THE SPIRIIUALIST AND THE CZAR.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7959, 25 January 1888, Page 3

THE SPIRIIUALIST AND THE CZAR.

("Civia" in Otago Daily Times.) The Spiritists, having been finally discredited, as one wight suppose, by the vpi\.^t of a competent and impartial commission of inquiry lately held in New York, feel it necessary to revive the drooping faith of the credulous by new tales of wonder. With this design an advertisement, three columns long, has been inserted iv the Melbourne Leader recounting some high jinks of mediumship at the court of the Czar of Russia. The medium, according to his own veracious narrative, entered the Imperial palace carrying a parcel under his arm, which parcel, for anything the police or the sentries knew to the contrary, might have contained dynamite. Likely story, this ! If, however, we jib at preliminary improbabilities of this kind we shall never get any forrardor. Let us proceed. The Czar, a pleasant - spoken, benevolentlooking gentleman, gripped the medium by the hand, said he was delighted to see him, and at once proposed a dark seance. How little the world really knows of the temper and habits of the Czar ! We have been humbugged by stories about his frenzied fear of assassination, yet here we find him calmly expressing his desire to sit in a dark room with a Yankee stranger. . Of courso his wish was complied with ; the lights were turned out, the Emperor seized the medium by the hand, and then the fun began : I began to ascend into tho air. the Empress and the Princess Oldenbur«r following me. Tho confusion was something indescribabloas I rose higher and higher, both my neighbors cUmbering on to their chairs as best they could. It wasn't conducive to mental equilibrium on the medium's part to know that an empress was porforming such antics and might Kct hurt, and I repeat edly begged during ray flight to bo allowed to break up tho soance. Alltonopurposo; nnd I continued to riso until my feet came into contact with two shoulders, upon which I rested, and which afterwardß proved t» bo thosoof tho Kmperor »nd thoGrand Dukeof Oldenburg. ABSomcono facetiously observed afterwards, "it was tho first time tho Emperor of Russia had beon under anyone's foot ! " When I ilesnonded the soance terminated, I being quite exhausted and tho parly delighted, 'lho Empress acted throughout with great coolness and judgment, and oven aßkcd to bo transported with mo into tho noxt room I As a rule I find tho ladirs nro much more courageous at dark seances than men. The last two sentences read somewhat ambiguously, but the writer means no harm. We may infer, however, from the, Empress' request to be transported witli the medium into the next room, thnt the Emperor is not of a jealous disposition. Pity that the only attestation to (lie world of these interesting facts should be an anonymous advertisement in a colonial paper. Before all other things, howerer, n the investigation of Spiritism, what is