps--3, 4, 8, 6; then a pause, and 3, 4, 8, 7.
“I think,” said the authoress, “they must be numbers. Will the spirits,”
she said, “be good enough to aid us? Shall we use the alphabet?”
“Yes,” was rapped very quickly.
“Are these numbers?”
“Yes,” again.
“I will write them,” she added, and, doing so, took up the card and
tapped the letters. The spelling was pretty rapid, and ran thus as she
tapped, in turn, first the letters, and last the numbers she had already
set down:
“UNITED STATES ARMY MEDICAL MUSEUM, Nos. 3486, 3487.”
The medium looked up with a puzzled expression.
“Good gracious!” said I, “they are MY LEGS--MY LEGS!”
What followed, I ask no one to believe except those who, like myself,
have communed with the things of another sphere. Suddenly I felt a
strange return of my self-consciousness. I was reindividualized, so to
speak. A strange wonder filled me, and, to the amazement of every one,
I arose, and, staggering a little, walked across the room on limbs
invisible to them or me. It was no wonder I staggered, for, as I briefly
reflected, my legs had been nine months in the strongest alcohol. At
this instant all my new friends crowded around me in astonishment.
Presently, however, I felt myself sinking slowly. My legs were going,
and in a moment I was resting feebly on my two stumps upon the floor. It
was too much. All that was left of me fainted and rolled over senseless.
I have little to add. I am now at home in the West, surrounded by every
form of kindness and every possible comfort; but alas! I have so
little surety of being myself that I doubt my own honesty in drawing
my pension, and feel absolved from gratitude to those who are kind to
a being who is uncertain of being enough himself to be conscientiously
responsible. It is needless to add that I am not a happy fraction of
a man, and that I am eager for the day when I shall rejoin the lost
members of my corporeal family in another and a happier world.