Since this article was commenced, the following fact has been furnished me from a reliable source. It is offered not only for the test which it involves, but also to illustrate the remarkable faculty which Planchette sometimes manifests, of calling things by their right names. A lady well known to the community, but whose name I have not permission to disclose, recently received from Planchette, writing under her own hands, a communication so remarkable that she was induced to ask for the name of the intelligence that wrote it. In answer to her request, the name of the late Col. Baker, who gallantly fell at Ball's Bluff, was given, in a perfect _fac-simile_ of his handwriting. She said to him: "For a further test, will you be kind enough to tell me where I last saw you?" She expected him to mention the place and occasion of their last interview when she had invited him to her house to tea; but Planchette wrote: "_In the hall of thieves_." "In the hall of thieves," said the lady; "what on earth can be the meaning of that? O! I remember that after he was killed, his body was brought on here and laid in the City Hall, and there I saw him."
In Planchette, public journalists and pamphleteers seem to have caught the "What is it?" in a new shape, and great has been the expenditure of printer's ink in the way of narratives, queries, and speculations upon the subject. There are now lying before me the following publications and articles, in which the Planchette phenomena are noticed and discussed,--from which we propose to cull and condense such statements of fact as appear to possess most intrinsic interest, and promise most aid in the solution of the mysteries. Afterward we shall discuss the different theories of these writers, and also some other theories that have been propounded.
"PLANCHETTE'S DIARY," edited by Kate Field, is an entertaining pamphlet, consisting of details in the author's experience, with little or no speculation as to the origin or laws of the phenomena. The author herself was the principal medium of the communications, but she occasionally introduces experiences of others. The pamphlet serves to put one on familiar and companionable terms with the invisible source of intelligence, whatever that may be, illustrating the leading peculiarities of the phenomena, giving some tests of an outside directing influence more or less striking, and candidly recording the failures of test answers which were mixed up with the successes. We extract two or three specimens: