Etherial Softdown, a pale and impressionable girl, is drawn into the circle of the ‘New Light’, where mesmerists and self-styled spiritual professors such as Boanerges Phospher feed on the energies of their followers. Webber’s introduction sets out his theory of mesmeric imposition before the story moves through New York boarding-houses and crowded lecture halls.
A curious period satire of the spiritualist movement at its first height, for readers of American oddities. Download the free EPUB.