A marked case of the increase of the _imitative power_ of persons in the magnetic condition, is found in the case of Frederica Hauffe. In one of her magnetic moods she informed Dr. Kerner that she would make a diagram of the spheres. "The sun sphere," as she called it, is very complex; but "she spun out the complicated web with unerring precision," and a pair of compasses given her to facilitate her labor only embarrassed her. It is made up of circles within circles, and sections and points, amounting to thousands, related and connected; and yet the "whole was executed," says Dr. K., "in an incredible short space of time." An engraving was made of this sphere, and a year after she was shown the engraving, and said it was not correct; a point on one of the lines was wanting. On referring to the original, they found she was right. This diagram contained many curious things, and in some parts related to the highest departments of mathematics. This _faculty_ she only possessed in the magnetic state, being wholly incompetent to the task when not clairvoyant. No living artist can execute that diagram with a pen, with a fac-simile before him, with the rapidity with which that ignorant, unlettered child of nature did it. "I have, in many cases," says Dr. Richmond, "witnessed this imitative power of mediums with the pen, dashing off figures and images with a rashness and rapidity almost inconceivable." As far as we can see, there is no more proof of the agency of spirits in one case than in the other; and we are sure no such claim was ever set up in the case of Mrs. Hauffe, though living in a less enlightened region, perhaps, than these United States. We might multiply cases of this kind, but space will not permit.
The operator in biology or magnetism often lays hold of the inquiring spectator, and uses him or her to imitate unseen letters, signatures, and sentences, in foreign languages. And no doubt but what Professor Bush has been made unconsciously instrumental in executing a few specimens of languages, his eyes wide open, it may be, all the while. It can be no more strange than that the son of Dr. Phelps should have been made unconsciously instrumental in tying himself to the limb of a tree in his father's yard, _supposing_ it to have been done by _spirits_. (See the version of the affair by A. J. Davis.)