THE “WHITE LADY.”
One of the most attractive, blood-curdling, hair-raising and goose-flesh causing legends in the whole history of superstition is that of the appearance of the “White Lady” as the precursor of death in the royal family of Prussia. In the first place the “White Lady” is duplex; there are two of her. One is the unhappy ghost of the Countess Agnes of Orlamunde, who is alleged to have departed this life after the procrastinating fashion peculiar to the middle ages, by being walled up alive in a vault in the palace at Berlin. The occasion for this incarceration is said to have been her poisoning of the two sons of the then Margrave of Brandenburgh (incidentally her own, by the way), who stood in the road to her promised marriage to the Margrave. The other personality of the “White Lady” was, while in the flesh, the Princess Bertha von Rosenberg, who lived in the fifteenth century died in the odor of sanctity, bequeathed a gift to the poor and this gift having been falsely discontinued, “walks” at periods inconvenient to the Hohenzollern family, to remind them of the impropriety of their course. Once in 1628, the “White Lady” made her appearance at the palace in Berlin and made the remark, in Latin, “I wait for judgment.” Pending the incident for which she waited, a Hohenzollern departed this life. Again, some hundred or so of years later, she was seen at the Castle of Neuhaus, in Bohemia, when she casually observed to the princess who encountered her, “It is ten o’clock.” This chronological information so affected the princess that she died in a few weeks. The latest appearance of La Dame Blanche was in 1879, again in the palace in Berlin; immediately there occured the death of Prince Wald[emar]. We are informed that this persistent and long-lived spectre was seen not long since by the night sentinels on guard at the royal castle at Berlin—and now Berlin society is all agog with a delicious fear and wonderment, waiting for grim Death to cry.—Telegram.
One of the most singular freaks of nature ever falling under our observation is the fungus growth in the possession of Mr. Simon Snyder, keeper of the hotel at Conville, Iowa. In May, 1882, Mr. Snyder lost a hand while working in a planing mill at Portsmouth, Ohio, and the amputated member was buried in his garden. Two weeks after there grew out of the mound covering the cairn a fungus plant of the exact form of the hand. It was visited by hundreds of people many of whom thought it was a portent of evil. On his removal to Conville, Mr. Snyder brought the fungus preserved in alcohol. They are of a dark brown color, and what is as remarkable as the growth itself, the fore-finger in its shortened length is a reproduction of the original which had been amputated two years before. It will pay visitors to Conville to see this wonderful duplication.
How did it get there?—We saw on Tuesday afternoon a perfectly formed, apparently human hand, that of an infant, taken from the centre of a new-grown potato, in a field near town. The formation is so perfect that the smallest fibres and ligaments are quite apparent, and by touching the thumb or wrist the motion is felt throughout the whole hand.—From the Cape Breton Advocate.