The dance master Blackman's piano, accustomed to ringing waltzes and cakewalks, is now playing a solemn hymn; the mirrored walls reflect not whirling youths as heretofore, but white-bearded gentlemen, sallow-faced ladies and scrofulous young men, looking piously in their prayerbooks. This time, a Spiritualists’ meeting is underway in the dance master Blackman's hall.

In Germany, Spiritualism tries to attach itself to science. In France, it is rather successfully accessorised with décolletés, chansonettes and private boudoirs. In England, it has moved on to prayerbooks, psalms and sallow Misses of an uncertain age. C’est fatalité.

I happened on this meeting when it had already started. The attendees were on their feet and, looking into some books, were singing in unsteady chorus the praises of those ‘spirits’ who appear to the medium:

I don't remember any more, but even these lines are sufficient to detect that the enigmatic form of energy that manifests at Spiritualist séances has already had time to become canonised in England.

The medium himself – a squirming, dishevelled, extravagantly dressed gentleman with a worn-out face and manners pretending to the mysterious – offers a prayer from the pulpit to the spirit of all spirits, then blesses us majestically and begins his séance to the sound of music. He enters a trance. He gnashes his teeth, rolls his eyes and growls like the hero of a melodrama. From the first minute you know that you are faced with charlatanism, and of a tasteless, crude and coarse kind at that, calculated to appeal to the most uncivilised and uncouth public. Look around. You’ll see knitted brows, pursed lips – you’ll see faith and grim delight. More hymns, more prayers, more trances; the voluntary collection plate goes many rounds – and you find yourself back in the street with the impression that someone has mocked and insulted you, deceived you in a childish, unintelligent, ham-fisted way.