Between then and her next engagement with me (which was her fourth visit to my house), the lace woman had played her fraudulent cards upon her. She had palmed off upon her a fraudulent trance and Spiritualism, and had prepared her for the coming of a handsome young French officer, with et cetera, et cetera of a story. The upshot was that this young man was the lace woman's son, and an adventurer of whom the rich lady was made a prey. He pretended honorable love and marriage, at which a sinful but repentant soul clutched readily. She married him, and paid me a farewell visit on her departure.
She said, "You little know the good you have done to me;" and she threw on my neck a gold chain and handsome cross. She kissed my hand and left it wet with tears. "Oh, it won't hurt you," she said, "if I kiss your hand, though I am much worse than you think me--or at least have been."
My good friend, Professor Mapes, was present at this, and public repute had made him know all about her. After she had gone he said to me, "You have done that poor woman more good than all the preachers of New York could ever have done. You have reformed one of the vilest of women."
I afterward heard that her handsome adventurer-husband spent or got away from her all her money, and absconded, abandoning her; and that she died destitute and forlorn in a hospital in Paris. I could tell more tales than this of women who have passed through my hands, or rather those of the Spirits, between whom and them I have humbly served as a medium.
I have thus far carried my narrative down to the time at which my public mediumship closed with my marriage in 1858. Of the five years spent in New York, I have spoken only in the general manner of the present chapter, though were I to enter upon the field of particulars I should have to weary the reader's patience with a second volume. I will only relate two episodes of that interesting period: the phosphorus affair, and the affair of the Harvard professors, for reasons which will be apparent. But I must give them each a chapter to itself.
SPIRIT LIGHTS VISIBLE AT DARK SÉANCES--PRIVATE CIRCLE IN JERSEY CITY IN 1857--SOLID GRANULES OF PHOSPHORUS APPEARING IN EARTH WHICH I HAD TOUCHED--SURPRISING AND DISTRESSING LETTER--THE GOOD SPIRITS AND DANIEL UNDERHILL TO THE RESCUE--BENJAMIN FRANKLIN--MARRIAGE TO D. UNDERHILL, NOVEMBER 2, 1858, AND CLOSE OF MY PUBLIC MEDIUMSHIP--ANALOGOUS PHENOMENA IN PRIVATE AT HOME.