To the Editor of the North Star:—

I observe in the late number of your paper a brief article addressed "to correspondents" who have from all parts of the country, queried of you respecting the "mysterious noises" which have indeed made so much noise in these latter days.

In the editorial alluded to, you say,—"Being too much engaged in the discharge of the numerous duties of our position to reply to our correspondents upon this subject, individually, we beg to state to them briefly, through the Columns of the North Star, firstly, that we have heard the rappings" &c.

We have never received any intelligence from those alleged spirits; they are "of the earth, earthly," and possess no more illumination than we, who are yet in this clod of cumbrous clay."

Now, friend Douglass, I am not going to find fault with you for any matter therein contained; neither shall I blame you that you have not chosen to slip the Anti-Slavery harness, for the purpose of paying more attention to things which seem to you to occupy an outer field in which you have no work to do. I love the God-approved cause in which your physical energies and devoted mind are engaged too well to ask you to rob it of a single hour of labor, or to halt in the battle while the foe is yet unsubdued. But as an impression exists in my mind that many of your readers, and especially the correspondents referred to, have a strong desire to know something definite of what is to most a mystery, and believing, as I do, that your opportunities of observation have been too limited to admit of any very clear statement by you in regard to it, I propose—not as a disciple of a bubble fancy, or the victim of an exploded humbug, but as an honest expositor of the truth, to perform this small labor of love for you.

Let me state to you and your readers, in the outset, that were these sounds, which we hear, merely the effect of an ingenious contrivance on the part of a few men or women—no matter how cunning the hands that made them, I would not waste one moment of my time or insult the intelligence of your readers by any notice of this kind. Again, were they only the simple but strange production of passive matter, acted upon by some hidden law as yet veiled to the telescopic eye of science, we might wonder, as we always do when any new and unexplained phenomena attract our attention, and quietly hand the subject over to the savans of our time and tell them to find a parent for the nondescript offspring.

In the absence, however, of any such possibility, I deem the subject of too much importance for summary disposal, and of that nature with which Philosophy has nothing to do—any further than it may rationally explain the media, which serves as the electric chain connecting being with being in God's universe. In brief a mind of ordinary perceptions, lacking not time or patience and imbued with that sincerity which is ever willing to unlearn error as well as to learn truth, is just as good an investigator of some things as the white-haired savan, whose name has countless appendages.

It is somewhat difficult, within the limits of an newspaper article, to give an explicit and full exposition of this subject. The reader will undoubtedly, on perusal, find a multitude of questions suggested to his mind which he would like to have answered; and which, had I the opportunity, might for the most part be replied to at once and safisfactorily. I will only attempt therefore to give my own views and reasons for them.

Firstly, as thousands can testify, there are sounds produced, various in quality and volume, while observers are in the presence of one or more certain individuals.

Secondly, these sounds, by their peculiar nature, variations, difference of locality and simultaneous production, afford to any one who will listen to them during the space of even thirty minutes, when the communication is free, the most conclusive evidence that their origin is not in the volition of any visible human being or beings.

Thirdly, there is intelligence connected with and controlling the sounds, which is manifested, in a manner simple as it is beautiful, by the answers to questions put by observers at will to those unseen agencies.

When a question is asked which requires as an answer, but a simple affirmative or negative, it is replied to by the plain signal easily understood; but when a question requires anything more than that, the alphabet is resorted to.

I will give a few incidents which have come under my observation. On one occasion, as a sort of test of their intelligence, I took from my desk three several letters from as many different correspondents, with the names of the writers endorsed upon them, folded them compactly in a wrapper and placed the package in my side coat-pocket. When I came in the presence of these agencies, and was seated with several strangers at the table, my name was called to converse with them. I asked if the questions I had prepared in my mind would be answered; an affirmative was received. I then took out the package, laid it on the table—holding it the while—and asked how many letters are there in this package? Three was the reply. I then asked if the communicator would tell the company by spelling the names of the writers of those letters; an affirmative was signified. The alphabet was called and the name of Margaret Robinson was given as one of the writers. The same process was repeated, and Elizabeth was spelled by the invisible agent. The third name was refused to be given—why, I know not, but will state that it was the name of my sister (Sarah,) whose spirit, meanwhile, if we may believe the sounds, was conversing with me. On asking "how many letters are there in the first name of the third writer?" five was the reply I then opened the package and showed to the company the result; the replies were correct in every particular.

A gentleman from Boston asked if the sounds would tell, by means of the alphabet, the last words which his mother addressed to him; an affirmative was the response. The letters were called, and "good by my dear" were the words given as the last addressed by the mother to her son. "These were her very last words to me—no more, no less!" was his exclamation.

I have known a vast number of instances in which these agencies (be they what they may) have evinced an unerring perception truly astonishing; and which gave to the individuals in conversation with them the most unmistakable evidence of the possession of a knowledge familiar with all the minutiae of their lives, and a power to read, at will, the unspoken thoughts stirring at the moment in the secrect receses of their minds.

Now I know not why anything of this nature should for a moment, at this stage, prompt any person of ordinary understanding to indulge in levity or carelessly sneer at what he has not studied. The subject has chained the attention of some of the best minds in our country. They have approached it with the honest determination to use the appliances of their best reason to fathom the mystery. If it was of the earth earthy" no small number of those who have given it their attention would long since have discovered the deception and have consigned its authors to that ignomin which they would so richly have deserved. I say, and say it with some emphasis, that it argues no small degree of self-conceit in any one who is willing, without better evidence than has yet been or will be produced, to call this a delusion, and those deluded who claim it to be at least one of the most remarkable species of phenomena the world has ever witnessed.

Regarding the spirituality of these manifestations, I would not assign to them that character, if there was any room for argument. It is, of all others, the easiest and most rational way to account for them. I say this with care, and after first ascertaining, facts which shut out completely any other conclusion.

The mode of communication has often been alluded to as repulsive and totally at variance with that dignity and refinement which we would please to accord to the disembodied spirits of our kind. Now it seems to me if any one will reflect, and not get at conclusions by jumping, they can readily see that such a vew of the thing is about as devoid of calm rationality as the common estimate of manhood by the hue of the skin he wears. Just step with me from your office across to the Telegraph Station, where the unseen lightnings are heralding to us the swift-winged thoughts from all points of the compass. Hark! listen to that electric hammer, as is scores the language on the bit of paper. Do you hear the rapping? Click, click, click. Is it odious! No, it is beautiful! "I love to witness it"—you say. It is a triumph of man's glorious intelligence, and is robed about with that distinctive grandeur which marks its author as a being but "little lower" than those whose shining foreheads reflect the effulgence of the Deity. But how it raps! Yes, you will say, but this rapping is done by machinery, and therefore beautiful, Go with me again. But no, you will not; else I would take you to another station where the wires you here see are useless; where thought is borne to us from other worlds by less complicated means than is here used to bring it but a thousand miles. The embodied spirit has crossed mountains with his wires, has forded streams and robbed a forest to erect thereon his electric bridge, and converses with his distant fellow. The disembodied human, yet more ingenious, uses the simple elements of our common atmosphere, and raps without a hammer.

Very truly yours,

J. E. R.