Page:The humbugs of the world - An account of humbugs, delusions, impositions, quackeries, deceits and deceivers generally, in all ages (IA humbugsworld00barnrich).djvu/149

 story I fear was imitated from Hood’s funny conceit of the deaf woman who bought an ear-trumpet, which was so effective that

"—“The very next day She heard from her husband in Botany Bay!”"

The Chicago old lady in like manner, after having had Doctor Newton’s thumbs “jobbed” into her ears, certifies that she heard next morning from her son in California.

One would think that this ridicule would put the learned Dr. Newton to flight; but it will not until he is through with the fools.

I have already given an account of some of the messages from the other world in the “Banner of Light,” in which some of the spirits explain that they have turned into women since they died. This is by no means the first remarkable trick that the spirits have performed upon the human organization. Here is what they did at High Rock, in Massachusetts, a number of years ago. It beats Joanna Southcott in funny absurdity, if not in blasphemy.

At High Rock, in the year 1854 or thereabouts, certain spiritualist people were building some mysterious machinery. While this was in process of erection, a female medium, of considerable eminence in those parts, was informed by certain spirits, with great solemnity and pomp, that “she would become the Mary of a new dispensation;” that is, she was going to be a mother. Well, this was all proper, no doubt, and the lady herself—so say the spiritualist accounts—had for some time experienced indications that she was pregnant.