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Tales of Terror:
Edward Page Mitchell
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Tales of Terror
by
Edward Page Mitchell
This e-book edition: Project Gutenberg Australia, 2023
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Edward Page Mitchell.
EDWARD PAGE MITCHELL (1852-1927), who worked as
an editor and story writer for the New York daily The
Sun, is recognized as a major figure in the early development
of the science fiction genre.
His works include stories about a time machine ("The Clock that Went Backward," 1881) and an invisible man ("The
Crystal Man," 1881), both of which pre-date H.G. Wells' novels
on these subjects (1895 and 1897).
Other works include stories about faster-than-light travel
("The Tachypomp," 1874), a cyborg ("The Ablest Man in the World,"
1879), teleportation ("The Man without a Body", 1877), and
mind-transfer ("Exchanging Their Souls," 1877).
Besides works of science fiction, Mitchell wrote stories in the fantasy and horror genres. RGL offers special compilations of tales in all three categories.
—Roy Glashan, 22 January 2023
TABLE OF CONTENTS
●1. The Devilish Rat
●2. Exchanging Their Souls
●3. The Case of the Dow Twins
●4. An Extraordinary Wedding
●5. Back from That Bourne
●6. The Last Cruise of the Judas Iscariot
●7. The Flying Weathercock
●8. The Legendary Ship
●9. The Shadow on the Fancher Twins
1. — THE DEVILISH RAT
Published in the New York Sun, 27 January 1878
YOU know that when a man lives in a deserted castle on the top
of a great mountain by the side of the river Rhine, he is liable
to misrepresentation. Half the good people of the village of
Schwinkenschwank, including the burgomaster and the burgomaster's
nephew, believed that I was a fugitive from American justice. The
other half were just as firmly convinced that I was crazy, and
this theory had the support of the notary's profound knowledge of
human character and acute logic. The two parties to the
interesting controversy were so equally matched that they spent
all their time in confronting each other's arguments, and I was
left pretty much to myself.
As everybody with the slightest pretension to cosmopolitan
knowledge is already aware, the old Schloss Schwinkenschwank is
haunted by the ghosts of twenty-nine medieval barons and
baronesses. The behavior of these ancient spectres was very
considerate. They annoyed me, on the whole, far less than the
rats, which swarmed in great numbers in every part of the castle.
When I first took possession of my quarters, I was obliged to
keep a lantern burning all night, and continually to beat about
me with a wooden club in order to escape the fate of Bishop
Hatto. Afterward I sent to Frankfort and had made for me a wire
cage in which I was able to sleep with comfort and safety as soon
as I became accustomed to the sharp gritting of the rats' teeth
as they gnawed the iron in their impotent attempts to get in and
eat me.
Barring the spectres and the rats, and now and then a
transient bat or owl, I was the first tenant of the Schloss
Schwinkenschwank for three or four centuries. After leaving Bonn,
where I had greatly profited by the learned and ingenious
lectures of the famous Calcarius, Herr Professor of Metaphysical
Science in that admirable university, I had selected this ruin as
the best possible place for the trial of a certain experiment in
psychology. The hereditary Landgraf Von Toplitz, who owned
Schloss Schwinkenschwank, showed no signs of surprise when I went
to him and offered six thalers a month for the privilege of
lodging in his ramshackle castle. The clerk of a Broadway hotel
could not have taken my application more coolly or my money in a
more businesslike spirit.
"It will be necessary to pay the first month's rent in
advance," said he.
"That I am fortunately prepared to do, my well-born hereditary
Landgraf," I replied, counting out six dollars. He pocketed them
and gave me a receipt for the same. I wonder whether he ever
tried to collect rent from his ghosts.
The most inhabitable room in the castle was that in the
northwest tower, but it was already occupied by the Lady Adelaide
Maria, eldest daughter of the Baron von Schotten, and starved to
death in the thirteenth century by her affectionate papa for
refusing to wed a one-legged freebooter from over the river. As I
could not think of intruding upon a lady, I took up my quarters
at the head of the south turret stairway, where there was nobody
in possession except a sentimental monk, who was out a good deal
nights and gave me no trouble at any time.
In such calm seclusion as I enjoyed in the Schloss it is
possible to reduce physical and mental activity to the lowest
degree consistent with life. St. Pedro of Alcantara, who passed
forty years in a convent cell, schooled himself to sleep only an
hour and a half a day, and to take food but once in three days.
While diminishing the functions of his body to such an extent he
must also, I firmly believe, have reduced his soul almost to the
negative character of an unconscious infant's. It is exercise,
thought, friction, activity, that bring out the individuality of
a man's nature. Professor Calcarius' pregnant words remained
burned into my memory:
"What is the mysterious link that binds soul to the living
body? Why am I Calcarius, or rather why does the soul called
Calcarius inhabit this particular organism? (Here the learned
professor slapped his enormous thigh with his pudgy hand.) Might
not I as well be another, and might not another be I? Loosen the
individualized ego from the fleshy surroundings to which it
coheres by force of habit and by reason of long contact, and who
shall say that it may not be expelled by an act of volition,
leaving the living body receptive, to be occupied by some
non-individualized ego, worthier and better than the old?"
This profound suggestion made a lasting impression upon my
mind. While perfectly satisfied with my body, which is sound,
healthy, and reasonably beautiful, I had long been discontented
with my soul, and constant contemplation of its weakness, its
grossness, its inadequacy, had intensified discontentment to
disgust. Could I, indeed, escape myself, could I tear this paste
diamond from its fine casket and replace it with a genuine jewel,
what sacrifices would I not consent to, and how fervently would I
bless Calcarius and the hour that took me to Bonn!
It was to try this untried experiment that I shut myself up in
the Schloss Schwinkenschwank.
Excepting little Hans, the innkeeper's son, who climbed the
mountain three times a week from the village to bring me bread
and cheese and white wine, and afterward Hans's sister, my only
visitor during the period of my retirement was Professor
Calcarius. He came over from Bonn twice to cheer and encourage
me.
On the occasion of his first visit night fell while we were
still talking of Pythagoras and metempsychosis. The profound
metaphysicist was a corpulent man and very short-sighted.
"I can never get down the hill alive," he cried, wringing his
hands anxiously. "I should stumble, and, Gott im Himmel,
precipitate myself peradventure upon some jagged rock."
"You must stay all night, Professor," said I, "and sleep with
me in my wire cage. I should like you to meet my roommate, the
monk."
"Subjective entirely, my dear young friend," he said. "Your
apparition is a creature of the optic nerve and I shall
contemplate it without alarm, as becomes a philosopher."
I put my Herr Professor to bed in the wire cage and with
extreme difficulty crowded myself in by his side. At his especial
request I left the lantern burning.﹃Not that I have any
apprehension of your subjective spectres,﹄he explained. "Mere
figments of the brain they are. But in the dark I might roll over
and crush you."
"How progresses the self-suppression," he asked at length,
"the subordination of the individual soul? Eh! What was
that?"
"A rat, trying to get in at us," I replied. "Be calm: you are
in no peril. My experiment proceeds satisfactorily. I have quite
eliminated all interest in the outside world. Love, gratitude,
friendship, care for my own welfare and the welfare of my friends
have nearly disappeared. Soon, I hope, memory will also fade
away, and with my memory my individual past."
"You are doing splendidly!" he exclaimed with enthusiasm, "and
rendering to psychologic science an inestimable service. Soon
your psychic nature will be a blank, a vacuum, ready to
receive—God preserve me! What was that?"
"Only the screech of an owl," said I, reassuringly, as the
great gray bird with which I had become familiar fluttered
noisily down through an aperture in the roof and lit upon the top
of our wire cage.
Calcarius regarded the owl with interest, and the owl blinked
gravely at Calcarius.
"Who knows," said the Herr Professor, "but what that owl is
animated by the soul of some great dead philosopher? Perhaps
Pythagoras, perhaps Plotinus, perhaps the spirit of Socrates
himself abides temporarily beneath those feathers."
I confessed that some such idea had already occurred to
me.
"And in that case," continued the professor, "you have only to
negative your own nature, to nullify your own individuality, in
order to receive into your body this great soul, which, as my
intuitions tell me, is that of Socrates, and is hovering around
your physical organization, hoping to effect an entrance.
Persist, my worthy young student, in your most laudable
experiment, and metaphysical science—Merciful heaven! Is
that the Devil?"
It was the huge gray rat, my nightly visitor. This hideous
creature had grown in his life, perhaps of a century, to the size
of a small terrier. His whiskers were perfectly white and very
thick. His immense tushes had become so long that they curved
over till the points almost impaled his skull. His eyes were big
and blood red. The corners of his upper lip were so shriveled and
drawn up that his countenance wore an expression of diabolical
malignity, rarely seen except in some human faces. He was too old
and knowing to gnaw at the wires; but he sat outside on his
haunches, and gazed in at us with an indescribable look of
hatred. My companion shivered. After a while the rat turned away,
rattled his callous tail across the wire netting, and disappeared
in the darkness. Professor Calcarius breathed a deep sigh of
relief, and soon was snoring so profoundly that neither owls,
rats, nor spectres ventured near us till morning.
I had so far succeeded in merging my intellectual and moral
qualities in the routine of mere animal existence that when it
was time for Calcarius to come again, as he had promised, I felt
little interest in his approaching visit. Hansel, who constituted
my commissariat, had been taken sick of the measles, and I was
dependent for my food and wine upon the coming of his pretty
sister Emma, a flaxen-haired maiden of eighteen, who climbed the
steep path with the grace and agility of a gazelle. She was an
artless little thing, and told me of her own accord the story of
her simple love. Fritz was a soldier in the Emperor Wilhelm's
army. He was now in garrison at Cologne. They hoped that he would
soon get a lieutenancy, for he was brave and faithful, and then
he would come home and marry her. She had saved up her dairy
money till it amounted to quite a little purse, which she had
sent him that it might help purchase his commission. Had I ever
seen Fritz? No? He was handsome and good, and she loved him more
than she could tell.
I listened to this prattle with the same amount of romantic
interest that a proposition in Euclid would excite and
congratulated myself that my old soul had so nearly disappeared.
Every night the gray owl perched above me. I knew that Socrates
was waiting to take possession of my body, and I yearned to open
my bosom and receive that grand soul. Every night the detestable
rat came and peered through the wires. His cool, contemptuous
malice exasperated me strangely. I longed to reach out from
beneath my cage and seize and throttle him, but I was afraid of
the venom of his bite.
My own soul had by this time nearly wasted away, so to speak,
through disciplined disuse. The owl looked down lovingly at me
with his great placid eyes. A noble spirit seemed to shine
through them and to say, "I will come when you are ready." And I
would look back into their lustrous depths and exclaim with
infinite yearning,﹃Come soon, oh Socrates, for I am almost
ready!﹄Then I would turn and meet the devilish gaze of the
monstrous rat, whose sneering malevolence dragged me back to
earth and to earth's hatreds.
My detestation of the abominable beast was the sole lingering
trace of the old nature. When he was not by, my soul seemed to
hover around and above my body, ready to take wing and leave it
free forever. At his appearance, an unconquerable disgust and
loathing undid in a second all that had been accomplished, and I
was still myself. To succeed in my experiment I felt that the
hateful creature whose presence barred out the grand old
philosopher's soul must be dispatched at any cost of sacrifice or
danger.
"I will kill you, you loathsome animal!" I shouted to the rat;
"and then to my emancipated body will come the soul of Socrates
which awaits me yonder."
The rat turned on me his leering eyes and grinned more
sardonically than ever. His scorn was more than I could bear. I
threw up the side of the wire cage and clutched desperately at my
enemy. I caught him by the tail. I drew him close to me. I
crunched the bones of his slimy legs, felt blindly for his head,
and when I got both hands to his neck, fastened upon his life
with a terrible grip. With all the strength at my command, and
with all the recklessness of a desperate purpose, I tore and
twisted the flesh of my loathsome victim. He gasped, uttered a
horrible cry of wild pain, and at last lay limp and quiet in my
clutch. Hate was satisfied, my last passion was at an end, and I
was free to welcome Socrates.
When I awoke from a long and dreamless sleep, the events of
the night before and, indeed, of my whole previous life were as
the dimly remembered incidents in a story read years ago.
The owl was gone but the mangled carcass of the rat lay by my
side. Even in death his face wore its horrible grin. It now
looked like a Satanic smile of triumph.
I arose and shook off my drowsiness. A new life seemed to
tingle in my veins. I was no longer indifferent and negative. I
took a lively interest in my surroundings and wanted to be out in
the world among men, to plunge into affairs and exult in
action.
Pretty Emma came up the bill bringing her basket.﹃I am going
to leave you,﹄said I. "I shall seek better quarters than the
Schloss Schwinkenschwank."
"And shall you go to Cologne," she eagerly asked, "to the
garrison where the Emperor's soldiers are?"
"Perhaps so—on my way to the world."
"And will you go for me to Fritz?" she continued, blushing. "I
have good news to send him. His uncle, the mean old notary, died
last night. Fritz now has a small fortune and he must come home
to me at once."
"The notary," said I slowly, "died last night?"
"Yes, sir; and they say he is black in the face this morning.
But it is good news for Fritz and me."
"Perhaps—" continued I, still more slowly
"—perhaps Fritz would not believe me. I am a stranger, and
men who know the world, like your young soldier, are given to
suspicion."
"Carry this ring," she quickly replied, taking from her finger
a worthless trinket. "Fritz gave it to me and he will know by it
that I trust you."
My next visitor was the learned Calcarius. He was quite out of
breath when he reached the apartment I was preparing to
leave.
"How goes our metempsychosis, my worthy pupil?" he asked.﹃I
arrived last evening from Bonn, but rather than spend another
night with your horrible rodents, I submitted my purse to the
extortion of the village innkeeper. The rogue swindled me,﹄he
continued, taking out his purse and counting over a small
treasure of silver. "He charged me forty Groschen for a bed and
breakfast."
The sight of the silver, and the sweet clink of the pieces as
they came in contact in Professor Calcarius' palm, thrilled my
new soul with an emotion it had not yet experienced. Silver
seemed the brightest thing in the world to me at that moment, and
the acquisition of silver, by whatever means, the noblest
exercise of human energy. With a sudden impulse that I was unable
to resist, I sprang upon my friend and instructor and wrenched
the purse from his hands. He uttered a cry of surprise and
dismay.
"Cry away!" I shouted; "it will do no good. Your miserly
screams will be heard only by rats and owls and ghosts. The money
is mine."
"What's this?" he exclaimed. "You rob your guest, your friend,
your guide and mentor in the sublime walks of metaphysical
science? What perfidy has taken possession of your soul?"
I seized the Herr Professor by the legs and threw him
violently to the floor. He struggled as the gray rat had
struggled. I tore pieces of wire from my cage, and bound him hand
and foot so tightly that the wire cut deep into his fat
flesh.
"Ho! Ho!" said I, standing over him;﹃what a feast for the
rats your corpulent carcass will make,﹄and I turned to go.
"Good Gott!" he cried. "You do not intend to leave me:
No one ever comes here."
"All the better," I replied, gritting my teeth and shaking my
fist in his face; "the rats will have uninterrupted opportunity
to relieve you of your superfluous flesh. Oh, they are very
hungry, I assure you, Herr Metaphysician, and they will speedily
help you to sever the mysterious link that binds soul to living
body. They well know how to loosen the individualized ego from
the fleshly surroundings. I congratulate you on the prospect of a
rare experiment."
The cries of Professor Calcarius grew fainter and fainter as I
made my way down the hill. Once out of hearing I stopped to count
my gains. Over and over again, with extraordinary joy, I told the
thalers in his purse, and always with the same result. There were
just thirty pieces of silver.
My way into the world of barter and profit led me through
Cologne. At the barracks I sought out Fritz Schneider of
Schwinkenschwank.
"My friend," said I, putting my hand upon his shoulder, "I am
going to do you the greatest service which one man may do
another. You love little Emma, the innkeeper's daughter?"
"I do indeed," he said. "You bring news of her?"
"I have just now torn myself away from her too ardent
embrace."
"It is a lie!" he shouted. "The little girl is as true as
gold."
"She is as false as the metal in this trinket," said I with
composure, tossing him Emma's ring. "She gave it to me yesterday
when we parted."
He looked at the ring and then put both hands to his forehead.
"It is true," he groaned. "Our betrothal ring!" I watched his
anguish with philosophical interest.
"See here," he continued, taking a neatly knitten purse from
his bosom. "Here is the money she sent to help me buy promotion.
Perhaps that belongs to you?"
"Quite likely," I replied, very coolly. "The pieces have a
familiar look."
Without another word the soldier flung the purse at my feet
and turned away. I heard him sobbing, and the sound was music.
Then I picked up the purse and hastened to the nearest café to
count the silver. There were just thirty pieces again.
To acquire silver, that is the chief joy possible to my new
nature. It is a glorious pleasure, is it not? How fortunate that
the soul, which took possession of my body in the Schloss, was
not Socrates', which would have made me, at best, a dismal
ruminator like Calcarius; but the soul that had dwelt in the gray
rat till I strangled him. At one time I thought that my new soul
came to me from the dead notary in the village. I know, now, that
I inherited it from the rat, and I believe it to be the soul that
once animated Judas Iscariot, that prince of men of
action.
2. — EXCHANGING THEIR SOULS
PRINCE MICHALSKOVICH AND DR. HARWOOD'S WONDERFUL CURE
Published in the New York Sun, 27 April 1877
The Strange Confession Of A New York Physician—a Case
That
Has Puzzled The Medical Fraternity For Many Years Past
DR. JAMES HARWOOD, who died last week, stood for more than
twenty years very near the head of the medical profession. His
fame extended also to the other side of the water, and when
traveling in Europe other celebrated physicians availed
themselves of the opportunity of consulting him. On one of his
Continental tours, Dr. James Harwood effected a most marvelous
cure which soon made the rounds of the papers and helped
materially in establishing his world-wide reputation. He
succeeded in curing the Russian Prince Michalskovich of an almost
hopeless form of monomania. What made the case of such interest
to the medical profession was the extraordinary and strange means
which the doctor had employed to effect the cure. Dr. James
Harwood maintained, verbally and in print, that he had restored
the prince to a sound mind by means of mesmerizing him. This
occurred about twenty or thirty years ago, and mesmerism was then
all the rage, and there were many intelligent persons who fully
believed in all the wonderful things told of its power.
Naturally, the case formed for a long time a fertile subject for
discussion in medical circles and periodicals, and after a while,
in view of the high respectability of the practitioner and the
testimony corroborating it, the prince's strange case of insanity
and Dr. James Harwood's wonderful cure was entered as a fact into
the various medical annals and finally found also a place in the
textbooks used in our medical schools and colleges.
But scientific men are always somewhat skeptical, and to this
day some members of the medical profession continue to look with
suspicion upon the doctor's account of the cure.
Six or seven years ago the prince himself paid a visit to this
city. He had scarcely looked at his new quarters in the hotel
when he was told that two celebrated New York physicians, father
and son, begged the favor of an interview. When admitted, the
older explained that he was a professor of medicine, and now
engaged on an elaborate work on physiology, and that he would
feel obliged if the prince would give him a detailed account of
his own famous case, to be incorporated in the chapter on
insanity. The prince graciously complied and, entering upon every
particular connected with his cure, he ascribed it again to the
effects of mesmerism. The aged professor thereupon ventured on
letting an incredulous smile flit across his face. But the moment
the prince had seen and interpreted this treacherous smile, the
medical gentleman became aware of having been seized by the coat
collar and deposited on the soft carpet of the corridor outside
of the prince's door, where his son soon came rushing after him,
followed by his hat and cane. There is a rumor in medical circles
that this is the reason why the prince's curious case is not
mentioned in a recently published great American work on
physiology.
The original account of the marvelous cure of the insane
prince as Dr. James Harwood first gave it reads as follows:
I was called to St. Petersburg to examine the case of Prince
Michalskovich, who was suffering from a very curious mental
affection. I found him raving in a language wholly unknown, at
least to the attending physicians and several linguists who had
been invited to his bedside. After having succeeded in allaying
his brain fever, I was in hopes of hearing him resume the use of
Russian, French, or English, in which he was in the habit of
conversing, but he persisted in using his unintelligible
gibberish. Otherwise he was quiet and inoffensive. His deportment
toward his numerous serfs and servants was, in fact, wondrously
gentle and courteous while, when sane, he exhibited always to
them the most irascible temper, and treated them habitually
brutally and cruelly. He began to show also an extraordinary
preference for coarse clothing and frugal meats. One day he
showed a desire to leave the palace. I instructed his attendants
to give him as much liberty as possible, and to follow him only
at a distance. In the evening these men reported that the prince
had been at work all day in the shop of a carriage maker. He had
gone into the shop and, without saying a word, had taken hammer
and hatchet and assisted the workmen in making a carriage. The
wheelwright said that he had let the prince have his way because
he saw at once that he was a very skilled laborer. Early in the
morning, the prince was at work again in the wheelwright's shop,
and continued there until evening. In a week or two it became
perfectly plain that the prince had the monomania of being
nothing but a simple carriage maker. I tried at first to prevent
him from going to the shop, but seeing that it distracted his
mind only more, I consented to let him go on, trusting that
something would occur which would lead his mind back into its
proper channels.
I was very near fixing a day for my return to New York, and
about to decide that the prince was an incurable lunatic, when my
eyes fell on a paragraph in a medical journal speaking of the
case of an insane journeyman in Tiflis, who imagined himself to
be a powerful and wealthy prince. I read the account through a
second time, feeling peculiarly impressed by the singular
coincidences that this poor fellow was a carriage maker by trade,
and that, while he had never been heard to speak anything but an
obscure Georgian dialect of Mingrolia, and had always been known
as a low and ignorant peasant, he was now heard in his ravings to
make a fluent and cultured use of Russian, German, French, and
English. It was this unexpected talking in foreign languages
which had caused this journeyman's case to make the rounds of the
papers. I could not help observing that it was exactly the same
case as that of Prince Michalskovich, only inverted. The prince
wanted to be a wheelwright; the wheelwright wanted to be a
prince. The one had given up talking in civilized languages, and
talked gibberish; the other had given up his gibberish, and
talked Russian, English, and other tongues.
Naturally enough I took at once the necessary
steps to have the man removed from the Tiflis to the St.
Petersburg insane asylum. I claimed him there and found that the
correspondence between his case and that of the prince was most
surprising. After consulting the family of Prince Michalskovich,
I had the fellow taken to the palace with all the pomp and
ceremony that was due a prince, just out of sheer curiosity to
see what the development would be. He confounded everybody. He
took possession of the prince's private apartments as if he had
occupied them all of his life. He greeted the parents, relatives,
and friends of the prince by name, used the wardrobe, and ordered
the servants, as if he were really the prince himself. The grace
of his manners and the elegance with which he expressed himself
in various languages were most astonishing, and withal he had the
build, the hands, and features of a rough artisan. I put him to
another test. I confronted him with the veritable prince in the
carriage factory. He spoke to the prince patronizingly, even
somewhat familiarly, but still preserving always a certain
distance and showing at times unmistakable haughtiness. He did
not seem to notice the fact that the prince gave him no answer in
return to anything he said.
Thus another week or two passed by, and I had made no progress
in the case of the prince, except that instead of one insane man
I had now two on my hands. I was again on the point of abandoning
the prince when one day a seedy-looking individual paid me a
visit and offered to cure the prince instantly if I guaranteed
that he should be paid well for his services. A thousand rubles
was his price. I made the bargain with him, but put in the
condition that I was to be present at every step of the
operation.
At the appointed time I had the prince and the artisan in the
palace. The mysterious stranger made me order them to sit side by
side as closely as possible. Then he passed his hands over their
faces, moving them continually to and fro as if mesmerizing the
two men, who soon fell into a state of the most complete
unconsciousness which I have ever witnessed. Thereupon he
stripped them of every garment on their bodies, continuing all
the time his mesmerizing manipulations. Suddenly the prince and
the artisan felt simultaneously a heavy shock, after which their
bodies lay as rigid as in death.
"I have caused their spirits to depart from them," said the
stranger, in an explanatory tone. "Now I shall order the spirit
of this one to enter the body of the other, and shall make the
spirit of the other come into this body."
He stretched out his hands and commanded, "Now!"
The very instant he uttered the word the two bodies shook and
trembled.
The stranger then came up to me and said, "Have you the money
ready for me? Take it out, if you please, and hold it in your
hand. The moment I order the bodies to move, and you hear the
prince talk Russian and see him act like a prince, while the
journeyman looks around bewildered and abashed as a peasant
would, you will know that I have performed the cure, and you must
slip the thousand rubles into my hand. I have not the time to
wait another moment. Are you ready? All right, then. Now!"
Instantly the prince jumped up in full possession of his mind,
called in Russian for his servants, and stepped up to me and
demanded an explanation of the strange condition in which he had
been placed—he was still naked. The Tiflis artisan looked
as stupid and terrified as he could. To make the matter short,
the stranger had indeed effected a perfect cure; both men were
again of a sound mind.
I turned to the stranger and handed him his thousand rubles,
adding that I should like to see him at my hotel and converse
with him about the strange methods of his cure. But he shook his
head and stole quietly out of the room.
Mesmerism or no mesmerism, said Dr. James Harwood, in
conclusion, this is the way Prince Michalskovich was cured,
and this is all that I have to state in regard to it.
SUCH was the great sensation of about twenty years ago. The
papers were full of it, everybody was full of it, and nobody knew
what to make of it. Spiritualists and mesmerizers, of course,
were proud of it, and felt triumphant. There was, in fact, no
possibility of denying the case. Prince Michalskovich was a
well-known character, and his prolonged sickness and final
monomania of believing himself a simple carriage maker were
well-authenticated facts. Also the Tiflis artisan's sudden and
wonderful gift of tongues was attested to by several eminent
physicians who had examined and treated him in the early stages
of his insanity.
Several years ago, when the doctor was still residing in this
city, he was urged by a colleague to come forward with the real
facts of the case, and thereby save the honor of the profession
as well as his own. The doctor acceded in so far to the demand
that he deposited with a friend a full account of the case,
taking a solemn promise that the same should not be published
before the prince and he himself were dead and buried. This
confession is now laid before the world, and though rather
strange and unexpected, yet it cannot be said of the doctor that
the course he pursued was entirely unjustifiable. He says:
The medical world will not be very much surprised when they
read that I acknowledge the stranger's cure of the prince and the
artisan to have been a deception, and that I knew it at the time
to have been such, because the whole scene was of my own
devising. From the first I have always felt confident that the
better class of physicians would not fail to perceive that my
making use of a magician to cure an insane man was one of those
tricks to which a physician has sometimes to resort in the
treatment of the insane, especially of those who are laboring
under a great self-deception. But the great credulity of the
masses took me by surprise. In a fortnight all the papers had
copied the nonsensical account of the prince's cure, and I was at
once besieged with thousands of letters from medical men and
associations, and everybody I met wanted me to tell him the story
over again. I could not do otherwise than give the same version
of the case to all inquirers, for in cures of insanity effected
by deception it is of the utmost importance that the patient does
never discover that his physician only deceived him. Here is a
case in point: A merchant once imagined that he had a watch in
his head, and that the never-ceasing ticking prevented him from
thinking and sleeping. When placed in an asylum, he was told that
he had to submit to the very dangerous operation of having the
watch got out of his head. He was chloroformed, a deep cut was
made into a safe spot, and when he awoke a small blood-stained
mechanism was shown and given him with the assurance that it had
been taken out of his head. He believed it, and was cured. He
resumed his commercial pursuits and made a great fortune.
But now comes the terrible sequel. One day, after ten or
twenty years, he met in the street the physician who had cured
him of his insanity. The doctor, attempting to joke with him
about the former monomania, said laughingly, "What a funny fancy
that was of yours to think that you carried a watch in your
brain. Don't you now sometimes laugh at yourself when you
recollect it?"
The merchant looked at him in surprise. "Then you did not cut
it out of my head! I thought so. I always thought so. I never
believed it. I heard it tick all the time just the same. Now put
your ear right here. How it ticks! Don't you hear it tick?
Tick, tick, tick!"
The man was insane again. Nothing could cure him now, for
nobody could deceive him again.
I determined to manage my own case better. I resolved to tell
my secret to nobody in order to be sure that nobody would tell it
again. If a single word of it had at any time crept out, it would
have reached the prince by some means or other, sooner or later.
Luckily, the mystery was deepened by the strange coincidence of
the Tiflis carriage maker, and whenever I could, I drew the
attention of medical men away from my trick with the magician to
the real and well-authenticated fact of the wonderful similarity
and simultaneousness of the insanity of the artisan and the
prince. It cannot be denied that the case is one of the most
wonderful occurrences in medical practice, and I shall proceed to
present it, shorn of everything but what actually happened.
Prince Michalskovich's nurse was a beautiful Georgian woman
whose own child was made his playfellow, and shared his tuition
until he was about fourteen years of age. Then the prince went on
his travels, and his foster brother returned with his mother to
the district of Mingrolia, in Russian Georgia, where he learned
the trade of a carriage maker. The prince loved the nurse and his
foster brother dearly, and he spent many a season in the
Transcaucasian mountains in order to be near them. He was a very
active youth, fond of hunting and fishing, and taking delight in
mechanical employments, he spent many a day in the wheelwright's
shop working at the side of his foster brother.
Unfortunately the prince fell in love with the same young
peasant woman whom his foster brother was about to marry. When
the young artisan discovered the unfaithfulness of his betrothed
he had a violent scene with the prince and the very day, as
misfortune would have it, the young woman died, suddenly and
unexpectedly. Her two lovers were then equally wretched. Both
left Mingrolia. The wheelwright went to Tiflis and worked there
under an assumed name to prevent the prince from finding him
again. The prince returned to St. Petersburg and it was soon
discovered that he was subject to abnormal fits of melancholia.
His yearning for his foster brother, coupled with the unfortunate
termination of his love affair, finally developed the peculiar
form of insanity already described.
The young artisan continued at work in Tiflis. He spoke to no
one of his past history and formed no friendships among his
fellow workmen. The day's work done, he returned at night to his
hovel where he spent the remainder of the day in strict
seclusion. He became insane, too, imagining on a sudden to be his
own foster brother, Prince Michalskovich. This considering one's
self to be some great and powerful person is quite a common form
of monomania, and hence the artisan's case would hardly have
attracted attention if it had not been coupled with his
surprising use of foreign languages. He had never been known to
speak anything but his peasant dialect, and nobody suspected to
think that he was a man of education and refinement. The
physician who attended him at once pronounced his case the great
marvel of the age. The story of the sudden gift of tongues
traveled over the world, and at last reached me also. You know
how I sent for the young man and finally took him into the
palace. He was instantly recognized as the foster brother of the
prince. One day he startled me by inquiring for his brother Paul.
I perceived at once that his reason was dawning again, and by
careful treatment I succeeded in restoring him to his senses.
When I told him of the prince's mental malady and of the
wonderful coincidence of his own, the young man's affection for
the prince revived and he was full of ardor to assist me to set
up the situation by which I hoped to bring about a cure. In the
course of a conversation he told me one day some anecdotes
illustrative of the gross superstition of the prince. He
mentioned, among other things, the prince's strong faith in the
transmigration of souls, and his firm belief in the pretensions
of persons like Cagliostro or Joseph Balsamo. I saw at once an
opportunity for another experiment, and I quickly concocted the
scene with the magician which I described. When the prince came
to his senses again, he listened to my account of his wonderful
cure by the mysterious stranger in perfect good faith, and when
he saw his foster brother and heard him say that he had also been
cured that very moment, he was perfectly satisfied, and acted
again the sane man.
The notoriety which the prince attained through the widespread
accounts of his wonderful cure flattered him very much, and if
anybody had insinuated to him that he had been duped, he would
have regarded it as a great insult. It is rumored that some New
York physician was made to feel his wrath when he called on the
prince and wished him to understand that he believed that I had
only deceived him. Of course, if somebody had told the prince
that he had heard me say that his cure was effected simply by a
medical trick, the consequences would have been of a very serious
nature.
Such is Dr. James Harwood's confession. Does it justify him?
3. — THE CASE OF THE DOW TWINS
Published in the New York Sun, 08 April 1877
"MY notions about soul's influence on soul," said Dr. Richards
of Saturday Cove to me one day last September, "are a little
peculiar. I don't make a practice of giving 'em away to the folks
around here. The cove people hold that when a doctor gets beyond
jalap and rhubarb he's trespassing on the parson's property. Now
it's a long road from jalap to soul, but I don't see why one man
mightn't travel as well as another. Will you oblige me with a
clam?"
I obliged him with a clam. We were sitting together on the
rocks, fishing for tomcod. Saturday Cove is a small watering
place a few miles below Belfast, on the west shore of Penobscot
bay. It apparently derives its name from a belief, generally
entertained by the covers, that this spot was the final and
crowning achievement of the Creator before resting on the seventh
day. The cove village consists of a hotel, two churches, several
stores, and a graveyard containing former generations of
Saturdarians. It is a favorite gibe among outsiders, who envy the
placid quiet of the place, that if the population of the
graveyard should be dug up and distributed through the village,
and the present inhabitants laid away beneath the sod, there
would be no perceptible diminution in the liveliness of the
settlement. The cove proper abounds with tomcod, which may be
caught with clams.
"Yes," continued Dr. Richards, as he forced the barb of his
jig hook into the tender organism of the clam, "my theory is that
a strong soul may crowd a weak soul out of the body which belongs
to the weak soul and operate through that body, even though miles
away and involuntarily. I believe, moreover, that a man may have
two souls, one his own by right and the other an intruder. In
fact I know that this is so and it being so what becomes of your
moral responsibility? What, I ask, becomes of your moral
responsibility?"
I replied that I could not imagine.
"Your doctrine of moral responsibility," said the doctor
sternly, as if it were my doctrine and I were responsible for
moral responsibility, "isn't worth this tomcod." And he took a
small fish off his hook and contemptuously tossed it back into
the cove. "Did you ever hear of the case of the Dow twins?"
I had never heard of the case of the Dow twins.
"Well," resumed the doctor, "they were born into the family of
Hiram Dow, thirty years or more ago, in the red farmhouse just
over the hill back of us. My predecessor, old Dr. Gookin,
superintended their birth, and has often told me the
circumstances. The Dow twins came into the world bound back to
back by a fleshy ligature which extended half the length of the
spinal processes. They would probably have traveled through life
in an intimate juxtaposition had the matter depended on your
great city surgeons—your surgeons who were afraid to
disconnect Chang and Eng, and who discussed the operation till
the poor fellows died without parting company. Old Dr. Gookin,
however, who hadn't attempted anything for years in the surgical
line, more than to pull a tooth or to cut out an occasional wen,
calmly went to work and sharpened up his rusty old operating
knife and slashed and gashed the twins apart before they had been
three hours breathing. This promptitude of Gookin's saved the Dow
twins a good deal of inconvenience."
"I should think so."
"And yet," added the doctor, reflectively, "perhaps it might
have been better for 'em both if they hadn't been separated.
Better for Jehiel, especially, since he wouldn't have been put in
a false position. Then, on the other hand, my theory would have
lacked the confirmation of an illustrative example. Do you want
the story?"
"By all means."
WELL, Jacob and Jehiel grew up healthy, strapping boys, like
as two peas physically, but not mentally and morally. Jehiel was
all Dow—slow, slow-witted, melancholy inclined, and
disposed to respect the Ten Commandments. Jake, he had his
mother's git-up-and-git—she was a Fox of Fox
Island—and was into mischief from the time he was tall
enough to poke burdock burrs down his grandmother's back. Dr.
Gookin watched the development of the twins with great interest.
He used to say that there was an invisible nerve telegraph
between Jake and Jehiel. Jehiel seemed to sense whenever Jacob
was up to any of his pranks. One night, for instance, when Jake
was off robbing a hen roost, Jehiel sat up in bed in his sleep
and crowed like a frightened cock until the whole family was
aroused.
I came here and opened my office about ten years ago. At that
time Jehiel had grown into a steady, tolerably industrious young
man, prominent in the Congregational Church, and so sober and
decorous that the village people had trusted him with the driving
of the town hearse. When I first knew him he was courting a young
woman by the name of Giles, who lived about seven miles out in
the country. Jehiel was a tin knocker by trade, and a more pious,
respectable, reliable tin knocker you never saw.
Jake had turned out very differently. By the time he was
twenty-one he had made Saturday Cove too hot to hold him, and
everybody, including his twin Jehiel, was glad when he enlisted
in a Maine regiment. I never saw Jake in my life, for I came here
after he had departed, but I had a pretty good notion of what a
reckless, loud-mouthed, harum-scarum reprobate he must have been.
After the war he drifted into the western country, and we heard
of him occasionally, first as a steamboat runner at St. Louis,
then in jail at Jefferson for swindling a blind Dutchman, then as
a gambler and rough in Cheyenne, and finally as a debt beat in
Frisco. You could tell pretty well when Jake was in deviltry by
watching the actions of Jehiel. At such times, Jehiel was
restless. Knocked tin with an uneasy impatience that wasn't
natural with him, was as solemn and glum as an undertaker.
He was impatient and short to the people of Saturday Cove, and
evidently had to struggle hard to be good. It seemed as if Dr.
Gookin's knife had severed the physical bond but not the mental
one.
The strangest thing of all was in regard to Jehiel's
attentions to the young woman named Giles. She was a sober,
demure, church-going person, whom Jacob had never been able to
interest, but who, as everybody said, would make an excellent
helpmate for Jehiel. He seemed to care a good deal for her in his
steady, slow way and made a point twice a week of driving over to
bring her to prayer-meeting at the cove. But when one of his odd
spells was on him he forsook her altogether, and weeks would go
by, to her great distress, without his appearing at the Giles
gate. As Jake went from bad to worse these periods of
indifference became more frequent and prolonged, and occasioned
the young woman named Giles much misery and a good many
tears.
One fine afternoon in the summer of 1871, Jacob Dow, as we
afterward learned, was shot through the heart by a Mexican in a
drunken row at San Diego. He sprang high into the air and fell
upon his face, and when they laid him away a good Catholic priest
said mass for the repose of his soul.
That same afternoon, as it happened, old Dr. Gookin was to
have been buried in the graveyard yonder. He had died a day or
two before, at an extreme age, but in the full possession of his
faculties, and one of the last remarks he made was to express
regret that he would be unable to follow the career of the Dow
twins any further.
It became Jehiel's melancholy duty to harness up his hearse on
account of old Dr. Gookin's funeral, and as he dusted the plumes
and polished the ebony panels of the vehicle, his thoughts
naturally recurred to the great service which that excellent
physician had rendered him in early youth. Then he thought of his
twin brother Jacob, and wondered where he was and how he
prospered. Then his eyes wandered over the hearse, and he felt a
dull pride in its creditable appearance. It looked so bright and
shiny in the sun that he resolved, as it still wanted a couple of
hours of the time appointed for the funeral, to drive it over to
the Giles farm and fetch his sweetheart to the village on the box
with him. The young woman named Giles had frequently ridden with
Jehiel on the hearse, her demure features and sober apparel
detracting nothing from the respectable solemnity of the
equipage.
Jehiel drew up in state to the door of his betrothed, and she,
not at all reluctant to enjoy the mild excitement of a funeral,
mounted to the box and settled herself comfortably beside him.
Then they started for Saturday Cove, and jogged along on the
hearse, discoursing affectionately as they went.
Miss Giles affirms that it was at the third apple tree next
the stone wall of Hosea Getchell's orchard, just opposite the
bars leading to Mr. Lord's private road, that a sudden and most
extraordinary change came over Jehiel. He jumped, she says, high
into the air and landed sprawling in the sandy road alongside the
hearse, yelling so hideously that it was with difficulty that she
held the frightened horses. Picking himself up and uttering a
round oath ( something that had never before passed the virtuous
lips of Jehiel), he turned his attention to the horses, kicking
and beating them until they stood quiet. He next proceeded to cut
and trim a willow switch at the roadside, and putting his decent
silk hat down over one eye, and darting from the other a surly
glance at the astonished Miss Giles, he climbed to his seat on
the hearse.
"Dow!" said she, "what does this mean?"
"It means," he replied, giving the horses a vicious cut with
his switch, "that I have been goin' slow these thirty year, and
now I'm goin'to put a little ginger in my gait. Ge'long!"
The hearse horses jumped under the unaccustomed lash and broke
into a gallop. Jehiel applied the switch again and again, and the
dismal vehicle was soon bumping over the road at a tremendous
pace, Jehiel shouting all the time like a circus rider, and Miss
Giles clinging to his side in an agony of terror. The people in
the farmhouses along the way rushed to doors and windows and
gazed in amazement at the unprecedented spectacle. Jehiel had a
word for each—a shout of derision for one, a blast of
blasphemy for another, and an invitation to ride for a
third—but he reined in for nobody, and in a twinkling the
five miles between Hosea Cetchell's farm at Duck Trap at the
village at Saturday Cove had been accomplished. I think I am safe
in saying that never before did hearse rattle over five miles of
hard road so rapidly.
"Oh, Jehiel, Jehiel," said Miss Giles, as the hearse entered
the village, "are you took crazy of a sudden?"
"No," said Jehiel curtly, "but my eyes are open now. Ge'long,
you beasts! You get out here; I'm going to Belfast."
"But, Jehiel, dear," she protested, with many sobs, "remember
Dr. Gookin."
"Dang Gookin!" said Jehiel.
"And for my sake," she continued. "Dear Jehiel, for my
sake."
"Dang you, too!" said Jehiel.
Drawing up his team in magnificent style before the village
hotel, he compelled the weeping Miss Giles to alight, and then,
with an admirable imitation of the war whoop of a Sioux brave,
started his melancholy vehicle for Belfast, and was gone in a
flash, leaving the entire population of Saturday Cove in a state
of bewilderment that approached coma.
The remains of the worthy Dr. Gookin were borne to the
graveyard that afternoon upon the shoulders of half a dozen of
the stoutest farmers in the neighborhood. Jehiel came home long
after midnight, uproariously intoxicated. The revolution in his
character had been as complete as it was sudden. From the moment
of Jacob's death, he was a dissipated, dishonest scoundrel, the
scandal of Saturday Cove, and the terror of quiet respectable
folks for miles around. After that day he never could be
persuaded to speak to or even to recognize the young woman named
Giles. She, to her credit, remained faithful to the memory of the
lost Jehiel. His downward course was rapid. He gambled, drank,
quarreled, and stole; and he is now in state prison at Thomaston,
serving out a sentence for an attempt to rob the Northport Bank.
Miss Giles goes down every year in the hopes that he will see
her, but he always refuses. He is in for ten years.
"AND he, does he feel no remorse for what he
did?" I asked.
"See here," said Dr. Richards, turning suddenly and looking me
square in the face. "Do you think of what you are saying? Now I
hold that he is as innocent as you or I. I believe that the souls
of the twins were bound by a bond which Dr. Gookin's knife could
not dissect. When Jacob died, his soul, with all its depravity,
returned to its twin soul in Jehiel's body. Being stronger than
the Jehiel soul, it mastered and overwhelmed it. Poor Jehiel is
not responsible; he is suffering the penalty of a crime that was
clearly Jake's."
My friend spoke with a good deal of earnestness and some heat,
and concluding that Jehiel's personality was submerged. I did not
press the discussion. That evening, in conversation with the
village clergyman, I remarked:
"Strange case, that of the Dow twins."
"Ah," said the parson, "you have heard the story. Which way
did the doctor end it?"
"Why, with Jehiel in jail, of course. What do you mean?"
"Nothing," replied the parson with a faint smile. "Sometimes
when he feels well disposed toward humanity, the doctor lets
Jehiel's soul take possession of Jacob and reform him into a
pious, respectable Christian. In his pessimistic moods, the story
is just as you heard it. So this is one of his Jacob days. He
should take a little vacation."
4. — AN EXTRAORDINARY WEDDING
Published in the New York Sun, 06 January 1878
I
PROFESSOR Daniel Dean Moody of Edinburgh, a gentleman equally
well known as a profound psychologist and as an honest and
keen-eyed investigator of the phenomena sometimes called
spiritualistic, visited this country not many months ago and was
entertained in Boston by Dr. Thomas Fullerton at his delightful
home on Mount Vernon Street. One evening when there were present
in Dr. Fullerton's parlors, besides himself and his Scotch guest,
Dr. Curtis of the medical school of the Boston University, the
Reverend Dr. Amos Cutler of the Lynde Street Church, Mr. Magnus
of West Newton, three ladies, and the writer, the conversation
turned to subjects of an occult character.
"There once lived in Aberdeen," said Professor Moody, "a
medium named Jenny McGraw, of slender intellectuality, but of
remarkable psychic strength. Two hundred years ago you good
people of Boston would have hanged Jenny for a witch. I have seen
in her cottage materialization for which I could not and cannot
account by any hypothesis of deception or of hallucination. I
have seen forms come forth, not from any cabinet or trick closet,
but extruded before my eyes from the person of Jenny herself,
hanging nebulous in the air for a moment and then slowly taking
corporate shape. That there was no vulgar trick about this I am
willing to stake my scientific reputation. One night Plato
himself, or an eidolon claiming to be Plato, emerged from Jenny
McGraw's bosom and conversed with me for full fifteen minutes
upon the duality of the idea, the medium, in the meanwhile,
remaining entranced."
Dr. Fullerton exchanged a significant glance with his wife.
Their guest intercepted it and said:
"You don't believe me? No wonder."
"Not that," rejoined Dr. Fullerton. "Your testimony as a
scientific observer is worthy of all possible respect. But what
became of Jenny McGraw?"
"She was a dull, unsympathetic young woman, hardly to be
classed as a rational being. So far from becoming interested in
these wonderful manifestations exhibited through her
organization, she was excessively annoyed by them, and I believe
she finally left Scotland to escape the troublesome spirits and
the still more troublesome mortals who flocked to her cottage and
sadly interfered with her washing, ironing, and baking."
"A Yankee girl," said Mr. Magnus, "would have turned such
powers to account and have made her fortune."
"Jenny McGraw," replied Professor Moody, "whom I believe to be
the only medium in the world capable of producing
materializations in the broad light and independently of her
surroundings, was thrifty enough, like all Scotchwomen, but she
hadn't the intelligence to recognize the opportunity. She was
frequently advised to go before the public. Advice is wasted on
the Scotch. I don't know where she is at present."
Dr. Fullerton again glanced at his wife. Mrs. Fullerton arose
and touched a bell.
The door soon opened, and there appeared a lumpy, red-haired
domestic, who curtsied awkwardly as she entered the room.
"Did ye rang, ma'am?" she asked.
"Jenny," said Mrs. Fullerton, "here is an old friend of yours
from Scotland."
The girl showed no sign of surprise. Scarcely a shade of
recognition passed over her stupid countenance as she walked
sullenly up to the professor and sullenly took his extended
hand.
"I didna ken ye was cam to America, Maister Moody," she said,
and looked around as if she would be glad to escape the learned
company.
"Now, with your permission, Mrs. Fullerton," said the
professor, looking over Jenny McGraw's shoulder toward his
hostess, "we will ask the young woman if she will kindly assist
us in an investigation which we purpose to make."
Jenny looked up suspiciously and turned her small, dull eyes
from her master to her mistress, and from her mistress to the
door.
"I'm na ower fond of sic investigatin'," she stolidly
remarked, "an' it gies me a pain in the breast to brang oot the
auld ghaists, as ye na doot remember wull, Maister Moody."
For a long time the girl stubbornly refused to renew her
relations with the mysterious yonder. I have forgotten what
argument or plea it was that at last won her to a reluctant
consent. I have not forgotten what followed.
The room was as light as the full blaze of five gas jets could
make it. Under this blaze, and surrounded by the partly amused,
partly skeptical company, jenny was seated in a Turkish easy
chair. She did not form an attractive picture, short, squat,
sandy, freckled, and peevish-eyed as she was. "Good Lord!" I
whispered to a neighbor. "Do glorified spirits choose such a
channel as that when they wish to come back to us?"
"Hush!" said Professor Moody. "The girl is passing into a
trance."
The swinish eyes opened and closed. A sluggish convulsion
fluttered across the flabby cheeks. A sigh or two, a nervous
twitching of her chair, breathing heavily.
"Ineffectively simulated coma," whispered Dr. Curtis to me,
"and not the work of an artist. This is a farce."
For fifteen or twenty minutes we sat in patience, the
stillness broken only by the rough respiration of the girl. Then
one or two of the party began to yawn, and the hostess, fearing
that the experiment was becoming a bore, moved as if to break up
the circle. But Professor Moody raised his hand in protest.
Before he dropped it he made a rapid gesture which directed all
our eyes toward Jenny McGraw.
Her head and bust seemed to be enveloped in a dim, thin film
of opalescent vapor, which floated free about her, yet was fixed
at one point, as a wreath of blue smoke hangs at the end of a
good cigar. The point of attachment appeared to be in the
neighborhood of Jenny's heart. She had stopped breathing loudly,
and was as pale as the dead; but her face was no whiter than that
of Dr. Curtis. I felt his hand groping for mine. He found it and
clutched it till it was numb.
While we watched, the vapor that proceeded from Jenny's bosom
grew in volume and became opaque. It was like a dark,
well-defined cloud, floating before our eyes, here gathering
itself in and extending itself there, till at last the shape was
perfect.
You have seen a dim, meaningless object under a lens gradually
define itself as it was brought into focus, and suddenly stand
out clear and sharp. Or, better, you have seen at a shadow
pantomime a vague, amorphous cloudiness intensify and take shape
as the person approached the screen, until it became a perfect
silhouette. Now, imagine the silhouette stepping forth into your
presence a solidified fact, and you get some idea of the
marvelous transition by which this shadow from a world we know
not of stepped forth into the midst of our little company.
I looked across the room at the Reverend Dr. Cutler. He was
clasping his forehead with both hands. I have never seen a more
striking picture of mingled horror, terror, and perplexity.
The newcomer was a man of twenty-eight or thirty, of fine
features and dignified bearing. He made a courteous bow to the
assemblage, but when he saw that Professor Moody was about to
speak put his finger to his lips and glanced back uneasily at the
medium. I fancied that an expression of disgust stole over his
handsome countenance when he perceived how unlovely was the
gateway through which he had returned to earth. Nevertheless, he
kept his eyes fixed upon Jenny McGraw's pallid face and folded
his arms as if waiting.
We were now thoroughly under the spell of this mysterious
happening. With eager expectation, but without surprise, we saw
again the phenomena of the cloud, the shadow, the concentration,
and the presence.
Slowly out of the white mist and nebulous shadow there took
form the most beautiful woman that mortal eyes ever beheld. It
was a woman—a living, breathing woman, her magnificent lips
slightly parted, her bosom rising and falling beneath a garment
of wonderfully woven texture, her glorious black eyes shining
upon us till our heads swam and our thoughts reeled. It would be
easier to fathom the secret of her being than to describe the
unearthly beauty that startled and awed us.
The first corner unfolded his arms, and with the tenderness of
a lover and the deference due a queen, took the shapely white
hand of the marvelous lady and led her forth to the middle of the
room. She said no word, but suffered herself to be guided by his
hand, and stood like an empress scanning our faces and
habiliments with a puzzled curiosity in which it was possible to
detect the slightest trace of disdain. He spoke at last in a low
voice.
"Friends," he slowly said, "a great love carried one who was
lately a mortal into the presence of a goddess. A greater good
fortune befell him than his small sacrifices had earned. I cannot
speak more plainly. Hear our entreaty and grant it without
questioning. There is here a servant of the church, duly
qualified to pronounce the only words that can crown a love like
mine. That love reached back over centuries to meet its object,
and was sealed by a willing death. We come from another world to
ask to be joined in wedlock according to the forms of this
world."
Strange as it may seem, the preceding events had so attuned
our consciousness to the spirit of the surroundings that we heard
this extraordinary speech without amazement. And when Mr. Magnus
of West Newton, who would preserve his cool, matter-of-fact
manner in the company of archangels, audibly whispered,﹃Eloped,
by Jove, from the spirit land!﹄His words jarred harshly in our
ears.
The Reverend Dr. Amos Cutler displayed most strikingly the
effect of the glamor that had been thrown over our
nineteenth-century common sense. That pious man rose from his
chair with a dazed and helpless look in his face, and, like one
walking in his sleep, advanced toward the couple.
Raising his hand to command silence, he solemnly and
deliberately asked the questions that by usage of the church are
preliminary to the marriage rite. The man responded in a clear,
triumphant tone. The bride answered only by a slight inclination
of her beautiful head.
"Then," continued Dr. Cutler,﹃in the presence of these
witnesses, I pronounce you man and wife. And God forgive me,﹄he
added, "for lending myself to the Devil's works by the sacrilege
of this act."
One by one we passed up to take the bridegroom's hand and
salute the bride. His hand was like the hand of a marble statue,
but a radiant smile brightened his face. At a whispered
suggestion from him, she bent her regal head, and allowed each
one of us to kiss her cheek. It was soft and blood-warm.
When Dr. Cutler saluted her she smiled for the first time and,
with a rapid, graceful movement detached from her black hair a
great pearl and put it in his hand. He gazed at it a moment and,
then on a sudden impulse, flung it into the open grate. In the
hot blaze, Dr. Cutler's wedding fee whitened, calcined, crumbled,
and disappeared.
Then the bridegroom led his wife back to the chair where the
medium still sat entranced. He clasped her close in his arms.
Their melting forms interblended in shadowy vapor, and, fading
slowly away, this newly married couple found their nuptial pillow
in the bosom of Jenny McGraw.
II
ONE day after Professor Moody had left Boston, I went to the
Athaeneum Library in search of certain facts and dates regarding
the Franco-Prussian war. While turning over the leaves of a bound
file of the London Daily News for 1871 my eyes happened to
fall upon the following paragraph:
The Vienna Freie Presse says that at four o'clock in
the afternoon of July 12 a young man of good appearance shot
himself through the heart in the east corridor of the Imperial
Gallery. It was at the hour of closing the gallery, and the young
man had been warned by an attendant that he must depart. He was
standing motionless before Herr Hans Makart's fine picture of
"Cleopatra's Barge," and paid no heed to the admonition. When it
was repeated more emphatically he pointed in an absent manner to
the painting, and having remarked,﹃Is not that a woman worth
dying for!﹄drew a pistol and fired with fatal effect.
There is no clue to the suicide's individuality except that
afforded at the Golden Lamb Hotel, where he was registered simply
as "Cotton." He had been in Vienna several weeks, had spent money
freely, and had frequently been observed at the Imperial Gallery,
always before this picture of Cleopatra. The unfortunate youth is
believed to have been insane.
I made a careful copy of this brief story, and sent it,
without comment, to the Reverend Dr. Cutler. A day or two later
he returned it with a note.
"The events of that night at Dr. Fullerton's," he
wrote, "are to me as the events of a dimly remembered dream.
Pardon me if I say that it will be a kindness to let me forget
them altogether."
5. — BACK FROM THAT BOURNE
PRACTICAL WORKING OF MATERIALIZATION IN MAINE
Published in the New York Sun, 19 December 1874
Practical Working of Materialization in Maine. A Strange
Story from Pocock Island—A Materialized Spirit that Will
not Go back. The First Glimpse of what May yet Cause very
Extensive Trouble in this World.
WE are permitted to make extracts from a private letter which
bears the signature of a gentleman well known in business
circles, and whose veracity we have never heard called in
question. His statements are startling and well-nigh incredible,
but if true, they are susceptible of easy verification. Yet the
thoughtful mind will hesitate about accepting them without the
fullest proof, for they spring upon the world a social problem of
stupendous importance. The dangers apprehended by Mr. Malthus and
his followers become remote and commonplace by the side of this
new and terrible issue.
The letter is dated at Pocock Island, a small township in
Washington County, Maine, about seventeen miles from the mainland
and nearly midway between Mt. Desert and the Grand Menan. The
last state census accords to Pocock Island a population of 311,
mostly engaged in the porgy fisheries. At the Presidential
election of 1872 the island gave Grant a majority of three. These
two facts are all that we are able to learn of the locality from
sources outside of the letter already referred to.
The letter, omitting certain passages which refer solely to
private matters, reads as follows:
But enough of the disagreeable business that brought me here
to this bleak island in the month of November. I have a singular
story to tell you. After our experience together at Chittenden I
know you will not reject statements because they are
startling.
My friend, there is upon Pocock Island a materialized spirit
which (or who) refuses to be dematerialized. At this moment and
within a quarter of a mile from me as I write, a man who died and
was buried four years ago, and who has exploited the mysteries
beyond the grave, walks, talks, and holds interviews with the
inhabitants of the island, and is, to all appearances, determined
to remain permanently upon this side of the river. I will relate
the circumstances as briefly as I can.
John Newbegin
IN April, 1870, John Newbegin died and was buried in the
little cemetery on the landward side of the island. Newbegin was
a man of about forty-eight, without family or near connections,
and eccentric to a degree that sometimes inspired questions as to
his sanity. What money he had earned by many seasons' fishing
upon the banks was invested in quarters of two small mackerel
schooners, the remainder of which belonged to John Hodgeson, the
richest man on Pocock, who was estimated by good authorities to
be worth thirteen or fourteen thousand dollars.
Newbegin was not without a certain kind of culture. He had
read a good deal of the odds and ends of literature and, as a
simple-minded islander expressed it in my hearing, knew more
bookfuls than anybody on the island. He was naturally an
intelligent man; and he might have attained influence in the
community had it not been for his utter aimlessness of character,
his indifference to fortune, and his consuming thirst for
rum.
Many yachtsmen who have had occasion to stop at Pocock for
water or for harbor shelter during eastern cruises, will remember
a long, listless figure, astonishingly attired in blue army
pants, rubber boots, loose toga made of some bright chintz
material, and very bad hat, staggering through the little
settlement, followed by a rabble of jeering brats, and pausing to
strike uncertain blows at those within reach of the dead sculpin
[a species of fish] which he usually carried round by the
tail. This was John Newbegin.
HIS SUDDEN DEATH
AS I have already remarked, he died four years ago last April.
The Mary Emmeline, one of the little schooners in which he
owned, had returned from the eastward, and had smuggled, or﹃run
in﹄a quantity of St. John brandy. Newbegin had a solitary and
protracted debauch. He was missed from his accustomed walks for
several days, and when the islanders broke into the hovel where
he lived, close down to the seaweed and almost within reach of
the incoming tide, they found him dead on the floor, with an
emptied demijohn hard by his head.
After the primitive custom of the island, they interred John
Newbegin's remains without coroner's inquest, burial certificate,
or funeral services, and in the excitement of a large catch of
porgies that summer, soon forgot him and his friendless life. His
interest in the Mary Emmeline and the Prettyboat
recurred to John Hodgeson; and as nobody came forward to demand
an administration of the estate, it was never administered. The
forms of law are but loosely followed in some of these marginal
localities.
HIS REAPPEARANCE AT POCOCK
WELL, my dear ———, four years and four
months had brought their quota of varying seasons to Pocock
Island when John Newbegin reappeared under the following
circumstances:
In the latter part of last August, as you may remember, there
was a heavy gale all along our Atlantic coast. During this storm
the squadron of the Naugatuck Yacht Club, which was returning
from a summer cruise as far as Campobello, was forced to take
shelter in the harbor to the leeward of Pocock Island. The
gentlemen of the club spent three days at the little settlement
ashore. Among the party was Mr. R———
E———, by which name you will recognize a medium
of celebrity, and one who has been particularly successful in
materializations. At the desire of his companions, and to relieve
the tedium of their detention, Mr. E———
improvised a cabinet in the little schoolhouse at Pocock, and
gave a séance, to the delight of his fellow yachtsmen and
the utter bewilderment of such natives as were permitted to
witness the manifestations.
The conditions appeared unusually favorable to spirit
appearances and the séance was upon the whole perhaps the
most remarkable that Mr. E———ever held. It was
all the more remarkable because the surroundings were such that
the most prejudiced skeptic could discover no possibility of
trickery.
The first form to issue from the wood closet which constituted
the cabinet, when Mr. E———had been tied
therein by a committee of old sailors from the yachts, was that
of an Indian chief who announced himself as Hock-a-mock, and who
retired after dancing a "Harvest Moon" pas seul, and
declaring himself in very emphatic terms, as opposed to the
present Indian policy of the Administration. Hock-a-mock was
succeeded by the aunt of one of the yachtsmen, who identified
herself beyond question by allusion to family matters and by
displaying the scar of a burn upon her left arm, received while
making tomato catsup upon earth. Then came successively a child
whom none present recognized, a French Canadian who could not
talk English, and a portly gentleman who introduced himself as
William King, first Governor of Maine. These in turn re-entered
the cabinet and were seen no more.
It was some time before another spirit manifested itself, and
Mr. E———gave directions that the lights be
turned down still further. Then the door of the wood closet was
slowly opened and a singular figure in rubber boots and a species
of Dolly Varden garment emerged, bringing a dead fish in his
right hand.
HIS DETERMINATION TO REMAIN
THE city men who were present, I am told, thought that the
medium was masquerading in grotesque habiliments for the more
complete astonishment of the islanders, but these latter rose
from their seats and exclaimed with one consent:﹃It is John
Newbegin!﹄And then, in not unnatural terror of the apparition
they turned and fled from the schoolroom, uttering dismal
cries.
John Newbegin came calmly forward and turned up the solitary
kerosene lamp that shed uncertain light over the proceedings. He
then sat down in the teacher's chair, folded his arms, and looked
complacently about him.
"You might as well untie the medium," he finally remarked. "I
propose to remain in the materialized condition."
And he did remain. When the party left the schoolhouse among
them walked John Newbegin, as truly a being of flesh and blood as
any man of them. From that day to this, he has been a living
inhabitant of Pocock Island, eating, drinking, (water only) and
sleeping after the manner of men. The yachtsmen who made sail for
Bar Harbor the very next morning, probably believe that he was a
fraud hired for the occasion by Mr. E———. But
the people of Pocock, who laid him out, dug his grave, and put
him into it four years ago, know that John Newbegin has come back
to them from a land they know not of.
A SINGULAR MEMBER OF SOCIETY
THE idea, of having a ghost—somewhat more condensed it
is true than the traditional ghost—as a member was not at
first overpleasing to the 311 inhabitants of Pocock Island. To
this day, they are a little sensitive upon the subject, feeling
evidently that if the matter got abroad, it might injure the sale
of the really excellent porgy oil which is the product of their
sole manufacturing interest. This reluctance to advertise the
skeleton in their closet, superadded to the slowness of these
obtuse, fishy, matter-of-fact people to recognize the
transcendent importance of the case, must be accepted as
explanation of the fact that John Newbegin's spirit has been on
earth between three and four months, and yet the singular
circumstance is not known to the whole country.
But the Pocockians have at last come to see that a spirit is
not necessarily a malevolent spirit, and accepting his presence
as a fact in their stolid, unreasoning way, they are quite
neighborly and sociable with Mr. Newbegin.
I know that your first question will be:﹃Is there sufficient
proof of his ever having been dead?﹄To this I answer
unhesitatingly, "Yes." He was too well-known a character and too
many people saw the corpse to admit of any mistake on this point.
I may add here that it was at one time proposed to disinter the
original remains, but that project was abandoned in deference to
the wishes of Mr. Newbegin, who feels a natural delicacy about
having his first set of bones disturbed from motives of mere
curiosity.
AN INTERVIEW WITH A DEAD MAN
YOU will readily believe that I took occasion to see and
converse with John Newbegin. I found him affable and even
communicative. He is perfectly aware of his doubtful status as a
being, but is in hopes that at some future time there may be
legislation that shall correctly define his position and the
position of any spirit who may follow him into the material
world. The only point upon which he is reticent is his experience
during the four years that elapsed between his death and his
reappearance at Pocock. It is to be presumed that the memory is
not a pleasant one: at least he never speaks of this period. He
candidly admits, however, that he is glad to get back to earth
and that he embraced the very first opportunity to be
materialized.
Mr. Newbegin says that he is consumed with remorse for the
wasted years of his previous existence. Indeed, his conduct
during the past three months would show that this regret is
genuine. He has discarded his eccentric costume, and dresses like
a reasonable spirit. He has not touched liquor since his
reappearance. He has embarked in the porgy oil business, and his
operations already rival that of Hodgeson, his old partner in the
Mary Emmeline and the Prettyboat. By the way,
Newbegin threatens to sue Hodgeson for his undivided quarter in
each of these vessels, and this interesting case therefore bids
fair to be thoroughly investigated in the courts.
As a business man, he is generally esteemed on the Island,
although there is a noticeable reluctance to discount his paper
at long dates. In short, Mr. John Newbegin is a most respectable
citizen (if a dead man can be a citizen) and has announced his
intention of running for the next Legislature!
IN CONCLUSION
AND now, my dear ———, I have told you the
substance of all I know respecting this strange, strange case.
Yet, after all, why so strange? We accepted materialization at
Chittenden. Is this any more than the logical issue of that
admission? If the spirit may return to earth, clothed in flesh
and blood and all the physical attributes of humanity, why may it
not remain on earth as long as it sees fit?
Thinking of it from whatever standpoint, I cannot but regard
John Newbegin as the pioneer of a possibly large immigration from
the spirit world. The bars once down, a whole flock will come
trooping back to earth. Death will lose its significance
altogether. And when I think of the disturbance which will result
in our social relations, of the overthrow of all accepted
institutions, and of the nullification of all principles of
political economy, law, and religion, I am lost in perplexity and
apprehension.
6. — THE LAST CRUISE OF THE JUDAS ISCARIOT
Published in the New York Sun, 16 April 1882
"SHE formerly showed the name Flying Sprite on her
starn moldin'," said Captain Trumbull Cram, "but I had thet
gouged out and planed off, and Judas Iscariot in gilt sot
thar instid."
"That was an extraordinary name," said I.
"'Strornary craft," replied the captain, as he absorbed
another inch and a half of niggerhead. "I'm neither a profane man
or an irreverend; but sink my jig if I don't believe the sperrit
of Judas possessed thet schooner. Hey, Ammi?"
The young man addressed as Ammi was seated upon a mackerel
barrel. He deliberately removed from his lips a black brierwood
and shook his head with great gravity.
"The cap'n," said Ammi, "is neither a profane or an
irreverend. What he says he mostly knows; but when he sinks his
jig he's allers to be depended on."
Fortified with this neighborly estimate of character, Captain
Cram proceeded. "You larf at the idea of a schooner's soul?
Perhaps you hey sailed 'em forty-odd year up and down this here
coast, an' 'quainted yourself with their dispositions an' habits
of mind. Hey, Ammi?"
"The cap'n," explained the gentleman on the mackerel keg, "hez
coasted an' hez fished for forty-six year. He's lumbered and he's
iced. When the cap'n sees fit for to talk about schooners he
understands the subjeck."
"My friend," said the captain, "a schooner has a soul like a
human being, but considerably broader of beam, whether for good
or for evil. I ain't a goin' to deny thet I prayed for the Judas
in Tuesday 'n' Thursday evenin' meetin', week arter week an'
month arter month. I ain't a goin' to deny thet I interested
Deacon Plympton in the 'rastle for her redemption. It was no use,
my friend; even the deacon's powerful p'titions were clear
waste."
I ventured to inquire in what manner this vessel had
manifested its depravity. The narrative which I heard was the
story of a demon of treachery with three masts and a jib
boom.
The Flying Sprite was the first three-master ever built at
Newaggen, and the last. People shook their heads over the
experiment. "No good can come of sech a critter," they said.
"It's contrairy to natur. Two masts is masts enough." The Flying
Sprite began its career of base improbity at the very moment of
its birth. Instead of launching decently into the element for
which it was designed, the three-masted schooner slumped through
the ways into the mud and stuck there for three weeks, causing
great expense to the owners, of whom Captain Trumbull Cram was
one to the extent of an undivided third. The oracles of Newaggen
were confirmed in their forebodings.﹃Two masts is masts enough
to sail the sea,﹄they said; "the third is the Devil's hitchin'
post."
On the first voyage of the Flying Sprite, Captain Cram started
her for Philadelphia, loaded with ice belonging to himself and
Lawyer Swanton; cargo uninsured. Ice was worth six dollars a ton
in Philadelphia; this particular ice had cost Captain Cram and
Lawyer Swanton eighty-five cents a ton shipped, including
sawdust. They were happy over the prospect. The Flying Sprite
cleared the port in beautiful shape, and then suddenly and
silently went to the bottom in Fiddler's Reach, in eleven feet of
salt water. It required only six days to float her and pump her
out, but owing to a certain incompatibility between ice and salt
water, the salvage consisted exclusively of sawdust.
On her next trip the schooner carried a deckload of lumber
from the St. Croix River. It was in some sense a consecrated
cargo, for the lumber was intended for a new Baptist meetinghouse
in southern New Jersey. If the prayerful hopes of the navigators,
combined with the prayerful expectations of the consignees had
availed, this voyage, at least, would have been successfully
made. But about sixty miles southeast of Nantucket the Flying
Sprite encountered a mild September gale. She ought to have
weathered it with perfect ease, but she behaved so abominably
that the church timber was scattered over the surface of the
Atlantic Ocean from about latitude 40° 15' to about latitude 43°
50'. A month or two later she contrived to go on her beam ends
under a gentle land breeze, dumping a lot of expensively carved
granite from the Fox Island quarries into a deep hole in Long
Island Sound. On the very next trip she turned deliberately out
of her course in order to smash into the starboard bow of a
Norwegian brig, and was consequently libeled for heavy
damages.
It was after a few experiences of this sort that Captain Cram
erased the old name from the schooner's stern and from her
quarter, and substituted that of Judas Iscariot. He could
discover no designation that expressed so well his contemptuous
opinion of her moral qualities. She seemed animate with the
spirit of purposeless malice, of malignant perfidy. She was a
floating tub of cussedness.
A board of nautical experts sat upon the Judas
Iscariot, but could find nothing the matter with her,
physically. The lines of her hull were all right, she was
properly planked and ceiled and calked, her spars were of good
Oregon pine, she was rigged taut and trustworthy, and her canvas
had been cut and stitched by a God-fearing sailmaker. According
to all theory, she ought to have been perfectly responsible as to
her keel. In practice, she was frightfully cranky. Sailing the
Judas Iscariot was like driving a horse with more vices
than hairs in his tail. She always did the unexpected thing,
except when bad behavior was expected of her on general
principles. If the idea was to luff, she would invariably fall
off; if to jibe, she would come round dead in the wind and hang
there like Mohammed's coffin. Sending a man to haul the jib sheet
to windward was sending a man on a forlorn hope: the jib
habitually picked up the venturesome navigator, and, after
shaking him viciously in the air for a second or two, tossed him
overboard. A boom never crossed the deck without breaking
somebody's head. Start on whatever course she might, the schooner
was certain to run before long into one of three things, namely,
some other vessel, a fog bank, or the bottom. From the day on
which she was launched her scent for a good, sticky mud bottom
was unerring. In the clearest weather fog fob lowed and enveloped
her as misfortune follows wickedness. Her presence on the Banks
was enough to drive every codfish to the coast of Ireland. The
mackerel and porgies were always where the Judas Iscariot
was not. It was impossible to circumvent the schooner's fixed
purposes to ruin everybody who chartered her. If chartered to
carry a deckload, she spilled it; if loaded between decks, she
dived and spoiled the cargo. She was like one of the trick mules
which, if they cannot otherwise dislodge the rider, get down and
roll over and over. In short, the Judas Iscariot was known
from Marblehead to the Bay of Chaleur as the consummate
schooneration of malevolence, turpitude, and treachery.
After commanding the Judas Iscariot for five or six
years, Captain Cram looked fully twenty years older. It was in
vain that he had attempted to sell her at a sacrifice. No man on
the coast of Maine, Massachusetts, or the British provinces would
have taken the schooner as a gift. The belief in her demoniac
obsession was as firm as it was universal.
Nearly at the end of a season, when the wretched craft had
been even more unprofitable than usual a conference of the owners
was held in the Congregational vestry one evening after the
monthly missionary meeting. No outsider knows exactly what
happened, but it is rumored that in the two hours during which
these capitalists were closeted certain arithmetical computations
were effected which led to significant results and to a singular
decision.
On the forenoon of the next Friday there was a general
suspension of business at Newaggen. The Judas Iscariot,
with her deck scoured and her spars scraped till they shone in
the sun like yellow amber, lay at the wharf by Captain Cram's
fish house. Since Monday the captain and his three boys and
Andrew Jackson's son Tobias from Mackerel Cove had been busy
loading the schooner deep. This time her cargo was an
extraordinary one. It consisted of nearly a quarter of a mile of
stone wall from the boundaries of the captain's shore pasture.﹃I
calklet,﹄remarked the commander of the Judas Iscariot, as
he saw the last boulder disappearing down the main hatch, "thar's
nigh two hundud'n fifty ton of stone fence aboard thet
schoon'r."
Conjecture was wasted over this unnecessary amount of ballast.
The owners of the Judas Iscariot stood up well under the
consolidated wit of the village; they returned witticism for
witticism, and kept their secret.﹃Ef you must know, I'll tell
ye,﹄said the captain.﹃I hear thar's a stone-wall famine over
Machias way. I'm goin' to take mine over'n peddle it out by the
yard.﹄On this fine sunshiny Friday morning, while the luckless
schooner lay on one side of the wharf, looking as bright and trim
and prosperous as if she were the best-paying maritime investment
in the world, the tug Pug of Portland lay under the other side,
with steam up. She had come down the night before in response to
a telegram from the owners of the Judas Iscariot. A good
land breeze was blowing, with the promise of freshening as the
day grew older.
At half past seven o'clock the schooner put off from the
landing, carrying not only the captain's pasture wall, but also a
large number of his neighbors and friends, including some of the
solidest citizens of Newaggen. Curiosity was stronger than fear.
"You know what the critter," the captain had said, in reply to
numerous applications for passage.﹃Ef you're a mind to resk her
antics, come along, an' welcome.﹄Captain Cram put on a white
shirt and a holiday suit for the occasion. As he stood at the
wheel shouting directions to his boys and Andrew Jackson's son
Tobias at the halyards, his guests gathered around him—a
fair representation of the respectability, the business
enterprise, and the piety of Newaggen Harbor. Never had the
Judas Iscariot carried such a load. She seemed suddenly
struck with a sense of decency and responsibility, for she came
around into the wind without balking, dived her nose playfully
into the brine, and skipped off on the short hitch to clear
Tumbler Island, all in the properest fashion. The Pug steamed
after her.
The crowd on the wharf and the boys in the small boats cheered
this unexpectedly orthodox behavior, and they now saw for the
first time that Captain Cram had painted on the side of the
vessel in conspicuous white letters, each three or four feet
long, the following legend:
THIS IS THE SCHOONER JUDAS ISCARIOT
N.B.—GIVE HER A WIDE BERTH!!!
Hour after hour the schooner bounded along before the
northwest wind, holding to her course as straight as an arrow.
The weather continued fine. Every time the captain threw the log
he looked more perplexed. Eight, nine, nine and a half knots! He
shook his head as he whispered to Deacon Plympton:﹃She's
meditatin' mischief o' some natur or other.﹄But the Judas led
the Pug a wonderful chase, and by half past two in the afternoon,
before the demijohn which Andrew Jackson's son Tobias had
smuggled on board was three quarters empty, and before Lawyer
Swanton had more than three quarters finished his celebrated
story about Governor Purington's cork leg, the schooner and the
tug were between fifty and sixty miles from land.
Suddenly Captain Cram gave a grunt of intelligence. He pointed
ahead, where a blue line just above the horizon marked a distant
fog bank. "She smelt it an' she run for it," he remarked,
sententiously. "Time for business."
Then ensued a singular ceremony. First Captain Cram brought
the schooner to, and transferred all his passengers to the tug.
The wind had shifted to the southeast, and the fog was rapidly
approaching. The sails of the Judas Iscariot flapped as
she lay head to the wind; her bows rose and fell gently under the
influence of the long swell. The Pug bobbed up and down half a
hawser's length away.
Having put his guests and crew aboard the tug, Captain Cram
proceeded to make everything shipshape on the decks of the
schooner. He neatly coiled a loose end of rope that had been left
in a snarl. He even picked up and threw overboard the stopper of
Andrew Jackson's son Tobias' demijohn. His face wore an
expression of unusual solemnity. The people on the tug watched
his movements eagerly, but silently. Next he tied one end of a
short rope to the wheel and attached the other end loosely by
means of a running bowline to a cleat upon the rail. Then he was
seen to take up an ax, and to disappear down the companionway.
Those on the tug distinctly heard several crashing blows. In a
moment the captain reappeared on deck, walked deliberately to the
wheel, brought the schooner around so that her sails filled,
pulled the running bowline taut, and fastened the rope with
several half hitches around the cleat, thus lashing the helm,
jumped into a dory, and sculled over to the tug.
Left entirely to herself, the schooner rolled once or twice,
tossed a few bucketfuls of water over her dancing bows, and
started off toward the South Atlantic. But Captain Trumbull Cram,
standing in the bow of the tugboat, raised his hand to command
silence and pronounced the following farewell speech, being
sentence, death warrant, and funeral oration, all in one:
"I ain't advancin' no theory to 'count for her cussedness. You
all know the Judas. Mebbe thar was too much fore an' aff to her.
Mebbe the inickerty of a vessel's in the fore an' aff, and the
vartue in the squar' riggin'. Mebbe two masts was masts enough.
Let that go; bygones is bygones. Yonder she goes, carryin' all
sail on top, two hundred'n-odd ton o' stone fence in her holt,
an' a hole good two foot acrost stove in her belly. The way of
the transgressor is hard. Don't you see her settlin'? It should
be a lesson, my friends, for us to profit by; there's an end to
the long-sufferin'est mercy, and unless—Oh, yer makin'
straight for the fog, are ye? Well, it's your last fog bank. The
bottom of the sea's the fust port you'll fetch, you critter, you!
Git, and be d—d to ye!"
This, the only occasion on which Captain Cram was ever known
to say such a word, was afterward considered by a committee of
discipline of the Congregational Church at Newaggen; and the
committee, after pondering all the circumstances under which the
word was uttered, voted unanimously to take no action.
Meanwhile, the fog had shut in around the tug, and the
Judas Iscariot was lost to view. The tug was put about and
headed for home. The damp wind chilled everybody through and
through. Little was said. The contents of the demijohn had long
been exhausted. From a distance to the south was heard at
intervals the hoarse whistling of an ocean steamer.
"I hope that feller's well underwrit," said the captain
grimly, "for the Judas'll never go down afore she's
sarched him out'n sunk him."
"And was the abandoned schooner ever heard of?" I asked, when
my informant had reached this point in the narrative.
The captain took me by the arm and led me out of the grocery
store down to the rocks. Across the mouth of the small cove back
of his house, blocking the entrance to his wharf and fish-house,
was stretched a skeleton wreck.
"Thar she lays," he said, pointing to the blackened ribs.
"That's the Judas. Did yer suppose she'd sink in deep
water, where she could do no more damage? No, sir, not if all the
rocks on the coast of Maine was piled onto her, and her hull
bottom knocked clean out. She come home to roost. She come sixty
mile in the teeth of the wind. When the tug got back next mornin'
thar lay the Judas Iscariot acrost my cove, with her jib
boom stuck through my kitchen winder. I say schooners has
souls."
7. — THE FLYING WEATHERCOCK
Published in the New York Sun, 13 April 1884
THERE were two peculiar things that I remarked about the
little brick meetinghouse on the hill at Newaggen. The first was
the fact that it had once been chained to the ground, as are some
structures on mountain summits. Big iron eyebolts were to be seen
in the ledge on each side of the meetinghouse, and to one of them
was still attached a rusty link of heavy chain. The hill was not
high. A steep path led down to the harbor, and you could count
the shingles on the roofs of the square, old-fashioned houses. On
the other side of the hill was a boggy meadow, with scattering
ricks of salt hay, bonneted with aged canvas. The front of the
church breasted the wind that blew in across the islands from the
ocean.
The second unusual feature was the vane on the stubby steeple.
The vane was a great gilt codfish, evidently very sensitive to
atmospheric influences. Its nose wavered nervously between
south-southeast and southeast by east.
"Why was the meetin' house tied down to the rock?" repeated my
companion, Deacon and Captain Silas Bibber. "Well, I'll tell ye.
Because the congregation allowed that this here hill was a
fittiner location for a house o' worship than the salt ma'sh
yonder."
The deacon and captain paused to shy a stone at a disreputable
sheep that was foraging among the gravestones.
"Why do we fly a weathercod instid of a weathercock?" he
continued. "I'll tell ye. Because the rooster's the Devil's own
bird."
He stooped for another missile just as the excited sheep,
which had been surreptitiously flanking him while watching his
movements with vigilant eyes, cleared the stone wall at a plunge
and disappeared over the edge of the hill.
"Durn the critter!" remarked the deacon and captain.
The unwritten legends of the coast of Maine are kept by a
generation that is rapidly going. Men and women are pretty old
now who were young in the golden age of the seaport towns; when
not only Portland and Bath and Wiscasset and the places to the
eastward but also all the little settlements wedged in between
rock and wave enjoyed a solid prosperity, based on an adventurous
spirit and keen commercial insight in the matters of Matanzas
molasses and Jamaica rum. Between the Maine towns and the West
Indian ports there was and is a straight ocean way. Time was when
direct communication with foreign parts brought sharp and
increasing contrasts into the daily life of the coast people.
This was the time, too, when the prevailing orthodoxy in
theological doctrine still left room for a curious and in some
respects peculiar supernaturalism that concerned itself chiefly
with the malevolent enterprises of the Enemy of Mankind.
I
IT appears from Captain Silas' narrative that about fifty
years ago Parson Purington was the chief bulwark of the faithful
against the Devil's assaults upon Newaggen. The parson was a hard
hitter, both in petition and in exhortation. It was generally
believed at the harbor, and for miles both ways along the coast,
that nothing worried the evil one half so much as Parson
Purington's double-hour discourses, mercilessly exposing his
character, exhibiting his most secret plans, and defying his
worst endeavors.
It was partly this feeling of triumph and pride in the prowess
of their champion that led the congregation to construct a
substantial church edifice, conspicuously situated on top of the
hill, and possessing both a steeple and a bell that could be
heard as far out at sea as Ragged Tail Island, with the wind
favorable. The parson himself chose the site. He eagerly watched
the progress of the workmen, and his heart was in every
additional brick that went into the walls.
At half past eleven o'clock one moonlight Saturday night, just
after the last touch of gilt had been put on the fine rooster
vane—the donation of an unknown friend—Parson
Purington ascended the hill on purpose to delight his eyes with
the completed structure. Imagine the astonishment with which the
good man discovered that no meetinghouse was there! No
weathercock, no steeple, no belfry, no brick walls and wooden
portico, not even the faintest trace of foundation or cellar!
The parson stamped his feet to see if he was awake. He
wondered if the three tumblerfuls of hot rum toddy with which his
daughter Susannah had fortified him against the night air could
have played his senses such a trick. He rubbed his eyes and
stared at the moon. The round face of that luminary presented its
usual aspect. He gazed at the village under the hill. The
well-known houses in which his parishioners slumbered were all
distinctly visible in the moonlight. He saw the ocean, the
islands, the harbor, the schooners at the wharves, the streets.
He even made out the solitary figure of Peleg Trott, zigzagging
home from the tavern, as if beating against a head wind. The
parson tried to shout to Peleg Trott, but found that he had no
voice for the effort. Everything in the neighborhood was as it
should be, except that the new meetinghouse had disappeared.
Dazed by that tremendous fact, the parson wandered aimlessly
about the summit of the hill for fully half an hour. Then he
perceived that he was not alone, for a tall individual, wrapped
in a black coat, sat upon the stone wall. The stranger looked
like a Spaniard or a Portugee. His elbows were on his knees, his
chin was in his hands, and he was watching the parson's movements
with obvious interest.
"May I venture to inquire," said the stranger, "whether you
are looking for anything?"
"Sir," the parson replied, "I am sorely perplexed. I came
hither expecting to behold the sacred edifice in which I am to
preach tomorrow morning for the first time, from a text in
thirteenth Revelations. Not longer ago than this afternoon it
occupied the very spot on which we stand."
"Ah, a lost meetinghouse!" said the stranger, carelessly.
"Pray, is it not customary in this part of the world to send out
the crier with his bell when they stray or are stolen?"
There was something in the tone of voice which caused the
parson to inspect his companion more closely than before. The
tall foreigner withstood the scrutiny with perfect composure,
twirling his black mustachios. His eyes were bright and steady,
and they seemed to grow brighter as the parson gazed into
them.
"Well," said the stranger at last, "I fancy you would know me
again."
"I think I know you now," retorted the parson, "although I do
not fear you. If I am not prodigiously mistaken, it is you who
have destroyed our meetinghouse."
The other smiled and shrugged his shoulders. "Since you press
me on that point, I must admit that I have taken a trifling
liberty with your property. Destroyed it? Oh, no; I have simply
moved it off my land. The truth is, this hill is an old camping
ground of mine, and I can't bear to see it encumbered with such a
villainous piece of architecture as your brick meetinghouse.
You'll find the whole establishment, to the last pew cushion and
hymnbook, clown yonder in the meadow; and if you are a man of
taste, you'll agree with me that the new site is a great
improvement."
The parson glanced over the edge of the hill. True enough,
there stood the new meetinghouse in the middle of the marsh.
"I know not," said the parson resolutely, "by what diabolical
jugglery you have done it, but I do know that you have no just
claim to the hill. It has been deeded us by Elijah Trufant, whose
father and grandfather pastured sheep here."
"My pious friend," returned the other calmly, "when Adam was
an infant this hill had been in the possession of my family for
millions of years. Would it interest you to peruse the original
deed?"
He produced from beneath his cloak a roll of parchment, which
he handed to the parson. The parson unrolled the document and
tried to read it. Strange characters, faintly luminous, covered
the page. They grew fiery bright, and as the parson's hand
trembled—for he afterward admitted that it did
tremble—they danced over the parchment charring the surface
wherever they touched. At last Parson Purington's hand shook some
of the fiery hieroglyphics quite to the margin of the sheet, the
edge curled and crinkled, a thin line of smoke went up, and
presently the entire document was ablaze.
"Rather awkward in you," said the stranger, "but it's of no
great consequence. I happen to have a duplicate of the deed."
He waved his hand. The same flaming characters, enormously
enlarged, danced now all over the ground where the meetinghouse
should have stood. The parson's head swam as his eyes sought in
vain to decipher the unhallowed inscription. There lay the
claimant's title, burned into the top of the hill. The dry grass
caught fire, the twigs and blueberry bush stems crackled in the
heat, and for a moment the tall stranger was enveloped in smoke
and flame that cast a lurid light over the features of his
forbidding countenance. He stamped his feet and the unnatural
conflagration was immediately extinguished.
"You perceive that my title is perfectly valid. Nevertheless,
I am not a hard landlord. You have set your heart upon this
location. Suppose you occupy it as my tenant at will. It will
only be necessary, as the merest form, to sign this
little—"
"No, sir," shouted the parson, now thoroughly aroused. "I make
no compact. Whether you be indeed Beelzebub in person, or only
one of his subordinate devils, your claim is a lie, your title of
fire is forged, and I shall defy you and all your works in the
sermon which I shall preach tomorrow morning in that brick
meetinghouse, no matter if it is on the hill or on the marsh, no
matter if you have meanwhile spirited it away to the bottom of
the bottomless pit!"
"I shall do myself the honor to listen to your discourse,"
replied the stranger, with an exasperating grin.
When the parson reached home his daughter Susannah heard his
story, gave him another glass of hot rum toddy, tucked him
comfortably in bed, and then dispatched the hired help to the
other end of the village with instructions to arouse Peletiah
Jackson, first mate of the hermaphrodite brig Sister
Sal.
II
AFTER beating through all the streets of the little
settlement, and sailing in great circles over several of the
outlying pastures without making a port, Peleg Trott found
himself about an hour after midnight halfway up the hill path,
with a heavy sea on and the wind still dead ahead.
He sat down on a rock to take his bearings. "Peleg!" he
shouted from his lookout on the forecastle deck.
"Aye, aye, Cap'n Trott!" he responded from the wheel.
"Howz hellum?" he demanded from the forecastle.
"Har' down, Cap'n Trott," he reported from the wheel.
"Makin' much starnway?"
"Beat's nater, the starnway, Cap'n Trott."
"Shake down the centerboard a peg, Peleg."
"It's clean chapped now, Cap'n Trott."
"Lez hear box ze compash. Believe ye're drunk agen; ye
clapper-clawed—"
"Sartainly, Cap'n Trott. Cod, codcodfish, codfish becod,
codfish; codfish-befish; fishcodfish, fish becod, FISH, Cap'n
Trott."
"Whazzat light, Peleg, bearin' codfish becod, half fish?"
"Make it out for the moon, Cap'n Trott."
"Orright, Peleg. Head's she is till the moon's astarn, then
make a half hitch an' drap anchor to low'rd new meetin'house to
take 'zervation' ze wezzercock."
"Aye, aye, sir," and the difficult navigation was resumed,
with Peleg and Trott both on deck.
At the brow of the hill Trott encountered the same surprising
fact which had stupefied the parson an hour or more earlier in
the night. The meetinghouse was not there.
"Salt me down ef the gale hain't blowed her off her moorin's,"
he muttered.
After carefully scrutinizing the horizon on every side, he
continued:
"I'll be salted an' flaked ef she hain't adrift yonder on the
ma'sh!"
Peleg studied the situation attentively. In none of his
nocturnal voyages had he run against anything so extraordinary.
His spiritual interest in the new edifice was perhaps less than
that of any other inhabitant of the harbor, since he never went
to meeting. Yet he had transported several cargoes of brick for
the church from Wiscasset in his celebrated four-cornered
clipper, the scow Dandelion, and his interest in the
progress of the building had been greatly enlarged by an incident
which happened several weeks before the night of which we are
speaking.
One afternoon a tall, dark man, in an outlandish cloak, stood
on the wharf at Wiscasset watching Peleg as he thrust bricks into
the capacious maw of the Dandelion.
"What's building?" asked the foreigner in excellent
English.
"Meetin'house," said Peleg.
"Orthodox?" persisted the inquiring stranger.
"No, Parson Purin'ton's at N'waggen," replied Peleg
curtly.
"Ah!" said the man on the wharf, "I have heard of that eminent
divine. I am glad he is to have a new church. Have they
everything they need?"
Peleg was about to say yes, for that was the last cargo of
bricks and the other material was already on the ground. But his
eye happened to wander to the steeple of the Wiscasset church,
and an idea struck him.
"Ef you're minded to contribute," said he, "they're desprit
for a rooster vane like the there."
The mysterious benefactor smiled. "I'll send them a bird,"
said he.
In due course of time there arrived by schooner from Portland
a fine wooden weathercock, properly boxed and ready for mounting
and gilding. Peleg's story had been received with some
incredulity at Newaggen, but now he found himself a hero. His
presence of mind was highly commended by the deacons of the
church, and they presented him with half a barrel of Medford rum.
By the time the weathercock went aloft the half barrel was empty,
and Peleg was chock full of rum and theological enthusiasm.
There was the meetinghouse fully a quarter of a mile off its
anchorage. There was the well-known Chanticleer—Peleg's
especial joy and pride—resplendently conspicuous in the
moonlight. But what strange spell was on the world that night? As
Peleg gazed upon the bird, it appeared to him to be
disproportionately large. There was no wind, and yet it began to
revolve violently. Peleg distinctly heard a prolonged crow and
the gilt rooster flapped its wings as if about to assay a flight
into the upper air. True enough, up it went, carrying the
meetinghouse with it, the church swaying and the bell tolling
sadly as it rose, until the brick walls of the structure actually
eclipsed the moon. Then the weathercock and its quarry slowly
settled back to earth, hovering an instant over the waters of the
harbor, and finally landing not in the meadow, but on top of the
hill, not a dozen yards from where Peleg stood, his knees
shaking, his teeth chattering, and his heart a-thump like the
flat bottom of the Dandelion in a chopping cross sea.
"You may split me, salt me, and flake me!" ejaculated the
mariner when he had partially recovered from his stupefaction.
"Am I Peleg Trott, marster 'n eighth owner of the skeow
Dandyline, or am I a blind haddock, a crazy hake, or a goramighty
tomcod?"
Thus it happened that the people of Newaggen Harbor had
information, more or less trustworthy, as to what occurred on the
disputed territory that memorable night between the time of
Parson Purington's departure and the arrival of the army of
relief, led by Susannah and Peletiah Jackson.
When Peleg's somewhat incoherent story had been told, the
parson's daughter turned to the first mate of the Sister Sal.
"Peletiah," said she, "what is to be done?"
"My idee," remarked Deacon Trufant, "is that the adversary
purposes to sperrit away the parson and the whole congregation.
He is subtile and fule of wiles."
Peletiah Jackson was not a theologian, but he was a practical
young man and very fond of Susannah. He took off his coat.﹃My
idee,﹄he said, "is that if we cut away the mainmast, the ship'll
weather any gale the Devil can send. Somebody fetch a
hatchet."
In ten minutes Peletiah Jackson's head was seen to emerge
through the window opening above the bell deck. Two minutes later
he was clasping one of the four little pinnacles that surrounded
the base of the steeple. In a surprisingly short time he had a
running noose around the stubby spire, high above his head. The
story of his ascent is the heroic episode in the annals of
Newaggen. A dark cloud threatened to obscure the moon. The group
of eager spectators on the ground below watched with breathless
interest the slow progress of the first mate up the steeple. If
he should lose his hold? If the running knot in his rope should
slip? If the moon should go behind the cloud? Worse than all, as
Peleg Trott suggested, if the weathercock should choose this
moment for another flight?
Up went Peletiah, hand over hand, until his arms, and then his
legs, encircled the steeple. Now he scrambled aloft with the
agility of a monkey. The free end of the rope was thrown around
the very apex of the steeple, and in no time at all Peletiah,
seated comfortably in a sling, was hacking vigorously at the
woodwork under the gilt ball on which the diabolical rooster was
perched.
Blow after blow resounded in the still night air. Down in the
harbor settlement windows were thrown open and nightcapped heads
appeared. The racket was infernal. The edge of the cloud covered
the moon, and it was difficult to distinguish Peletiah's form,
except now and then when a flash of lightning lit up the
weathercock and its bold assailant. The strokes of the hatchet
ceased. It began to rain and blow. The hatchet strokes were heard
again. The people huddled together.
"My idee," said Deacon Trufant, "is that the adversary will
presently come in a cherriat of fire and—"
A clap of thunder interrupted the development of the idea.
Thud, thud, thud, thud went the hatchet, more viciously
persistent than before. Another brilliant flash—was the
weathercock toppling at last? Peleg Trott declared in an
awestruck whisper that he saw the cock's wings flapping, as a
preliminary to another flight, with meetinghouse, Peletiah, and
all. At that instant the storm burst in full fury. There came a
blinding glare, a deafening peal, a blast of thunder and
hurricane combined that shook the church and the hill itself, a
wild shriek overhead, half a human yell of triumph and half a
chanticleer's defiant cry, and with a tremendous crash something
like a ball of fire fell to the ground not a dozen yards from the
affrighted group by the meetinghouse portico.
A moment later, Peletiah came down the rope on a run, dripping
wet. Susannah put her arms around his neck and gave him a kiss
which could be heard even above the uproar of the elements.
They searched the hill all over next morning for some trace of
the flying weathercock. Not a splinter of wood nor a spangle of
gilt was ever discovered, but on the ledge near where the fiery
ball must have fallen there was found a mark like this, burned
deeply in the granite: \|/.
On the highest point of Ragged Tail Island, seven miles out to
sea, they still show you another footprint, also deeply indented
in the rock. It is precisely similar to the first, and it points
the same way. Taken together, the two tracks are held by the
local demonologists to indicate a flying stride from the mainland
to the island, a hasty departure from the latter point,
and—who knows?—either a final flight into the upper
air, or a despairing plunge into the deepest depths of the
Atlantic Ocean.
8. — THE LEGENDARY SHIP
A TALE OF THE EARLY DAYS OF NEW HAVEN COLONY
Published in the New York Sun, 17 May 1885
AN unexpected and very profitable growth of our business made
the immediate purchase of a piece of land necessary. My partners
requested me to negotiate for a few acres in the vicinity of New
Haven, and I at once began to do so. An annoying delay occurred
owing to the illegibility of an ancient record which made it
impossible to obtain a perfect title. I was about to abandon the
attempt to buy the property, when I was reminded that a gentleman
well known to me might be able to give the information that could
not be deciphered from the record. This person was a professor in
the college, a man of wide repute as a scholar, and an ardent
student of the Colonial epoch of the town.
I found him in his library, and he, without any hesitation,
gave me the information which I sought, and told me where I would
find such legal proofs of clear title as I desired. I was
impressed with the accuracy of his learning and the readiness
with which it responded to his demands, and I ventured to say to
him that the acquisition of such a mass of names and dates must
have cost him great labor. To my surprise he replied that I was
mistaken, the truth being that he mastered such incidents with
ease. His great mental efforts, he said, were required by the
processes of analysis and comparison which were necessary to
separate truth from the rubbish and chaff of tradition and
record, and by the reasoning necessary accurately to trace causes
to those results which, when grouped, constituted trustworthy
history.
"For instance," said he, "I have here a document which will
cost me the most severe application before I am through with
it."
I had observed that there lay upon the table a roll of
manuscript. The table was littered with pamphlets, documents,
aged and worm-eaten books, and I do not know why my attention was
specially fixed upon this particular roll of paper. It was
plainly an aged manuscript. The paper was ribbed and unruled,
like that in use a century or more ago; and if it once was white,
the years had faded it to a dull buff leathery hue, while the
care with which he afterward handled it indicated that it had
little tenacity of fiber. I knew that he referred to this old
roll of manuscript, and, as I expected, he took it up.
"I have here," he continued, "a remarkable historical
narrative which I found among some refuse in a garret, where it
had lain for more than a hundred years. It is an account of a
strange, unnatural occurrence, of which I have heard by
tradition, and which is even casually mentioned in Mather's
Marginalia. I have, however, always regarded it as
unworthy of serious consideration, believing that there was
either no foundation for the tradition or else that it could be
traced to the hallucinations of a disordered brain. I now,
however, have an account of it which I cannot ignore. It was
written by a clergyman of the most godly character, a man who
could not, even in jest, speak falsehoods, and he asserts that he
was almost an eyewitness of what he describes. How, then, can I
refuse to accept this record? It gives all that a historian
requires to satisfy him of the authenticity of any alleged
occurrence. It is the genuine manuscript of a man whom I know to
have lived, and it is not a hearsay account. If we are to put
faith in any of the records of the past, we must accept this one.
I do not know of an established fact of history that has any
better basis than this document gives to substantiate the
wonderful phenomenon which it records.
"I confess," continued the professor with some animation of
speech, "that such a problem as is presented by this manuscript
has never before been given to me to solve. As a historian, I am
compelled to accept as true what I here read, while as a
physicist I must regard the record as the wildest and most
improbable of romances. Were it based on the testimony of one
person it could easily be rejected as a vision or alienation of
mind, to which the austerity of the Puritans seems to have
rendered some of them peculiarly liable. I am confronted,
however, with the assertion of this writer, as well as with the
inherent proof of the assertion, that he was one of many
witnesses. It is, indeed, an interesting problem, and the
difficulty of reconciling an account that must be accepted as
truthful history with the fact that it must be denied as physical
possibility makes the task fascinating."
Doubtless Professor M——— observed that he
had awakened a pleasing interest in me. Indeed, I took no pains
to conceal it, and told him that I would gladly hear the story
that had so puzzled him. He at once unrolled the manuscript.
"This appears," said he, "to have been written by the Reverend
Dr. Prentice, and in the year 1680. I judge it was a letter to a
friend, although the ravages of time have made the first few
sentences illegible. I have other manuscripts of the clergyman, a
few sermons, and having thus been enabled to make comparison, I
find the handwriting of all to be identical. I will not read it
in full, and will paraphrase some of the text, for it is written
in the stiff, formal manner of that day, many of the words found
in it now being obsolete.
"'There had come,' began the professor, 'upon the tradesmen
and those engaged in commerce a season of adversity in the year
1646, such as they had not known even in the earliest days of the
settlement of the New Haven Colony. The vessels lay idle in the
harbor, trade with the other colonies languished, and as the New
Haven colonists were familiar with commerce rather than
agriculture, they were embarrassed even for the necessaries of
life. But for the energy and determination of some of the men of
character, the colony must have found its existence imperiled,
for many had determined to depart, some even making arrangements
to emigrate to Ireland. A less courageous and tenacious race must
have succumbed. It was determined as a last resort to build a
ship large enough to cross the ocean, freight her, and send her
to England in the hope that the disheartening losses would be
retrieved by the development of commerce with the mother country.
Overcoming great obstacles they built a ship in Rhode Island
Colony.
"'The frost had closed the smaller streams, and the ground was
whitened with snow when the ship entered New Haven harbor. There
was great rejoicing at the sight of her, and her size, being
fully 150 tons measurement, was a cause for wonder, for such a
monster had never been seen before in that harbor. With her sails
all set and her colors abroad, she came up to her anchoring place
with such grace and speed as greatly delighted the people who had
assembled at the water's edge to greet her. Courage was revived
by the sight of her, and the people said, "Now we shall again
have plenty and add to our possessions, if God be willing."'
"The master of the ship, Mr. Lamberton, was found to be
somewhat gloomy, and Dr. Prentice records that Lamberton told him
in confidence that though the ship was of the model and a fast
sailer, yet she was so wilty—meaning thereby of such
disposition to roll in rough water—that he feared she
would prove the grave of all who sailed in her. However, he
breathed his suspicions to no one else. The ship was laden and
ready for departure early in January 1647.
"The cold that prevailed for five days and nights before the
time fixed for clearing for London was such as the people had
never before known. It must have remained many degrees below
zero, for the salt water was frozen far down the harbor, and the
ship was riveted by the ice as firmly as though by many anchors.
There were no lazy bones among the people, and with prodigious
industry the men cut a canal through the ice forty feet wide and
five miles long to the never-freezing waters of the sound. The
vessel was frozen in with her bow pointing toward the shore, and
it was necessary to propel her to clear water stern foremost.
"This was an unlucky omen. Captain Lamberton avowed that the
sea and the conflicting powers that struggled for its mastery
were controlled by whims and freaks, which would be sure to be
excited by such an insult as that of a ship entering the water
stern first. An old sailor, too, informed them all that a ship
that sailed stern first always returned stern first, meaning by
that that she never came back to the harbor from which she thus
departed.
"You will observe," said the professor, putting down the
manuscript for a moment, "that in these gloomy forebodings are to
be detected traces of the mythological conception of the mystery
of the sea, with which all sailors, even to the present time, are
more or less tinctured. I am especially impressed with the manner
in which these colonists acted. Believing in predestination in
spiritual matters, their lives in worldly affairs conformed more
or less thereto. So, in spite of these omens, there was no
thought of delay. They had fixed the time for sailing, and they
meant to sail. So godly a man as the Reverend Mr. Davenport
expressed this feeling in his prayer as reported by this writer.
Mr. Davenport, as the ship began slowly to move, used these
words: 'Lord, if it be Thy pleasure to bury these our friends in
the bottom of the sea, they are Thine. Save them.'
"Men less completely under the domination of their religious
belief would never have gone to sea without exorcising in some
way the evil influences which these omens seemed to indicate
would prevail. There had gathered on the ice all the people of
the colony except the sick and feeble, perhaps eight hundred or a
thousand souls. On the departing vessel were some of their
friends and kin. The farewells were said with the expression
neither of grief nor of joy. Restraint, the subjugation, even the
quenching of all emotions, was the rule of life with these
people, and I gather from one or two expressions in this account
that never was there more formal, less demonstrative
leave-taking.
"When the vessel reached deep water, and just as one of the
great sails was beginning to belly with the wind, the people with
one accord fell on their knees on the ice and prayed. The ship
was five miles away. The air was clarified by the cold, and the
vessel could be distinctly seen, and as the people prayed with
open eyes that were fixed upon the distant and receding ship, she
suddenly disappeared, vanished as quickly as though her bottom
had fallen out and she had sunk on the instant. 'Yes,' says this
writer, 'more suddenly for whereas at one moment the eyes of all
of us were fixed upon her, at the next, as in the wink of the
eye, she was not. We rose, gazed fixedly into the vacant space
where we last saw her, and then with wonder turned to each other.
Yet in another moment she was disclosed to us as she was before,
and we watched her until she disappeared behind the neck of land
that bounds the harbor to the east. So we dispersed, wondering at
this strange manifestation whose meaning was hidden from us. Some
there were who were convinced that it betokened that even as she
had disappeared only to be seen again, so we should again behold
her after her voyage. But there were many who were impressed that
though we should again see her, the sight would be but a partial
one. With reverent submission to the will of God, the people
repaired to their homes.
"You see," said the professor, again putting down the
manuscript, "in all this that inexplicable commingling of hope
and fatalism which was, I imagine, one of the inevitable
conditions of mind of this austere and intensely religious
people. The mere fact of the sudden disappearance and renewed
sight of the ship may perhaps be explained by natural and simple
causes, but not so the phenomena afterward described.
"In the natural order of events the colonists would have had
some tidings of their ship after three months had passed. None
came, however. Ships that sailed from England in March, April,
May, and even June, brought no word of her arrival. Their
suspense could be relieved only in one way. I should have
asserted, even had I no evidence of it, that the colonists sought
the relief they always thought they found in prayer. I should
also have unhesitatingly said that they did not, in their
prayers, ask that the inevitable be averted, but simply prayed
that they might be prepared to receive with submission whatever
was in store for them to know. I should have been justified in so
asserting, as I find by reference to their manuscript. The
account has it"—here the professor again read from the
manuscript—"'The failure to learn what was the fate of
their ship did put the godly people in much prayer, both public
and private, and they prayed that the Lord would, if it was His
pleasure, let them hear what He had done with their dear friends,
and prepare them for a suitable submission to His holy will.'
"In all the accounts that we have of prayer," said the
professor, "I know of nothing equal to that. It contains volumes
of history. With that simple text the ethnologist and historian
might construct the history of a people. Observe the human nature
of it, that is, the intolerable burden of suspense, and see the
religious faith of it, both of submission and the trust that the
prayer would be answered.
"These people seem to have rested with the conviction that
this remarkable supplication would be effective. Dr. Prentice
continues his narrative, after quoting the prayer, with an
account of what happened, as though it were the expected answer.
He writes, too, with the vividness and accuracy of detail to be
expected of the eyewitness, as inherent proof of the truth of his
narration. I infer that within a day or two after the prayer the
manifestation was received. There arose a great thunderstorm from
the northwest, such a tempest of fury as sometimes follows
elemental disturbances from that quarter. It seems to have been
accepted as the presage of the manifestation that followed. After
it passed away it left the atmosphere unusually clear. An hour
before sunset the reward of their faith came. Far off, where the
shores of Long Island are just dimly visible, a ship was
discovered by a man who made haste to tell all the colonists.
They gathered on the shore and saw a vessel, full rigged, every
sail puffed out by the wind and the hull listed to one side by
reason of the strain upon the masts and the speed with which the
breeze carried her.
"'It is our vessel,' they cried. 'God be praised, for He has
heard and answered our prayer.'
"Yet while they saw her straining with the wind, and seemingly
speeding with such rapidity as should bring her to them in an
hour, they also observed that she made no progress. Thus she
continued to appear to them for half an hour. While they were
still astounded by the mystery, they saw that she had of a sudden
approached, and was coming with what seemed most reckless and
foolhardy speed, for she was in the channel, which is narrow and
of sufficient depth only to permit the passage of a vessel of her
size with skillful handling. The children cried, 'There's a brave
ship,' but the older people were filled with apprehension lest
she should go upon the shoals or be dashed upon the shore. They
thereupon made warning gestures, although they could see no one
upon the deck.
"At last they observed something of which in their excitement
they had taken no heed. The harbor lies in a southerly direction,
and the channel itself runs due north and south. The vessel was
making toward them with great speed, every sail curved stiff with
the steady force of the wind that seemed to come in a gale from
the south, and yet the wind was actually north. Thus holding her
course due north, they saw her sailing directly against the wind.
Then they knew that they were witnessing a mysterious
manifestation. As she approached so near that some imagined they
could easily hurl a stone aboard her, they could see the smaller
details, the rivets, the anchor and its chains, the capping of
the smaller ropes, and the rhythmic quivering of the ribbonlike
pennant that was flying in the face of the wind. Yet they saw no
man aboard her.
"The people awaited with sober resignation such further
manifestations as were to be given them. Suddenly, and when she
seemed right upon them, her maintop was blown over, noiselessly
as the parting of a cloud, and was left hanging in the shrouds.
Then the mizzentop went over, making great destruction, and next,
as though struck by the fiercest hurricane, all the masts went by
the board, being twisted as by the wrenching of a wind that blew
in resistless circles. The sails were torn in narrow ribbons,
whirling round and round in the air, while the ropes snapped and
were unraveled into shreds, and beat with noiseless force upon
the decks. Soon her hull began to careen, and at last, being
lifted by a mighty wave, it dived into the water. Then a smoky
cloud fell in that particular place, as though a curtain had
dropped from heaven, and when, in a moment, it vanished, the sea
was smooth, and nothing was to be seen there. The people believed
that thus the Almighty had told them of the tragic end of their
ship, and they renewed their thanks to Him that He had answered
their prayer. The Reverend Mr. Davenport, in public, declared
'that God had condescended for the quieting of their afflicted
spirits this extraordinary account of His sovereign disposal of
those for whom so many fervent prayers were continually
made.'
"You will see," said the professor, as he carefully laid the
manuscript away, "what an extraordinary problem is here presented
to me. If I accept any recorded evidence, I must accept this; yet
science teaches me that the laws of nature are inexorable, as
much so now as ever. What is the truth?"
9. — THE SHADOW ON THE FANCHER TWINS
Published in the New York Sun, 17 January 1886
KING STREET is a highway that winds along the crest of the
sightly ridge in the southeast corner of Westchester County,
doubling and curving to conform to the contour of the land, and
permitting, in these swervings from right to left, superb views
of the distant waters of the sound and of the hazy blue hills of
Long Island to be obtained. It is a noble highway,
broad—for men, when in colonial days this road was built,
were generous of their land—and finely drooping elms and
here and there a warty oak stand like sentinels upon each side.
It serves not only its original purpose as a means for passing to
and fro between the harbor on the sound and the fertile and
romantic valley to the north, but has also in some places been
fixed upon as a boundary; so that if anyone riding from White
Plains to the sea should meet another driving north, and should,
therefore, turn to the right, the other turning to the left to
permit easy passage, one would be upon the very outermost
easterly rim of New York State, while the other would be skirting
the extreme western edge of Connecticut.
At one point, some six miles from the sea, the road makes a
majestic sweep from east to west, revealing a glorious panorama
of sea as far east as the bluffs that hem in Huntington Bay, and
to the west until the waters appear to be brought to an abrupt
halt by the gloomy Fort Schuyler; while a far-reaching view of
the dissolute rocks of Connecticut gives contrast to the scene.
Back from this point, and concealed from the highway by a scrubby
piece of woodland, stand the melancholy ruins of a house set in
the middle of a dreary and deserted field. So fragile and decayed
with age and neglect does it appear that the wonder is that even
the gentlest breeze had not long ago leveled it. Yet it has
resisted tempests and solitude for more than a hundred years, and
when it at last succumbs it will be with sudden dissipation into
natural elements. It seems now like the skull and skeleton of
something once alive. Great gaping holes, which brown and ragged
shingles fringe like shaggy eyebrows, were once windows, and a
yawning, cavernous space below, defined by moldering beams and
scantling, articulated with bent and rusty nails, tells where
once hung a heavy oaken door, now fallen upon the stone steps
that show no signs of age except a cloak of greenish moss.
The wind seems always to be moaning about this remnant, and at
night the screech of the owls awakens echoes of a century, for it
is more than a hundred years since any sound was heard within
these walls, except the mysterious tickings and rumblings with
which the forces of nature destroy what man has made and then
neglected, or the fearless twittering or screech of birds that
occupy when men desert. But why so sightly and pleasing a spot as
this must once have been, and might be, too, again, should have
been deserted as though plague-stricken none are now left to
tell. Was it the subtle influences that, like another atmosphere,
were ever present with the Fancher boys and led them to their
irresistible fate? If this be the real though perhaps the
unconscious reason, may it not be true that even in lands where
superstition is believed to be conquered, and facts alone
command, there remain mysterious and unacknowledged tributes in
human nature to the powers which the astrologers and necromancers
of the Orient worship? It is certain that none ever occupied the
place after the Fancher boys had quitted it, and after reading
this tradition of their lives one may judge for himself whether
reasons are good for thinking that in the olden times people
believed there rested an evil spell upon this home.
When the earth was shadowed and palled in that great eclipse
in the year 1733, terror seized the people, for nature seemed
reversed, and a stifling calm came over all things, so that the
beasts in the field gave frightened cries, and the dogs bayed,
and the fowls, even at midday, sought their perches. For people
were not prepared as now, to the accuracy of a science, to
witness this awful proof of the stupendous powers and laws of the
Almighty.
Just at that hour there had gathered in the Fancher homestead
neighbors, kindly bent on ministering to one in the most sacred
of all necessities. And when the midday shadow began to permeate
the atmosphere, and to grow deeper and denser, and the ghastly
light revealed the other and unusual sights without, the
neighbors sat crouched before the great fire in the living room,
close together, and speaking only in hoarse whispers, casting
half-averted glances from the window into the weird light beyond.
But one, a motherly matron, was in the inner room, whence once
she appeared with gloomy countenance, saying, "It were better
that it were dead, for this will blight its life."
And the neighbors asked in whispers, not for the child but for
the mother, and the matron replied, "She does not know that the
sun was darkened when the baby came to us."
By and by the matron came into the great room bearing a burden
in her pillowed arms and, having lifted the blanket of soft wool,
she permitted her friends to peer at the little child.
"Is it—does it live?" one asked.
"Pity it, for it does. It is a boy, and he will be dark, and
fierce, and who knows what; for do you suppose that such a thing
as that which happened to the sun will not prevail over one who
at that moment came to us?"
And the infant even then opened his eyes upon them, and they
saw that, though so long as women remembered there had been none
of the Fanchers, or the maternal Brushes, whose eyes were not the
gentlest blue, yet this one stretched apart lids that revealed
eyes that were surely dark and promised, when puerility had gone,
to be the deepest black; and even the little tufts of hair were
dark, and some of the matrons were sure that their penetrating
eyes detected a swarthy under-color beneath the smooth skin of
the cheek.
"He does not cry," said one.
"No, but his fists are doubled," said another.
"They always are: that signifies nothing," said the
matron.
"Aye, but not clenched and firm with resistance like his."
"If he would cry, I would like it," continued the first.
"I doubt if he ever sheds a tear," said the matron who bore
him upon her arms.
And then the father came and looked for many moments upon his
first born, and at length he said, "His name shall be
Daniel."
Then, when the shadow on the earth had gone and the women were
about to go, there came again a moment when the motherly matron
looked from the inner room for an instant, and though she did not
speak not a woman there failed to read her thoughts, so fine is
women's intuition at such times, and they gathered about the fire
again speaking with hushed voices and looking upon each other
with anxious glances. And just as the sun was setting behind
White Plains hills the matron came again, bearing another burden
gently, and, as she lifted the tip of the covering to let them
see, she said, "'Twas when the sun was shining brightly this one
came to us, and he will be fair and gentle and comely, but the
shadow of his brother's birth will be upon him all his days."
The women, when they saw this infant, said that his eyes were
Fancher eyes—that is to say were very blue; and his hair,
which was like a little ray of sunlight, was fair, like his
mother's and all her kin.
When the father had looked upon this one he said, "He shall be
called David."
Of course, so unusual was all this that there was much
conversation about it, far and near, and the little Fancher twins
were observed above all children thereabout, for there was no
small curiosity to note what the effect might be upon them of the
strange and unnatural event that happened at their birth. As they
grew older the people all agreed that rather than Daniel and
David their names might better have been Esau and Jacob, for
Daniel was dark, like some of the Indians that lived near by, and
his head was shaggy with thick black hair. He was fierce, and
imperious, and promised to become a mighty hunter or else a
warrior, for he talked of war and bloodshed, and before he was
ten years old had led his brother far away in search of Indians
to conquer. But David was gentle. He loved the farm and the
cattle. But he cared for no other mates, because he was content
with Daniel. So the twin brothers grew, David dependent upon and
yielding to his swarthy brother like a vine to the tree it
embraces. They slept together, and they ate together, and learned
their letters and did their sums from the same book, so that what
one knew the other knew, and though so different as to seem to
have sprung from distinct races, yet they had but one mind
between them, and that was Daniel's, and all the people said,
"The shadow of the brother is upon David and will be always till
it puts out his life."
Once their father said as he looked out in the morning upon
his farm, "'Twill storm, I fear, before the night. The wind comes
from the southeast. Mayhap 'twill bring rain."
And Daniel contradicted, saying, "Not southeast, but
southwest."
"You are wrong, my son."
"Not wrong. I am never wrong. I would not have spoken if I was
wrong. Ask David. He will tell you."
"David will say as you have said. You are two bodies and one
mind, I tell you."
"We are one mind because we say and think the truth."
The father smiled when he heard the imperious little son say
this, and then went away; and when he had gone, David said,
"Daniel, we will prevail upon our father that he is wrong and we
are right."
"If he will not believe our word he will believe nothing."
"Then he shall see."
"We will make a weathercock."
"It shall not be a cock, David."
"No, it shall not. What, then, shall it be?"
"It shall be a warrior."
"It shall. Can we make one?"
"You shall make the head and arms, for you have skill with the
knife, and I will make the body and legs. Then we will join the
parts, and if you make the arms with broad swords at the end,
then the wind will strike them, and they will point the way it
comes from. Our father shall not think we babble when we
contradict him."
So the lads went to the shed, and by noon had constructed a
marvelous image that they called a warrior, and its arms were
elongated into broad swords shaped from tough hemlock shingles,
and when one arm was lifted high above its head the other pointed
rigidly to the earth, and if there was a breeze the arms were to
gyrate with bewildering rapidity.
"A warrior should have color, Daniel," said David, when they
looked upon the image.
"He should have a red coat," replied Daniel.
"And his breeches?"
"They should be white, and he should have a fierce beard and a
stern eye."
So they thus decorated the image and set it up on the ridge
piece of the shed, and when their father saw it its arms and
sword were whirling away in a southwest breeze, and it was
staring fiercely, though with irregularly marked eyes, away upon
the horizon where the Long Island hills touch the sky. And there
the warrior stayed, long after the storm had begun, and until the
arms had become wounded in battling with the winds until one
night it tottered and fell beneath a vigorous blast and lay
unburied on the ground until the worms finished it. Daniel said,
when his father saw it: "When you look upon it remember that
David and I will not be disputed."
The neighbors heard this story of the warrior, and they said,
"The shadow is upon the lads. Who can tell what yet may
happen?"
When Daniel had come into possession of his strength, his fame
as a strong man spread far and near, and they said that he had
felled an ox with a blow, and had captured two robbers from the
town below and held them with a grip of steel, each by an arm;
and no one said yes or no to him until his desire was first
ascertained. But David they loved because of his gentleness, and
respected because of his skill with tools, and he was of such
kindly disposition that he had but to surmise a desire of any of
the neighbors when he would try to gratify it. So that when it
was their desire that Daniel should do some act or lend some
help, the wish was made known to David and Daniel was then
overcome. For as they grew older so they seemed more and more
closely to be united in common impulses and purposes, though the
people asserted that the shadow was more and more potent, and
that David's heart and mind were surely being absorbed, and that
before many years he would simply be the shadow of his
brother.
There lived in the town of Bedford, some miles distant, Miss
Persia Rowland, and it was said of her that, fair as all other
maids were, there was none like her, and she knew it, and was
pleased thereat, and that she coveted not only admiration but the
acknowledgment of it, whereby many a stalwart young fellow had
favored her wish to his sorrow.
One day Miss Persia summoned one who obeyed her always, and
said to him, "There is to be the great assembly of the year on
St. Valentine's eve, and the sleighing is fine."
"That will be well, mistress. But whether the sleighing was
fine or not the young fellows from miles around would come."
"No doubt. The winter is dull."
"Aye, but not that, and you know well, mistress, why they
come, and why, if you were not there, they would quickly
depart."
"But it tires me to see the same faces, with their staring,
yearning eyes. There's no spunk to them. I hear of one below who,
they say, never even so much as lets his eyes rest on a maid; not
from abashment, but because he cares not for them at all, being
in love with his own shadow—that is, his twin brother. It
would please me to set my eyes upon such a man."
"Ah, be never saw you, mistress, for if he had, the brother
would be forgot."
"Have you seen him?"
"Often."
"And what looks he like? Is he strong and fierce, and does he
scowl, and does he permit himself a beard?"
"He is all these things, and all men seem to fear him but the
brother, and he says nothing to the women."
"If you wish to please me, as so often you assert you do, you
will see that this strange being and his brother are present at
the assembly. The sleighing will be fine, I said."
So it happened that the young man, being greatly desirous of
doing whatever might make this woman smile even for an instant
upon him, with caution approached David, and at last won his
promise that he and Daniel would attend the assembly. But when
David and his brother talked about it, Daniel said, "You have
said we would go; therefore we will. But why do they chatter so
of this young woman? Is she unlike others? Have they not all eyes
that they cast on young men, David, and do they not all pucker
their lips that their smiles may seem more pleasing? Fools they
be who are bewitched thereby; but you have said we will go, and
we do what we say, David."
So, as the young men and women were engaged in the courtly
minuet in the great assembly room, there came among them the
Fancher twins. They stood side by side in the further end of the
room, where the light from the great burning logs revealed them
clearly. They were of an even height and tall, but one was
muscular and strongly built and his face seemed in the dim light
more swarthy than it really was, and his thick black hair stood
in shaggy masses, as nature had arranged it, and without the
rigid dressing of the time. The other was slight and fair as a
maid, and there was a smile upon his face, for the bright faces
and the gay dresses and the dance and the twinkling of candles
pleased him.
Miss Persia had seen them enter, and though with demure and
graceful manner she seemed occupied with the evolutions of the
dance, yet she saw them all the while. When the cotillion was
ended she summoned her adorer and said, "The dark one, that is
he. Why do you permit them to stand there? Will his brother be
his partner in the next set? He must not. Why do you not bring
him to me?"
And so the youth, in stiff peruke and silken stockings and
satin breeches, went to Daniel, and bowing, said, "'Tis dull for
you, I fear."
"If so we can go as we came."
"But not until you have been presented?"
"We came to see, not to be seen."
"He wishes to present you, Daniel," said his twin brother
David.
"Well, he may do it."
But the youth with some embarrassment perceived that Daniel
had no thought of moving when David were by, and he thought how
often had he heard it said, "The fair one is the other's shadow."
But he led them both to the high-backed chair wherein the fair
Persia sat; and though Daniel stood before her staring grimly at
her without abashment, and David, with becoming humility, bowed
low before her beauty, yet she took no heed of the fair one but
spoke to the dark one only.
"We have heard of you, but we have never seen you here
before," she said. "Why is it?"
"Because it has not been our wish," Daniel replied with grave
dignity.
"But it should have been. Such men as you do wrong yourself
and others by living as hermits." She perceived that by bold
self-assertion and fearlessness of manner she could alone
interest this man. "Come with me," she added. "Your arm, if you
would be considerate. 'Tis a strong arm, I perceive. No wonder
they tell us of your feats of strength. I wish to hear you talk
and it is pleasanter to stroll about. Here, let me present your
brother to a fair young woman. For once, sir, give me the
preference, and permit him to entertain Miss Nancy Brush."
And before he knew it the fierce Daniel was promenading with
the beauty on his arm, while David—Daniel for once forgot
him.
"It is a delight for us to see a strong man here," she said.
"A woman might almost lose her faith in men, did not such as you
appear once in a while."
"My strength is my own, and David's. What is it to you?" he
said.
"What to me? The pleasure of novelty. They say there is a war
brooding, and troops have fought already on Bunker Hill. It is
that to me that gives me and all women sense of safety, for I now
know that there are men fearless and brave, and quick to fight an
enemy, and we shall, therefore, be safe. Ali! why was I a
woman?"
"You talk of strength. It is weak to bemoan your fate."
"Would you not bemoan too had you been born without arms?"
"If you were a man what would you do?"
"Be strong and glory in it. If there were war, I would command
an army, as you might, and if there were peace, I would compel
the homage and affection of every fair maid."
"To command an army is well; to woo and will is pastime for
puerile men."
"So little do you know and realize the power of strength. The
greatest victories that a man can win are those which enable him
to woo and wed whichever of all the maids he ever saw that he
desires. If she be proud, he can subdue her pride, and that is a
greater feat than winning a battle; and if she be vain, he can
humble her vanity, and if she be selfish, he can make her forget
herself, and if she be well favored above all other maids, he can
be conscious that, if he wed, the beauty is for him, and that is
a conquest of all other men."
As she said this she looked up at him, bending her graceful
neck that she might obtain full view of his stern face and compel
him thereby to look upon her. And when he had perceived her face
and the beauty of it he did not speak, but led her to the remote
corner of the great room, and then, unloosing his arm, turned so
that he might stand squarely before her. He looked at her
steadily for a moment, she not quailing. She asked at length,
"What is it? Why do you look so fiercely at me?"
"Because you spoke as you did, and I perceive now what woman's
beauty is. Have you not more strength than I?"
"I? I stronger than you?"
"Yes, you think you are. I think you may be, but you are
subtle. Is that one form of strength? Is there one of the men
here, or whom you ever saw, who would not with joy obey you? And
if that be so, is that not due to the very strength you just now
complimented in men?"
"There may be some, who knows? I can be as frank as you. There
is one who would not."
"I don't know whether I would not, for you mean me."
"Yes, and you don't know? Well, I'll try you. I have a
powerful but vicious colt; no man dares approach him. I think you
would dare. Will you come tomorrow and break it for me?"
"I will come with my brother."
"Then you dare not come alone."
He looked half angrily upon her a moment, and then said, "I
will come alone."
"Now go and fetch your brother to me. He stands there now
alone, looking with great eyes at you. Is there some intangible
bond between you?"
"My brother is myself and I am he."
"Then bring him quickly, and leave us for a while, that I may
perceive how Daniel acts in David's person, as I have already by
your strange admission seen how David appears in Daniel's
person."
"You are a strange woman," said he, looking almost fiercely
upon her with his eyes black as the ornament of jet she wore, and
reflecting brighter light. But he brought David, and then stepped
aside and watched that supple, slender figure as, on David's arm,
she walked, as the swan sails, without apparent volition; and he
saw how white and graceful her neck was, as it was revealed above
the soft lace about it, and how like a crown her dark hair was
gathered upon her head, twinkling like stars in winter's night
with the jewels set there; and he could hear the whistle of her
silks as she once passed close by him, looking up with serious
face at him, and he perceived that her feet in slippers white and
supple did now and then peep from her skirt like little chicks
that thrust and withdrew their heads from their mother's
wing.
"What is my strength and determination beside this power?" he
thought. "I could crush, but this supple thing can compel."
While she was walking with David, Miss Persia had said, "Who
would surmise that you and he were brothers?"
"Why not?" asked David.
"Have you never surveyed yourselves side by side in the
mirror?" she asked.
"Why should we do that? I think the mirror belies, for no
reflection would put out of my mind the conviction that I am like
him and he like me. We cannot see ourselves."
"But your brother is so fierce and gloomy and imperious."
"Ah, that is but the other side of myself."
"And you, shall I say it? They say you are gentle and kindly
and peaceful."
"Ah, but that is the other side of him."
"Being the complement of each other, together you make a man,"
she said.
He laughed, and she continued, "But you cannot live always
thus. There is a better complement even than a brother."
"Tell me what you think it is."
"A fair maid: and there will come the realization of this to
you. But you are most unneighborly. We have never seen you
before. Come and be better friends. Come for I want to talk with
you more. Will you?"
"We will come."
"Not together. You would embarrass me. I should not know to
which I spoke. Come you the day after tomorrow and pay me a
little visit at my home. My father would be glad to know you,"
and she looked up, pleadingly with an arch smile, and not serious
and demure as she had when she obtained Daniel's promise to come.
So he promised her.
On their way home in the still hour before dawn the twins were
silent for a long time perhaps because Daniel drove furiously. At
length Daniel said:
"She is not like other women, David."
"She is not, Daniel."
"She hath a luminous eye."
"And a cheek like the pink shell in our best room,
Daniel."
"And her smile, it pleases, for it hath meaning, David."
"Yes, it pleases, but more her serious face."
"Even more that, and there is great power in her supple
motion."
"So I surmise."
The next afternoon Daniel mounted his horse and went flying
along the King Street to Bedford and when he returned he limped
as though lamed, but he said nothing.
"You are lamed, Daniel," said David.
"Yes, a colt kicked me but I mastered him."
On the next day David mounted the horse and away he went,
Daniel paying no heed to his departure. When he came back he said
nothing.
"Are you going supperless to bed?" asked his twin brother.
"I have eaten supper with friends," said David quietly.
Then until the winter frosts were yielding to the summer sun
Daniel and David ate and slept and worked together, but in
silence, and almost every day one or the other went hurrying off
toward the north, but never together.
One day after David had gone, Daniel an hour later followed.
He drove straight to the door of Esquire Rowland's mansion, and
without ceremony, entered, passing to the best room. There he saw
David sitting beside the fair Persia, who had not heard Daniel
enter.
He stood on the threshold for a moment Then he said, "David, I
sat there yesterday and should tomorrow. Is it to be our curse
that we have no mind except in common? Come, my brother; I say
come."
He did not speak to Persia but turned abruptly and quitted the
house; and David, without one word, arose and followed him.
The girl sat there like one bewildered, speechless; and when
at length her wits came she perceived that the brothers were far
down the highway.
"Oh were there but one, and that one the dark one," she said,
as she stood peering through the little windowpanes and watching
until the twins had passed out of sight.
Not a word did Daniel or David speak until they reached their
home. Then Daniel said:
"David, in this, as in all things wise, we are agreed. You
love the maid, as I love her. If you hated her, I should hate
her. But though we may be one, we are to the world as two. We
love her, and must be content with that."
"That is true, Daniel. She cannot cut the bond that binds
us."
"I love you as myself, David, and you me, for we are indeed in
all but body one. Therefore we must see her no more. And, as in
men contrary customs part them this way and that, so one of us
may be overcome by our passion, and visit the girl again. If so,
whichever does shall go to the other and confess, and say, 'What
shall I do? What will you do with me?' And what the other says,
that will be done."
"There is reason and purpose in this pledge, Daniel, and we
will make it."
"David, if it is you who comes to me I shall say what I hope
you will say to me if I fail."
"And that is to end my life?"
"That is what it is."
One day some weeks later Daniel came to David and led him to
the glen that even to this day may be seen beyond the old
house.
"David, I am a poor weakling. I have seen her again yesterday.
You know our pledge," and here Daniel drew from his pocket a
pistol.
David looked upon his brother with an agonizing glance, while
Daniel stood before him grim and fierce, and very dark. His hand
was upon the trigger.
"I can't, I can't, Daniel," David said.
"You can, for if I were in your place I could and would
command you to keep your pledge and do as I bid. There is no
escape, but here," and he held up the weapon.
"No, I cannot bid you do it, though 'twas our pledge," said
David, and put his hands to his eyes and shuddered.
"You are a babe," said Daniel, with contempt.
"But, Daniel, there is another thing that can be done. The war
has come. Washington is below. You shall enlist, and be a
soldier. Perhaps you will become a great commander, as you once
felt sure you would."
"You tell me to enlist, I will do it." And that night Daniel
quitted his home and within three days was with Washington at
Harlem.
Some months later the army was gathering near the natural
fortification at White Plains, preparing there to resist the
oncoming of the soldiers of King George. It was a time when men
were gloomy, but determined, for the shadow of battle was upon
them, and their courage was greater than their hopes. One morning
the sentry on the extreme left wing that was encamped in the
outskirts of the town of Bedford brought in a sad and sullen man.
They said to the officer in command that he was a deserter whom
they had captured that night.
"Who are you?" asked the officer.
"I am known as David Fancher."
"You heard the accusation?"
"It is the truth. Do as you please with me. But let me say
this thing—'twas not from cowardice I went away."
"If not, what then?"
"That is my affair."
"You know the penalty unless there be good excuse?" he was
asked.
"I know the penalty. Perhaps I am glad of it. Who knows?"
They led him away, and as he stood sullenly before the
officers of the court-martial and admitted his guilt and would
say no word in extenuation. They pronounced his sentence—to
be shot at sunrise the next morning.
In the evening David sent a communication to the officer,
saying that if it were not too late he would like to speak to one
of the soldiers who were detailed to execute him, and the officer
said, "Let his wish be granted."
So it happened that in the darkness of the night a soldier was
brought to the guardhouse and admitted. He stood by the door, for
he could not see within, but he said: "Who is it that has sent
for me and why?"
"It is I, Daniel."
"That is David's voice."
"Yes, Daniel. Daniel, do you remember how you used, with the
musket at fifty paces, to send a ball unerringly through a bit of
wood no larger than my hand?"
"That I remember."
"Remember that tomorrow when you see my hand."
"Do not speak in riddles, David."
"You remember the pledge we gave and that you promised that if
I came to you and said 'Daniel, I have seen her again,' that you
would do what I asked in recompense?"
"I remember that you would not keep your pledge with me."
"But you said you would had you been in my place. Daniel, I
have seen her again."
"I knew you would, and so must I if I live. 'Tis a common
impulse."
"Daniel, when I am led out tomorrow, and you stand facing me,
promise me that you will mark well the spot where my hand is
placed. 'Twill be over my heart."
"Is that in pursuance of our pledge?"
"It is."
"Then I will do it. But wait: there is military order about
this. The file will be selected."
"It is selected, and you are one."
"How know you that?"
"Because it was inevitable. No one told me, but I knew
it."
"Then I will do as you say," and he turned to go away.
"Wait, Daniel. What happens to one will happen to both."
"I know that. We cannot escape that."
"Daniel, in my hand will be a tress of hair."
"She gave it to you. Give me my part at once. No, keep it.
What matters whether your hand or mine hold it?"
"When you enlisted, I had to follow and though I could not
find your regiment yet I knew we should be brought together."
"I knew that."
"We were in camp near Bedford, and, by chance, she strayed
with some mates near us. She saw me first, and pleaded with me to
return with her. Though I was on guard I could not resist, and I
went. They found me and brought me here, and tomorrow morning the
mystery of it all, of our lives, will be cut short."
"It is better so, David. I am glad."
"You loved her, Daniel?"
"Better than I loved myself, and therefore better than I loved
you."
"And so, of course, it was with me. And I told her in my
frenzy that I did."
"As I had the day I came and demanded the fulfillment of your
pledge."
"She said that were we one she could have smiled on us. She
could not marry both."
"Those were her words to me. We could not escape our fate,
Daniel. Together we came into the world, and under mysterious
beclouding of nature."
"Together we shall go out, David. And if such a thing is
possible let us hope that there may be reunion complete, if so be
it happens men's spirits live after them.
"Sit here by me, Daniel for a while. You are not unhappy for I
am not."
"No, David, we are content."
They sat there side by side for many moments, until at last
the guard came and took the brother of the condemned away.
In the morning they led David out into the meadow beyond the
encampment, and there followed a line of soldiers, at the head of
which marched a swarthy and stern man whom not one of all that
company knew to be the brother of that man who, with bared head,
was kneeling, proudly and unflinchingly, some twenty paces away.
He had asked that he might give the signal, and the request had
been granted, and he told them that he would be ready when he
passed his hand on his heart.
The file of soldiers stood before him with leveled muskets
awaiting the word, and David looked upon Daniel for a
moment—and the soldiers said he smiled—and then he
placed his hand upon his heart.
There was a quick report. The swarthy soldier had fired before
the word, and then the volley of the others was delivered, but
David Fancher had fallen prone before their bullets reached
him.
Then the soldiers saw a strange thing. The swarthy companion,
unmindful of regulation, went forward to the dead man and seemed
to be leaning over him, and then lay prostrate beside him; and
when the soldiers went there they found that two were dead
instead of one.
Though soldiers are accustomed to things that startle, this
was such a mystery that much inquiry was made. At last one came
and looked upon the faces of the dead.
"Those are the Fancher brothers. Twins," he said.
THE END
Project Gutenberg Australia