The Myths and Fables of To-Day

“In Southborough, a township in the county of Worcester, a Mr. Johnson sowed with rye a field of new ground. At the south end of this field also grew a single barberry bush. The grain was blasted throughout the whole length of the field, on a narrow tract commencing at the bush and proceeding directly in the course, and to the extent, to which the blossoms were diffused by the wind.”

Certes, that was a most extraordinary belief held by the simple country folk in a certain quiet corner of New England, that candles made of the tallow obtained from a dead body, would, when lighted, render the person carrying them invisible; and furthermore that a lighted candle of this description, if placed within a bedroom, would effectually prevent a sleeping person from waking until it should be extinguished. This I had from the lips of a most intelligent and estimable lady, who knew whereof she spoke.

I confess that on hearing this statement I realized that I had now found more than I was looking for. But incredible as it may seem at first, all doubts were set at rest by the following article found among some fragments of old superstition in a certain treatise on that subject. Here is the article verbatim: —

“The Hand of Glory is a piece of foreign superstition common in France, Germany, and Spain; and is a charm used by housebreakers and assassins. It is the hand of a hanged man, holding a candle made of the fat of a hanged man, virgin wax, and siasme of Lapland. It stupefies those to whom it is presented, and renders them motionless, insomuch that they could not stir, any more than if they were dead.”

I do not find any recent mention of the appearance of that ancient bugbear known as the Will-o’-the-wisp, or magical Jack-o’-lantern, associated with the unearthly light sometimes seen flitting about ancient graveyards. Science has practically accounted for this natural phenomenon to the general acceptance; but science has not yet been able to do away with the instinctive dread with which the vicinity of a graveyard is associated in most minds. I well remember how, when a lad, I dreaded to pass a graveyard after dark. There was a sickly feeling of something lurking among those ghostly looking tombstones. I looked another way. I whistled, I looked behind me. Vain effort! I ran from the spot as if all the ghosts my fears had conjured up were close at my heels.

XI
OF PRESENTIMENTS

 
“Methinks I hear, methinks I see
Ghosts, goblins, fiends.” —Burton.
 

We approach a still different class of evil omens, or such as are believed by many to “cast their shadows before,” in such a manner as to prey upon the spirits, or show their visible effects in the daily actions of men, usually well balanced, with a feeling akin to respectful fear. Let other forms of superstition be never so mirth-provoking, the reality of this one, at least to those of an imaginative or highly impressible nature, is such that we are sobered at once. What concerns such momentous events as life and death is really no jesting matter.

There may be, probably is, a scientific explanation for those fancies that sometimes come over us, with a sinking feeling at the heart. Men usually keep silent. Women more often give utterance to their feelings. How many times have we heard this remark: “O dear, I feel as if something was going to happen!”

There is still another phase of the subject. Probably hundreds, perhaps thousands, could be found, who, at some time or other, have passed through some strange experience, which they are wholly unable to account for on any rational theory or ground whatever. Perhaps it has been to the inner man what the skeleton in the closet is to the family home. Unfortunately, it is only in moments when men lay bare their inmost thoughts to each other that these things, so valuable from the standpoint of psychology, leak out. What is, then, the secret power, which, in our waking hours, our sober consciousness, is able to oppress our spirits like some hideous nightmare? In its nature it seems most often a warning of coming evil or future event, – in fact, an omen of which we obtain the knowledge by accident, or without design or premeditation. Were it not for the fear of ridicule, we are persuaded that a multitude of persons could testify to some very interesting phenomena of this kind, drawn from their own experiences.

There was a woman whom I knew very well, in a little seaport of Maine, a respectable, middle-aged matron, who asserted that no one ever died in that village unless she had a warning. Precisely what the nature of that warning was she would never divulge; but it is nevertheless a fact that she was often consulted by her neighbors when any one was taken seriously ill, and that her oracular dictum received full and entire credit among them.

In that same little seaport the superstition is current that a sick person will not die till ebb tide. As that goes out, so does the life. This particular article of superstitious faith still holds in some parts of England, we understand, and is made use of by Dickens in “David Copperfield.”

The following incident came to my knowledge while I was in the near neighborhood of the place where a recent shocking railroad accident had happened. Naturally, it was the one topic of conversation, far and near. The engine-man, an old and trusted servant of the company, went down with his engine in the wreck. While being dug out from under his engine, crushed and bleeding, the poor fellow said to his rescuers: “Three times I’ve seen a man on the track at this very place, and three times I’ve stopped my engine. I said this morning that I wouldn’t go over the road again; but couldn’t get any one to take my place, and here I am.”

That a sinister presentiment should cross one in moments of extreme peril, may be easily conceived, but why it should occur, and does occur, at times when no known danger threatens, or any mental or physical condition would seem to warrant it, is not so easily understood. Yet history is full of such examples, related, too, not of the weaker sort, but of the strongest characters. Mr. Motley, in his “John of Barneveld,” gives a vivid picture of Henry IV. of France just before his death. The great monarch was on the point of departure, at the head of the best appointed army he had ever commanded, for the war against Spain. “But he delayed for a few days to take part in the public festivities in honor of the coronation of his queen. These festivities he dreaded, and looked forward to them with gloomy forebodings. He was haunted with fears that they involved his own life, and that he should not survive them. He said many times to his favorite minister, Sully: ‘I know not how it is, but my heart tells me that some misfortune is to befall me. I shall never go out of it.’ He had dreams, also, which assumed to him the force of revelations, that he was to die in a carriage, and at the first magnificent festival he gave. Sully asked him why he did not abandon the proposed festivities at the coronation, and actually went to the queen to persuade her to countermand them. But she refused in high indignation, being, as is now supposed, in the conspiracy against his life. The result is well known: the king was assassinated in his carriage by Ravaillac, as the festivities were in progress.”

Every one remembers the curious incident in regard to Lord Thomas Lyttleton’s vision, as related in Boswell’s “Johnson,” predicting the time of his death, and its exact fulfilment; and Johnson’s solemn comments thereon. “It is the most extraordinary thing that has happened in my day. I heard it with my own ears from his uncle, Lord Westcote.” Lord Byron once observed that several remarkable things had happened on his birthday, as they also had to Napoleon. Marie Antoinette, too, was a firm believer in these presentiments. She thus declares herself in language that now seems prophetic: “At my wedding something whispered to me that I was signing my death warrant. At the last moment I would have retreated if I could have done so.”

Our early New England historian, Winthrop, mentions a singular case of presentiment of death, experienced by one Baker, of Salem. This man, on going forth to his work, in the morning, told his wife he should never see her more. He was killed by a stick of timber, falling upon him, that same day.

It is quite true that we do not attach nearly as much importance to events happening a long time ago as to those occurring in our own day; for one thing, perhaps, because they do not seem so easy of verification; for another, because we choose to believe that they merely reflect the ignorance of a past age. That there is really no difference in the susceptibility of man to such premonitions, so long as he shall be the creature of feeling, is proved by the most irrefragable testimony. The poet Whittier, who took a peculiar delight in the legendary tales of New England, has related one or two incidents that came within his own knowledge, to this effect. “A very honest and intelligent neighbor of mine,” says the narrator, “once told me that at the precise moment when his brother was drowned in the Merrimack River, many miles distant, he felt a sudden and painful sensation – a death-like chill upon the heart, such as he had never before experienced. And,” adds the poet, “I have heard many similar relations.”

The following, he says, “are the facts,” relative to another incident that happened in his vicinity. “In September, 1831, a worthy and highly esteemed inhabitant of this town (Haverhill, Mass.) died suddenly on the bridge over the Merrimack, by the bursting of a blood-vessel. It was just at daybreak, when he was engaged with another person in raising the draw of the bridge for the passage of a sloop. The suddenness of the event, the excellent character of the deceased, and above all, a vague rumor that some extraordinary disclosure was to be made, drew together a large concourse at the funeral. After the solemn services were concluded, Thomas, the brother of the dead man – himself a most exemplary Christian – rose up and desired to relate some particulars regarding his brother’s death. He then stated – and his manner was calm, solemn, impressive – that more than a month previous to his death, his brother had told him that his feelings had been painfully disturbed by seeing, at different times on the bridge, a quantity of human blood; that sometimes while he was gazing upon it, it suddenly disappeared, as if removed by an invisible hand; … that many times in the dusk of the evening, he had seen a vessel coming down the river, which vanished just as it reached the draw; and that, at the same time, he had heard a voice calling in a faint and lamentable tone, ‘I am dying!’ and that the voice sounded like his own: that then he knew the vision was for him, and that his hour of departure was at hand. Thomas, moreover, stated that a few days before the melancholy event took place, his brother, after assuring him that he would be called upon to testify to the accounts which he had given of the vision on the bridge, told him that he had actually seen the same vessel go up the river whose spectral image he had seen in his vision, and that when it returned the fatal fulfilment would take place.”

Though of still earlier date, the remarkable premonition of Rev. Samuel Newman, of Rehoboth, will bear being repeated here. According to his biographer, he not only felt a certain presage of the approach of death, but seemed to triumph in the prospect of its being near. Yet he was apparently in perfect health, and preached a sermon from Job xiv. 14, “All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come.” In the afternoon of the following Lord’s Day, he asked the deacon to pray with him, saying he had not long to live. As soon as he had finished his prayer he said the time was come when he must leave the world; but his friends seeing no sign of approaching dissolution, thought it was merely the effect of imagination. Immediately he turned away, saying, “Angels, do your office!” and expired on the spot.

Lord Roberts of Kandahar relates the following of himself: “My intention, when I left Kabul, was to ride as far as the Khyber Pass; but suddenly a presentiment, which I have never been able to explain to myself, made me retrace my steps and hurry back toward Kabul – a presentiment of coming trouble which I can only characterize as instinctive.

“The feeling was justified when, about halfway between Butkhak and Kabul, I was met by Sir Donald Stewart and my chief of the staff, who brought me the astounding news of the total defeat by Ayab Khan of Brigadier-general Burrows’s brigade at Malwand, and of Lieutenant-general Primrose, with the remainder of his force, being besieged at Kandahar.”²³

Most people are familiar with the story told by President Lincoln to a friend, – told too, in his own half-playful, half-pathetic way, as if to minimize the effect upon that friend’s mind. It is given in the words of that friend: —

“It was just after my election in 1860, when the news had been coming in thick and fast all day and there had been a great ‘hurrah, boys,’ so that I was well tired out and went home to rest, throwing myself down on a lounge in my chamber. Opposite where I lay was a bureau with a swinging glass upon it (and here he got up and placed furniture to illustrate the position), and looking in that glass I saw myself reflected nearly at full length; but my face, I noticed, had two separate and distinct images, the tip of the nose of one being about three inches from the tip of the other. I was a little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass, but the illusion vanished. On lying down again, I saw it a second time, plainer if possible, than before; and then I noticed that one of the faces was a little paler – say, five shades – than the other, I got up, and the thing melted away; and I went off, and in the excitement of the hour forgot all about it – nearly, but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up and give me a little pang, as if something uncomfortable had happened. When I went home again that night, I told my wife about it, and a few days afterward I made the experiment again, when (with a laugh), sure enough! the thing came again; but I never succeeded in bringing the ghost back after that, though I once tried very industriously to show it to my wife, who was somewhat worried about it. She thought it was a ‘sign’ that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life through the last term.”

These are by no means isolated cases. It is said that General Hancock, who had faced the King of Terrors on too many battle-fields to fear him, was pursued by a presentiment of this sort, only too soon to be fully verified. While present as an honored guest at a dinner, surrounded by his old comrades in arms, the general remarked to a friend that he had come there with a premonition that it would be his last visit, and that he had but a short time longer to live. In fact, his lamented death occurred within a short time after.

Instances of fatal presentiments before going into battle are familiar to every veteran of our great Civil War. I have heard many of them feelingly rehearsed by eye-witnesses. The same thing has occurred, under precisely similar conditions, during the late war with Spain. But here is a tale of that earlier conflict, as published broadcast to the world, without question or qualification: —

“In a research for facts bearing upon psychology, Mrs. Bancroft (a daughter-in-law of the historian) has brought to light a strange story relating to either the record of odd ‘spirit communications’ or coincidences. On July 2, 1863, the wives of Major Thomas Y. Brent and Captain Eugene Barnes, two Confederate officers, were together at a wedding in Fayette County, each wearing her bridal dress. While dressing for the occasion Mrs. Brent’s companion discovered a blood spot upon the dress of the major’s wife, which could not be accounted for, and somewhat excitedly exclaimed, ‘It is a bad omen!’ Two days after Mrs. Brent experienced a severe pain in the region of her heart, although at the time in the best of health. This occurred at the birthplace of her husband. Two days later she heard that, while storming a Federal fortification, her husband was killed on July 4, 1863, as far as she could learn, at the identical time that she had experienced the heart pain. The major was shot in the breast by a Minié ball and instantly killed.”

There lies before me, as I write, the authoritative statement of an army officer, a survivor of the terrible charge up San Juan Hill, before Santiago de Cuba, to the effect that just before advancing to the charge a brother officer had confided to him a conviction that the speaker would be killed, entreating his friend to receive his last messages for his relatives. In this case, too, the fatal premonition was fully verified. The doomed man was shot while bravely storming the Spanish stronghold.

Still another story of this war has been widely published, so lately as this chapter was begun. It has reference to the death of the bandmaster of the United States ship Lancaster, then cruising in the South Atlantic. Upon learning that the Lancaster was to touch at Rio de Janeiro the bandmaster requested his discharge, giving as his reason that he had for years been under the presentiment that if he went to that port he would die of yellow fever. A discharge was refused him. The ship entered the harbor of Rio, and the bandmaster immediately took to his bed with all the symptoms of yellow fever. The identity of the malady soon established itself. He was taken to the plague hospital on shore and there died. One of the bandsmen who kissed him as he was being removed from the ship also died. The account goes on to say that “these two are the only cases reported at Rio for months. The fever has not spread, and no man besides the unfortunate bandsman caught the fever, the health of the ship’s crew remaining excellent.”

The number of persons who have testified to having seen the apparitions or death wraiths of dying or deceased friends is already large, as the records of various societies for psychical research bear witness. These phenomena are not in their nature forewarnings of something that is about to happen, but announcements of something that already has happened. They therefore can have no relation to what was formerly known as “second sight.”

In spite of all that our much-boasted civilization has done in the way of freeing poor, fallible man from the thraldom of superstition, there is indubitable evidence that a great many people still put faith in direct revelations from the land of spirits. In the course of a quiet chat one evening, where the subject was under discussion, one of the company who had listened attentively, though silently all the while, to all manner of theories, spiced with ridicule, abruptly asked how we would account for the following incident which he went on to relate, and I have here set down word for word: —

“My grandparents,” he began, “had a son whom they thought all the world of. From all accounts I guess Tom was about one of the likeliest young fellows that could be scared up in a day’s journey. Everybody said Tom was bound to make his mark in the world, and at the time I speak of he seemed in a fair way of doing it, too, for at one and twenty he was first mate of the old Argonaut which had just sailed for Calcutta. This would make her tenth voyage. Well, as I am telling you, the very day after the Argonaut went to sea, a tremendous gale set in from the eastward. It blew great guns. Actually, now, it seemed as if that gale would never stop blowing.

“As day after day went by, and the storm raged on without intermission, you may judge if the hearts of those who had friends at sea in that ship did not sink down and down with the passing hours. Of course, the old folks could think of nothing else.

“Let me see; it was a good bit ago. Ah, yes; it was on the third or fourth night of the gale, I don’t rightly remember which, and it don’t matter much, that grandfather and grandmother were sitting together, as usual, in the old family sitting-room, he poring over the family Bible as he was wont to do in such cases, she knitting and rocking, or pretending to knit, but both full of the one ever present thought, which each was trying so hard to hide from the other.

“Dismally splashed the raindrops against the window-panes, mournfully the wind whined in the chimney-top, while every now and then the fire would spit and sputter angrily on the hearth, or flare up fitfully when some big gust came roaring down the chimney to fan the embers into a fiercer flame. Then there would be a lull, during which, like an echo of the tempest, the dull and distant booming of the sea was borne to the affrighted listener’s ears. But nothing I could say would begin to give you an idea of the great gale of 1817.

“Well, the old folks sat there as stiff as two statues, listening to every sound. When a big gust tore over the house and shook it till it rocked again, gran’ther would steal a look at grandmother over his specs, but say never a word. The old lady would give a start, let her hands fall idly upon her lap, sit for a moment as if dazed, and then go on with her knitting again as if her very life depended on it.

“Unable at length to control her feelings, grandmother got up out of her chair, with her work in her hand, went to the window, put aside the curtain, and looked out. I say looked out, for of course all was so pitch-dark outside that nothing could be seen, yet there she stood with her white face pressed close to the wet panes, peering out into the night, as if questioning the storm itself of the absent one.

“All at once she drew back from the window with a low cry, saying in a broken voice: ‘My God, father, it’s Tom in his coffin! They’re bringing him up here, to the house.’ Then she covered her face with her hands, to shut out the horrid sight.

“‘Set down ’Mandy!’ sternly commanded the startled old man. ‘Don’t be making a fool of yourself. Don’t ye know tain’t no sech a thing what you’re sayin’? Set down, I say, this minnit!’

“But no one could ever convince grandmother that she had not actually seen, with her own eyes, her dear boy Tom, the idol of her heart, lying cold in death. To her indeed it was a revelation from the tomb, for the ship in which Tom had sailed was never heard from.”