It is said to be impossible that any mere human being could inform persons, with whom they never had any previous knowledge or acquaintance, of the past, present, and future events of their lives--whether they are married or single, the number of their children living and dead, age, health, business, letters expected, the whereabout of long-absent friends, &c. It is supposed that such information must indeed emanate from the spirit world. Yet precisely such things are and always have been told, more or less, by astrologers and fortune tellers, without any pretensions to being in league with spirits of the other worlds. We have said that fortune tellers do not always tell correctly; but, as poor an opinion as we have of them, we will venture to assert that they are full as correct, if not more so, in the information they give, as the members of the Fox family, or any of their contemporaries, of the alleged _spiritual_ manifestations.
Persons of sane mind, though ever so ignorant of arithmetic or orthography, can tell at least how many children they have, and are usually able to spell their own names; but one who has spent a good deal of time in witnessing the performances of the _spirit rappers_, says, "They seem to be unwilling or unable to answer purely test questions, like that of answering their own names. I have never known them to do this," says he, "though often solicited." He also speaks of their great deficiency in mathematics, not being able to enumerate the number of children they have on earth with any thing like accuracy. "I am aware that such questions have sometimes been correctly answered, and I have heard them so answered; but I have much more frequently known them to refuse entirely, or to do it very awkwardly, or to fail entirely in the attempt. Out of five numbers four were erroneously selected as the right one. The fifth was right, of course. This goes to show, at least, that spirits have greatly _deteriorated_, rather than _improved_, while inhabiting the celestial spheres." But this is not all. The facility of communication between the two classes of beings is also on the decline. The time was when ghosts or spirits held free conversation with those they visited, without calling in the aid of clairvoyancy or electricity. Neither did they resort, like modern spirits, to the slow and clumsy mode of communication, through the letters of the alphabet. In spelling out a sentence by letters, one of the ladies commences repeating the alphabet; and when the desired letter is mentioned, a rap is heard. In this slow and tedious process, long sentences are communicated. No wonder that the slowness of the mode of communication should be considered as "perfectly appalling." And then, too, the substance of these communications is too absurd and ridiculous to be believed. We might here refer to the information given by the prophet Swedenborg himself, in relation to the condition of the pious Melancthon in the future state, that he was sometimes in an excavated stone chamber, and at other times in hell; and when in the chamber, he was covered with bear skins to protect him from the cold; and that he refuses to see visitors from this world on account of the filthiness of his apartment. This is about as probable and interesting as the account given by a female clairvoyant in Cleveland, Ohio, who says that she has (just) had an interview with Tom Paine, "who recants his errors, and is at present stopping with General Washington and Ethan Allen, at a hotel kept by John Bunyan."