Rensselaer Union, Volume 1, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 December 1868 — Planchette. [ARTICLE]

Planchette.

It is useless to tell mo that there is any thing in I’lanehette, or that by its aid every man may become his own medium; I’ve been there.— When you!can pat a terrapin on the back and get him to respond in Coptic with his tail, ’twill be time to persuade ;ne that a block of wood can be “charged" sufficiently to write sentences. Mine was charged (it stands charged against me, I believe, to this day), but it would only write when I moved it, and then it wrote precisely what 1 dictated. That persons write “unconsciously” I do not believe. As well tell me that a man might pick pockets without knowing it. Nor am I at all prepared to . believe the assertions of those who declare tliat “they do not movethe board.” -I know wliat operators will do in such cases ; I know the distortion, the disregard of tpitfi,' which association with this immoral board superinduces. 1 have seqn charming young ladies, whose word I would take on any thing else .in life (even if they protested they were iiot engaged), who xvould not fib if you asked them if their curls were false or if the red of their lips were natural, sit up with both hands on Planchette—fortified in falsehood by -the contact —and lie like lawyers. Bring me any two professors of the ladies, lor men are not to be believed under any circumstances —not too Tar gone to' be sensible to some moral compunction, Who will put one hand on Planchette and the other on the Bible —establishing a sort of galvanic connection between the negative and positive poles of truth, so to speak—and swear (as' Elia says the custom of resorting to j an oath in extreme cases has intro-. duced into the lexer sort of minds the notions of two kinds of truth) i that they do not write the messages ; they promulgate, and I will' discuss i whether they do or not seriously.— CiiAinaiS IL Wfbu, in Marker’s-Mag- - azine iov December.