Page:The humbugs of the world - An account of humbugs, delusions, impositions, quackeries, deceits and deceivers generally, in all ages (IA humbugsworld00barnrich).djvu/84

 the innocence of the boys—sprang from his seat, turned up the gaslight, and pounced on the elder boy, who was found to have a nicely stuffed glove drawn partly on to the toe of his boot. That, then, was the spirit-hand! The nails that the imaginative spiritualist thought he saw were not on the fingers. The boy alleged that the spirits made him attempt the deception.

The father of these boys, who had accompanied them to New York, took them home immediately after that exposure. In Buffalo, they continued to hold “circles,” hoping to retrieve their lost reputation as good mediums—by being, not more honest, but more cautious. To prevent any one getting hold of them while operating, they hit upon the plan of passing a rope through a button-hole of each gentleman’s coat, the ends to be held by a trusty person—assigning, as a reason for that arrangement, that it would then be known no one in the circle could assist in producing the manifestations. The plan did not always work well, however; for a skeptic would sometimes cut the rope, and then pounce upon “the spirit”—that is, if he didn’t happen to miss that individual, on account of the darkness and while trying to avoid a collision with the instruments.

To secure greater immunity from detection, and to enable them to exhibit in large halls which could not easily be darkened, the boys finally fixed upon a “cabinet” as the best thing in which to work. They had, some time before, made the “rope-test” a feature of their exhibitions; and in their cabinet-show they depended