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 CHAPTER I

THE PREPARATION OF THE WORLD

began in the year 1848. Seeing that the Spiritualists of London invited the public, in 1920, to join with them in celebrating their seventy-second anniversary, the historian has no need to hesitate about choosing his starting-point. There is, further, no difficulty about selecting the precise event. The year 1848 was one of the great years of the nineteenth century. A grim revolutionary wave rolled over Europe. France finally rejected its old feudal royalty. Mazzini and his friends set up a republic at Rome. Germany and Austria seethed with rebellious sentiment. Chartists sent a shudder through London. The Abolition-movement gathered strength in America. It was a great year, a foundation-year. But the events to which Spiritualism traces its rise were as far removed as possible from these world-changing tumults. They were certain mysterious sounds that startled the inmates of a little wooden house in a very small village of a very provincial district of the United States.

There are reasons, which we will presently consider, 9