He took in the situation at a glance.
Casting his eye directly upon the youth in the gallery, he uttered the lines as if addressing them directly to him, "Well, I would never have believed it if I had not seen it." The poor fellow, startled, drew back from his perilous position, and the audience broke into a storm of applause.
Joseph Jefferson was a Swedenborgian in his religious belief.

At one time too extreme a belief in spiritualism threatened to cloud his sound, wholesome understanding.

As he grew older and happier and passed out from the shadow of his early tragedy he fell away from the more sinister influence the supernatural had attained over his imagination.

One time in Washington I had him to breakfast to meet the Chief Justice and Mr.
Justice Matthews and Mr.Carlisle, the newly-elected Speaker of the House.

It was a rainy Sunday, and it was in my mind to warn him that our company was made up of hard-headed lawyers not apt to be impressed by fairy tales and ghost stories, and to suggest that he cut the spiritualism in case the conversation fell, as was likely, into the speculative.