They have avowed themselves responsible for all
statements signed by themselves, and have thereby brought themselves into
more than one inextricable dilemma; but it is very funny, where a
response or a matter of fact has not been thus certified, how invariably
Mary Runnel is made to assume the discredit of it, on its turning out to
be false. It is the most ingenious arrangement that could possibly have
been contrived; and somehow or other, the pranks of this lying spirit
give a reality to the conversations which the more respectable ghosts
quite fail in imparting.
The whole matter seems to me a sort of dreaming awake. It resembles a
dream, in that the whole material is, from the first, in the dreamer's
mind, though concealed at various depths below the surface; the dead
appear alive, as they always do in dreams; unexpected combinations occur,
as continually in dreams; the mind speaks through the various persons of
the drama, and sometimes astonishes itself with its own wit, wisdom, and
eloquence, as often in dreams; but, in both cases, the intellectual
manifestations are really of a very flimsy texture.
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