the number of their children, and so on. There was no doubt about the visitation. The Fox family abandoned the haunted house—needless to say, it then ceased to be haunted—and scattered. Margaretta went to live with her married sister at Rochester. Katie was sent to live with relatives at Auburn. The ghosts, who were now numerous, followed the girls. The mediumistic power was strangely conveyed to their relatives and friends. Rochester and Auburn soon had quite a number of houses in which ghostly fingers rapped out answers to questions. Visitors to Rochester and Auburn took away the contagion to their own towns. Within a few months the epidemic had spread over the State of New York, and was approaching the metropolitan city. Spiritualism was founded.
Mrs. Fish, the eldest sister, gives us a moving account of the way in which her family tried to evade or get rid of their awful power. Her mother's hair turned white in a week. She and Margaretta after a time were told by the spirits that they must give public sittings, and charge for admission, so that a larger audience might hear the truth. They shrank from the ordeal, and there came a night, in November (1848), when the spirits gave them an ultimatum. Unless they promised within twenty minutes to begin work in public, the spirits would leave the earth and postpone the great revelation until a later generation. The small circle of sitters frantically appealed to the Fox sisters, but they were adamant, There were "showers of tears and choking sobs."
