The question is repeated every time there is a great robbery or a murder
committed,--
"Why do not the clairvoyants tell who has committed this crime?"
Simply because those who consult them do not know. If a person knew where
the stolen property was secreted, and he consulted a true clairvoyant, he
or she _might_ describe the property and the place where it is secreted.
Not otherwise. The same with the murderer. Therefore, of what good is it?
In order to do justice to this subject, to present and explain it in all
its various phases, we would require a volume, instead of the space
allotted in this chapter. But whatever name one may apply to it,--animal
magnetism, Mesmerism, clairvoyance, spiritual or trance mediumship,--its
success depends mostly upon the credulity of the person.
During the five days preceding May 15, 1869, a reporter of the Boston Post
visited seventeen of these clairvoyants, mediums, etc., and some curious
facts and startling contradictions were revealed therein.
"Putting it together," he says, "and carefully epitomizing the amount of
fortune that we have in this way been able to purchase, we present our
readers with the following balance sheet:" and this, he says, is from the
"most experienced and trustworthy fortune-tellers in the good city of
Boston, where everything like _humbug_ is most scrupulously avoided.
"Four times we have been told that we were engaged in no business at all,
and as many more that our affairs and prospects were never more
flourishing. Repeatedly we have been told that we should speedily change
our business and abode. On the other hand, we were destined to be a
fixture in Boston, and were so well satisfied with our present calling
that we should never change. We are not married, but a great many pretty
maidens stood ready to help us out of that difficulty." Again, "we were
married, and the father of several roguish boys and bright-eyed girls.
Thus far in life we had enjoyed good health, were free from all
infirmities, and stood a good chance to reach fourscore and ten."
"In less than twenty-four hours this sweet hope was buried, and we were
advised that death would overtake us suddenly and soon."
There are various grades of clairvoyants, as of everything else. Here is
one class.
"After ascending a rickety, dirty, greasy stairway, you find the madam
quartered in a small, square bedroom, poorly and miserably furnished. The
room is dirty, dark, and dingy. Portions of the walls are covered with a
cheap and quaint paper, patched, here and there, with some of another
figure and quality. Pictures of a cheap class are hanging on two sides of
the room,--of Columbus, Webster, and three or four love and courtship
scenes in France and Germany. The furniture consists of a cheap bed, a
dilapidated parlor cooking-stove, a small pine table, three common chairs,
and a rocking-chair, cane-bottomed, a big box, covered with a remnant of
the national flag, and a few cheap mantel ornaments.
"The madam is a woman under thirty, very stoutly built, weighs one hundred
and sixty pounds, has quite fair complexion, with pretty blue eyes, light
hair, and withal not bad-looking. She was attired in a loose and rather
soiled calico dress, wore no ornaments, and looked rather uninviting."