The spirit-rapper; an autobiography

Footnotes have been collected at the end of each chapter, and are linked for ease of reference. Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation. New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain. The blank cover has been enhanced by adding the basic title page elements. Any corrections are indicated using an underline highlight. Placing the cursor over the correction will produce the original text in a small popup. Any corrections are indicated as hyperlinks, which will navigate the reader to the corresponding entry in the corrections table in the note at the end of the text. THE SPIRIT-RAPPER. THE SPIRIT-RAPPER; AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. BY O. A. BROWNSON, AUTHOR OF “CHARLES ELWOOD.” BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY. LONDON: CHARLES DOLMAN. M.DCCC.LIV. Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1854, by Little, Brown and Company . In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. PREFACE. If the critics undertake to determine, by any recognized rules of art, to what class of literary productions the following unpretending work belongs, I think they will be sorely puzzled. I am sure I am puzzled myself to say what it is. It is not a novel; it is not a romance; it is not a biography of a real individual; it is not a dissertation, an essay, or a regular treatise; and yet it perhaps has some elements of them all, thrown together in just such a way as best suited my convenience, or my purpose. I wanted to write a book, easy to write and not precisely hard to read, on the new superstition, or old superstition under a new name, exciting just now no little attention at home and abroad; and I chose such a literary form as I—not, properly speaking, a literary man—could best manage, and which would afford me the most facilities for bringing distinctly before the reader the various points to which I wished to direct his attention. If the critics think that I have chosen badly, they are at liberty to bestow upon the author as much of the castigation which, in his capacity of Reviewer, he has for many years been in…