Florence Marryat

“ At this juncture Miss Cook, who had been moaning and moving about a good deal behind the black shawl, suddenly exclaimed, "I can't stand this any longer," and walked out into the room. There she stood in her grey dress and crimson ribbons whilst "Florence" sat on my lap in white drapery. But only for a moment, for directly the medium was fully in view, the spirit sprung up and darted behind the curtain. Recalling Miss Cook's injunctions to me, I scolded her heartily for leaving her seat, until she crept back, whimpering, to her former position. ”

“ I seem to hear some readers exclaim, "we do believe in all that you say. We have been taught so from our youth up, and the Bible points to it in every line." You may think you believe it, my friends, and in a theoretical way you may; but you do not realize it, and the whole of your lives proves it. Death, instead of being the blessed portal to the Life Elysian, the gate of which may swing open for you any day, and admit you to eternal and unfading happiness, is a far-off misty phantom, whose approach you dread, and the sight of which in others you run away from. ”

“ But Spiritualism, earnestly and faithfully followed, leaves us in no doubt. Spiritualists know where they are going to. The spheres are almost as familiar to them as this earth—it is not too much to say that many live in them as much as they do here, and often they seem the more real, as they are the more lasting of the two. Spiritualists are in no manner of doubt who their eyes will see when opening on another phase of life. ”

“ The idea of the spirits of the departed returning to this world to hold communication with their friends may be a new and startling one to them, but the very wonder of it would make one expect to see them evince a little interest in a matter which concerns us all. Yet the generality of Carlyle's British millions either pooh-pooh the notion as too utterly ridiculous for their exalted minds to entertain, or inform you, with superior wisdom, that if Spiritualism is true, they cannot see the use of it, and have no craving for any further knowledge. ”

“ I have proved Spiritualism not to be humbug, therefore I regard it in a sacred light. For, from whatever cause it may proceed, it opens a vast area for thought to any speculative mind, and it is a matter of constant surprise to me to see the indifference with which the world regards it. That it exists is an undeniable fact. Men of science have acknowledged it, and the churches cannot deny it. ”

“ But though I am about to record a great many incidents that are so marvellous as to be almost incredible, I do not expect to be disbelieved, except by such as are capable of deception themselves. They—conscious of their own infirmity—invariably believe that other people must be telling lies. Byron wrote, "He is a fool who denies that which he cannot disprove;" and though Carlyle gives us the comforting assurance that the population of Great Britain consists "chiefly of fools," I pin my faith upon receiving credence from the few who are not so. ”

“ The very fact of so common an article of furniture as a table, as an agent of communication with the unseen world, has excited so much ridicule and opens so wide a field for chicanery, that I thought it would be wiser to drop the subject, and confine myself to those phases of the science or art, or religion, or whatever the reader may like to call it, that can be explained or described on paper. The philosophers of the nineteenth century have invented so many names for the cause that makes a table turn round—tilt—or rap—that I feel quite unable (not being a philosopher) to cope with them. ”

“ It is the mystery that appals us. We see our friends die, and no word or sign comes back to tell us that there is no death, so we picture them to ourselves mouldering in the damp earth till we nearly go mad with grief and dismay. Some people think me heartless because I never go near the graves of those whom I love best. Why should I? I might with more reason go and sit beside a pile of their cast-off garments. I could see them, and they would actually retain more of their identity and influence than the corpse which I could not see. ”

“ The second class to which I alluded—the sceptics—have not done so much injury to Spiritualism as the enthusiasts, because they are as a rule, so intensely bigoted and hard-headed, and narrow-minded, that they overdo their protestations, and render them harmless. The sceptic refuses to believe anything, because he has found out one thing to be a fraud. If one medium deceives, all the mediums must deceive. If one séance is a failure, none can be successful. If he gains no satisfactory test of the presence of the spirits of the departed, no one has ever gained such a test. ”

“ But a journey to the other world—to the many worlds which perhaps await us—a certain proof that we shall live again (or rather, that we shall never die but need only time and patience and well-living here to reunite us to the dear one gone before) —that is a subject not worthy of our trying to believe—of not sufficient importance for us to take the trouble of ascertaining. I pity from my soul the men and women who have no dead darling buried in their hearts whom they know they shall meet in a home of God's own choosing when this life ends. ”

“ You draw people to you, and live upon their life; and when they have no more to give, nor you to demand, the liking fades on both sides. It must be so, because the spirit requires food the same as the body; and when the store is exhausted, the affection is starved out, and the persons pass out of your life. You have often wondered to yourself why an acquaintance who seemed necessary to you to-day you can live perfectly well without to-morrow. ”

“ But when I remember all those who have gathered on the other side, and whom I firmly believe will be present to help me in my passage there, I can feel nothing but a great curiosity to pierce the mysteries as yet unrevealed to me, and a great longing for the time to come when I shall join those whom I loved so much on earth. Not to be happy at once by any manner of means. ”

“ When I look around me and see the young men nowadays—ay, and the young women too—who believe in no hereafter, who lie down and die, like the dumb animals who cannot be made to understand the love of the dear God who created them although they feel it, I cannot think of anything calculated to do them more good than the return of a father or a mother or a friend, who could convince them by ocular demonstration that there is a future life and happiness and misery, according to the one we have led here below. ”

“ Volckman had seen the apparition was furnished as a drawing-room, and the room adjoining it, which was divided by a portière only from the larger apartment, she had converted for convenience sake into her bedroom. The first evening we sat it was about seven o'clock, and so light that we let down all the venetians, which, however, did little to remedy the evil. We had no cabinet, nor curtains, nor darkness, for it was full moon at the time, and the dancing, sparkling waves were quite visible through the interstices of the venetians. ”

“ They have a better and more substantial religion than that—a revelation that teaches them that the works we do in the flesh must bear their fruit in the spirit, and that no tardy deathbed repentance, no crying out for mercy because Justice is upon us, like an unruly child howling as soon as the stick is produced for chastisement—will avail to wipe off the sins we have indulged in upon earth. They know their expiation will be a bitter one, yet not without Hope, and that they will be helped, as well as help others, in the upward path that leads to ultimate perfection. ”

“ I wonder if it has struck any of my readers as strange that, during all these manifestations in England and America, I had never seen the form, nor heard the voice, of my late father, Captain Marryat. Surely if these various media lived by trickery and falsehood, and wished successfully to deceive me, some of them would have thought of trying to represent a man so well known, and whose appearance was so familiar. ”

“ I've just come to tell you what I know you will be very glad to hear, that through the medium's power, and our power, and the great power of God, the unhappy spirit who has been confessing his crime to you is freed to-night from the heaviest part of his burden—the being earth-chained to the spot. I don't mean to say that he will go away at once to the spheres, because he's got a lot to do still to alter the conditions under which he labors, but the worst is over. ”

“ The teaching of Spiritualism is such as largely to increase belief in our Divine Father's love, our Saviour's pity, and the angels' ministering help. But it does more than this, more than any religion has done before. It affords the proof—the only proof we have ever received, and our finite natures can accept—of a future existence. The majority of Christians hope and trust, and say they believe. It is the Spiritualist only that knows. ”

“ At the séance which produced the apparition of my sister Emily, Mr. Eglinton's control "Joey" made himself very familiar. "Joey" is a remarkably small man—perhaps two-thirds lighter in weight than the medium—and looks more like a little jockey than anything else, though he says he was a clown whilst in this world, and claims to be the spirit of the immortal Joe Grimaldi. He has always appeared to us clothed in a tight-fitting white dress like a woven jersey suit, which makes him look still smaller than he is. ”

“ You tell him too often that you love him. Let him feel there is always a higher height to gain, a lower depth to fall to, in your esteem. He is not the only man in the world. Why should you deceive him by saying so? You are much to blame." (Considering that Mr. Fletcher had never seen, or, as far as I knew, heard of the persons he mentioned in this tirade, it becomes a matter of speculation where or from whom he gathered this keen insight to their character and personalities, every word of which I can vouch for as being strictly true.) ”

“ People who wish to argue against Spiritualism are quite sure, as a rule, that media will descend to any trickery and cheating for the sake of gain. If you reply, as in my own case, that the séances have been given as a free-will offering, they say that they expected introductions or popularity or advertisement in exchange. But what can be adduced against the medium who lends his or her powers to a person whom he has never seen, and probably never will see, and for no reason, excepting that his controls urge him to the deed? ”

“ If I am met here with the objection that the term "Spiritualism" has been at times mixed up with so much that is evil as to become an offence, I have no better answer to make than by turning to the irrefragable testimony of the Past and Present to prove that in all ages, and of all religions, there have been corrupt and demoralized exponents whose vices have threatened to pull down the fabric they lived to raise. ”

“ One evening at Mrs. Gregory's, after the séance was concluded, "Florence" looked round the curtain and called to me to come inside of it. I did so and found myself in total darkness. I said, "What's the good of my coming here? I can't see anything." "Florence" took me by one hand, and answered, "I will lead you! Don't be afraid." Then some one else grasped my other hand, and "Peter's" voice said, "We've got you safe. We want you to feel the medium." The two figures led me between them to the sofa on which Miss Showers was lying. ”

“ People will talk of dress, or dinner, or their friend's private affairs—of anything, in fact, sooner than Death and Immortality and the world to come which we must all inevitably enter. Even parsons—the legalized exponents of what lies beyond the grave—are no exceptions to the rule. When the bereaved sufferer goes to them for comfort, they shake their heads and "hope" and "trust," and say "God's mercy has no limits," but they cannot give him one reasonable proof to rest upon that Death is but a name. John Powles, however, though a careless and irreligious man, liked to discuss the Unseen. ”

“ Mrs. Fay (as she passed through the room to her cabinet) appeared a very quiet, simple-looking little woman to me, without any loudness or vulgarity about her. Her cabinet was composed of two curtains only, made of some white material, and hung on uprights at one angle, in a corner of the room, the most transparent contrivance possible. Anything like a bustle or confusion inside it, such as would be occasioned by dressing or "making up," would have been apparent at once to the audience outside, who were sitting by the light of an ordinary gas-burner and globe. ”

“ You have not nearly reached the zenith of your success. It is yet to come. It is only beginning. You will have another child, certainly one, but I am not sure if it will live in this world. I do not see its earth-life, but I see you in that condition. ”