The replacement of seasons

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Here he stopped abruptly, as if he thought he had said too much, and the subject dropped.
We reached New York early in the morning and separated, having arranged to visit that afternoon a celebrated "spiritual" medium who was then giving séances in the Empire City, and of whom my friend had heard and repeated to me several more or less marvellous stories liqua ejuice. Our visit, however, was unsatisfactory; and as we came away Colonel A—— said—
"Well, I suppose this experience confirms you in your disbelief?"
"No," said I. "My first visits have , and I have more than once been told that my own temperament is most unfavourable to the success of a seance. Nevertheless, I have in some cases witnessed marvels perfectly inexplicable by known natural laws; and I have heard and read of others attested by evidence I certainly cannot consider inferior to my own."
"Why," he said, "I thought from your conversation last night you were a complete disbeliever."
"I believe," answered I, "in very little of what I have seen. But that little is quite sufficient to dispose of the theory of pure imposture. On the other hand, there is nothing spiritual and nothing very human in the pranks played by or in the presence of the mediums. They remind one more of the feats of traditionary goblins; mischievous, noisy, untrustworthy; insensible to ridicule, apparently delighting to make fools of men, and perfectly indifferent to having the tables turned upon themselves doing business in hong kong."
"But do you believe in goblins?"
"No," I replied; "no more than in table-turning ghosts, and less than in apparitions. I am not bound to find either sceptics or spiritualists in plausible explanations. But when they insist on an alternative to their respective theories, I suggest Puck as at least equally credible with Satan, Shakespeare , or the parrot-cry of imposture. It is the very extravagance of illogical temper to call on me to furnish an explanation because I say 'we know far too little of the thing itself to guess at its causes;' but of the current guesses, imposture seems inconsistent with the evidence, and 'spiritual agency' with the character of the phenomena."