A DAY WITH THE DEAD.
"Good morning!" said the old custodian, as he stood in the door of the lodge, brushing out with his knuckles the cobwebs of sleep entangled in his eyelashes, and ventilating the apartments of his fleshly tabernacle with prolonged oscitations. "You are on hand early this time, a'n't you? You're the first live man I've seen since I got up."
So saying, he vanished, and reappearing in a moment with a huge brass key, entered the arch, unlocked the gate which closed the aperture fronting the east like the cover of a porthole, and sent it with a heavy push wide open.
Wading through the flood of sunlight which poured into the passage-way——But stop! I was about,—who knows?—in imitation of divers admired models, to tell the reader in choicest poetic diction how the City of the Dead, with its magnificent streets, shining palaces, and lofty monuments, burst upon my dazzled vision,—how I walked for half a mile along a spacious avenue, beneath an arcade of giant elms hung with wreaths of mist and vocal with singing, feathery fruit,—past marble tombs whose yards were filled with bright and fragrant flowers,— among waving grassy knolls spread with the silver nets of spiders and sparkling dew,—through vales of cool twilight and ravines of sombre dusk,—and so on for more than a page, until finally, step by step, through laboriously elegant sentences, I worked my way up to the top of a lofty hill, the view from which to be graphically described as a picture and a poem dissolved together into mingled glory and mirage, and inundating with a billowy sea of beauty the landscape below;—and then further depicting to the delighted fancy of the reader, how on one side was a most remarkable river,—such as was never heard of before, probably,—in fact, a web of water framed between the hills, its rushing warp-currents, as it rolled along, woven by smoking steam-shuttles with a woof of foam,—how, at the entrance of a bay, flocks of snowy sails, with black, shining beaks, and sleek, unruffled plumage, were swimming out to sea,—how another river, not quite so unique as the last, was also in sight, coiling among emerald steeps and crags and precipices and forest,—while beyond, green woodlands, checkered fields, groves, orchards, villages, hills, farms, and villas, all glowed in an exceedingly charming manner in the morning sun;—and then, still further, to say something as brilliant as possible about a certain city, designated as the Great Metropolis,—how it resembled, perhaps, a Cyclopean type-form, with blocks of buildings for letters, domes, turrets, and towers for punctuation-points, church-spires for interrogation and exclamation marks, and squares and avenues for division-spaces between the paragraphs, set up and leaded with streets into a vast editorial page of original matter on Commerce and Manufactures, rolled every morning with the ink of toil, and printing before night an edition of results circulated to the remotest quarters of the globe. And the tall chimneys yonder were to be called—let me see—oh, the smoking cathedral-towers of the Holy Catholic Church of Labor, islanding the air with clouds of incense more grateful to the Deity than the fume of priest-swung censers. All this, and much more of a similar nature, including an eloquent address to the ocean hard by, it is possible I was about to say. But, unwilling to smother the reader beneath a mountain of rhetorical flowers,—which accident might happen, should I resolve to be "equal to the occasion,"—I shall contain myself, and state, in the way of a curt preface, in plain prose, and directly to the point, that I entered a remarkably large and populous cemetery, no matter where, very early one morning,—in fact, you have the gate-keeper's word for it that I was the first person there,—that I climbed to the summit of a high hill and enjoyed the view of a beautiful landscape, just after sunrise; and with this finally said and done, let us proceed.
As I stood listening to the music of the sea-breeze in the pine-forests below, and watching the ships sinking into the ocean from view or dropping through the sky into sight at the rim of the horizon, and the clouds changing their picturesque sunrise-dress for a uniform of sober white, forming into rank and file, marching and countermarching, sending off scouts into the far distance and foraging-parties to scour the yellow fields of air, pitching their tents and placing sentinels on guard around the camp,—amusing myself with fashioning quaint, arabesque fancies,—a sort of intellectual whittling-habit I have when idle,—I was roused from my reverie by the creaking of an iron gate.
Descending a few steps into a cluster of trees, I saw through their leafy lattice-work, in an inclosure ornamented with rose-bushes and other flowering shrubs, a young woman, richly dressed in black, kneeling by the side of a new-made grave. The mound, evidently covering a full-grown person, was nicely laid at the top with carefully cut sods, the dark edges of which projected a little over the lighter-colored gravel that sloped gradually down to the greensward. I was not long in becoming satisfied that the person I saw was a young widow at the grave of her husband, now three or four weeks dead, hither on her accustomed morning visit to display her love and affection for his memory.
Bowing her head, for a few moments she gave way to sobs and weeping, and then, removing the cover from a little willow basket, which stood by her side, she took from it handfuls of bright flowers, and began to adorn the table of sods upon the top of the mound.
As I regard her thus employed, weaving the tokens of her affection into garlands, chaplets, and fanciful devices, arranging their symbolic characters into interpretable monograms and hieroglyphs, matching their colors and blending their hues and shades with the skill of an artist, she becomes more and more absorbed in her work, the tears disappear from her eyes, and the morning light flushes her pale and beautiful face. Is she thinking now, I wonder, of the dead husband, or of something else? What has she found among the flowers so consoling? Do they suggest pleasant fancies, or recall the memories of happy days? Have they, perhaps, a double meaning,—souvenirs of felicity as well as symbols of sorrow? Are they opiates obliterating actual suffering, or prophets uttering hopeful predictions? Or is it none of these things, and does she find her work pleasant only because duty makes its performance cheerful labor? I cannot say what it is, but something has assuaged her grief; for I see her smiling now, as she holds a rosebud in her fingers, and gazes at it abstractedly; and her thoughts and feelings, whatever they may be, are indubitably not of a mournful character;—in fact, I am sure that she never was happier in her life than she is at this moment.
"Happy, do you say?"
Yes, I say happy.
The nature of woman, it is conceded by all men, is a curious, interesting, and perplexing, if not, in respect of positive practical results, a most unsatisfactory study. But nothing puzzles us so much to comprehend as the fact just alluded to. The tenderest female constitution will sustain a burden of grief which would crush a robust and iron-nerved man, and drive him to despair and suicide. A woman rarely succumbs to a calamity; however sudden and overwhelming the initial shock may be, she revives and grows cheerful and happy under it in a way and to a degree marvellous to behold. What singular secret is there among the psychological mysteries of her nature which is able to account for this phenomenon?—A gentle, timid girl of sixteen, whom the sight of a spider or a live snake would have frightened into hysterics, I had once an opportunity, on a tour through Italy, to observe, while she took little or no notice of other works of art, would gaze, as if fascinated, at the writhings of Laocoön and his sons in the folds and fangs of the serpents, at the sculptured death of the Gladiator, and even at the ghastly, repulsive pictures of martyrdoms and barbaric mutilations and tortures,—the hideous monstrosities of a diseased and degraded imagination found in the churches and convents of Rome, which made others turn their backs with a shivering of the bones and a creeping of the flesh. On expressing surprise at such a singular exhibition of taste, I received this innocent, unpremeditated reply:—"Why, I don't like them; the sight of them almost freezes my blood; but—somehow I do like to look at them, for I always feel better after it!" Now is there not involved in this artless answer a possible explanation of the above-mentioned fact? Has not woman, hidden somewhere among her other (of course angelic)—affections, a positive love of sickness, death, sorrow, and suffering, which man does not possess? Is not the pain they cause, in her case, qualified by actual pleasure? Do they not act as a stimulus upon her sensitive nervous system, and produce, somehow, a delightfully intoxicated state of the feelings? Would not this explain her otherwise unaccountable fondness for witnessing the execution of murderers, for the horrible in novels and the deaths and catastrophes in the newspapers, that she has a constitutional relish for such horrid things, and that she enjoys them, not because they are in se productive of pleasure, but just, as is the case with her "crying," because she feels better after it? And I think it would be found, if an investigation of the subject were instituted, that a foreknowledge of this inevitable result, derived from intuition or experience, is the agent which breaks up the clouds of her sorrow: so that, while the grief of a man stricken down by misfortune is an equinoctial storm, dark and dismal, which lasts for weeks and months, the grief of woman is a succession of refreshing April showers, each of brief duration, and the spaces between them filled with sunshine and rainbows.
But the sweets of that widow's present sorrow will be soon extracted. How many weeks will she find it a pleasure to make morning visits here and plait pretty flowers on the grave of her husband?—The grave in the next inclosure furnishes an answer to the question. A few months ago, it, too, was tended at sunrise by just such a tearful woman; but now the wreaths of evergreen are yellow, and the weeds are springing up among the withered garlands. The living partner has visited already the "mitigated grief" department of the mourning store, and the severed cords of her affections have been spliced and made almost as good as new. Not that I would not have it so; not that I believe the grief of woman to be less real and sincere than man's, though it be enjoyed; not that I would have her thrum a long mournful threnody on the harpstrings of her heart, and waste on the dead, who need them not, affections which, Heaven knows, the living need too much.
Retracing my steps, and descending the opposite slope of the hill, I entered a beautiful vale covered with stately tombs and containing a little lake, in the middle of which a fountain was springing high into the air. In a spot so much frequented at a later hour of the day only a single human being was in sight,—a young man, perhaps five-and-twenty years of age, jauntily dressed, and his upper lip adorned with a long moustache, who was leaning lazily upon a marble balustrade, and staring, with a stupid, vacant look, at the massive monument it surrounded. As nothing appeared at the moment more attractive to my eyes, I fixed them upon him. No great skill in deciphering human character is required to tell his past or foretell his future history, or even to read the few poor spent thoughts that flicker in his brain. His father—some city merchant—died last year, and left him a man of leisure, with a fortune on his hands to spend in idleness and dissipation. This is the first anniversary of the old gentleman's decease and departure to another and better world, and the hopeful heir of his bank-stock and buildings has, as a matter of etiquette, come out here from the city this morning to pass an hour of solemn meditation—as he calls the sixty minutes in which he does not smoke or swear—by the old man's grave. I observe him every moment forming a firm resolution to fix his feeble thoughts upon sober things and his latter end, and breaking it the second afterwards: the effort is too much for the exhausted condition of his mind, and results in a total failure. He is evidently well pleased that any attention is directed towards him, and fancies that I regard him as a very dutiful son, and his appearance here, so early in the morning and long before breakfast, a remarkable example of posthumous filial affection. To intensify, if possible, this sentiment in my breast, he has just now pulled out a white cambric handkerchief and pretends to be wiping tears from his eyes. Poor fellow! you have no natural talent for the solemn parts in acting, or you would know that the expression which your face now wears is not that of sorrow, solemnity, meekness, gentleness, humility, or any other sober Christian grace or virtue. But I leave you, for I see something more attractive now. Stand thy hour out, young man! we shall meet again.
"In the other world?"
No: to-morrow evening, as I am taking my accustomed walk into the country, I shall be wellnigh run over by a swiftly driven team; I shall spring suddenly aside, when thou wilt pass, O bogus son of Jehu, with thy dog-cart and two-forty span of bays, dashing down the road, thy thoughts fixed on horse-flesh instead of eternity, and thy soul bounded, north by thy cigar, east and west by the wheels thy vehicle, and south by the dumb beasts that drag thee along.
But, not to introduce the reader to more solemn scenes of affliction and sorrow which are witnessed here during the first vigil of the day, we pass to a later hour. The mourners who come hither in the early morning to decorate the graves of the recent dead, and to weep over them undisturbed by visitors, have now departed. The sun is already high, the dew has disappeared from the trees and the shrubs, and the paths and walks and avenues begin to be thronged with loungers and sight-seers from the city.
I had stopped at the forks of a lane and was hesitating which branch to take and what to do with myself, when a tall and beautiful Willow, standing upon a knoll a few rods distant, with thick drooping boughs sweeping the ground on every side, beckoned to me. On approaching him, he extended a branch, shook me cordially by the hand, and invited me to accept the shelter and hospitality of his roof. The proposal so generously made was at once accepted with profuse thanks, and, parting the boughs, I entered the tent and threw myself upon the soft grass.
Do you ever talk with trees? It is a custom of mine, and I usually find their conversation much more entertaining and profitable than that of most men I know. "Good morning!" I say to an acquaintance. "Fine day," he replies; "how's business?" And so on for an hour, over themes of every nature, the current of conversation rippled with trite truisms, and whirling in the surface-eddies of Tupper's "Proverbial Philosophy." But the tree takes the whole of the Tupperian philosophy for granted at the start, and the truisms which most men utter, and takes you for granted likewise,—supposing neither half of your eyeballs blind, and that you have a soul as well as a body,—and enters at once into conversation upon the high table-land of science, reason, and poetry. The entire talk of a fashionable tea-party, strained from its lees of scandal, filtered through a sober reflection of the following morning, is not equal in value to the quivering of a single leaf. A tree will discourse with you upon botany, physiology, music, painting, philosophy, and a dozen arts and sciences besides, none of which it simply chats about, but all of which it is: and if you do not understand its language and comprehend what it tells you about them, so much the worse for you; it is not the fault of the tree.
I say, I talk with trees for this reason,—because their wisdom is so much greater than that of my ordinary acquaintances,—and further, (to put the major after the minor premise,) because they are virtually living beings, endowed with instinct, feeling, reason, and display every essential attribute of sentient creatures,—in fact, because they have souls as well as men, only they are clothed in vegetable flesh.
"That is transcendental moonshine, and you don't believe a word of it!"
Well, my friend, allow me, then, to tell you, in all charity and with bowels of compassion, that you hold dangerous and fatal views respecting one of the cardinal doctrines of mythology,—yes, to be plain, you are a Joveless infidel, and in fearful danger of being locked out of Elysium; and I shall offer up a smoking sacrifice, the next time I get a sirloin, and pour out a solemn libation, in the presence of my whole family seated around the domestic altar early in the morning, for your speedy conversion.
Know, then, O obtuse, faithless, and perverse skeptic, that these things are so: that ocular and auricular evidence, indubitable and overwhelming, exists, that the arboreal and human natures are in substance one. Know that once on a time, as Daphne, the lovely daughter of Peneus, was amusing herself with a bow and arrows in a forest of Thessaly, she was surprised by a rude musician named Phoebus. Timid and bashful, as most young ladies are, she turned and fled as fast as her [Greek: skelae] could carry her. After running, closely pursued by the eager Delphian, for several miles, and becoming very much fatigued, she felt inclined to yield: but wishing to faint in a reputable manner, she lifted up her hands and asked the gods to help her. Her call was heard in a jiffy, and quicker than you could say, "Presto: change!" she was a Laurel-tree, which Phoebus married on the spot. This was the Eve of the Laurel family, so that all these trees you meet in the world at present must be rational beings, since they are the descendants of the beautiful Greek maiden Daphne. And to satisfy you that this is no foolish legend, but, on the contrary, a well-authenticated fact, clinched and riveted in the boiler-head of historical truth, permit me to assure you,—for I have seen it myself,—that in the Villa Borghese, near Rome in Italy, is an exact representation of the wonderful incident, cut in Carrara marble,—the bark of the Laurel growing over the vanishing girl, and her hands and fingers sprouting into branches and leaves,—supposed to have been copied from a photograph taken on the spot,—for there is a photograph in existence exactly like the marble statue.
We know positively—for we have an equally minute account of the transaction—that the Cypress originated in a similar way. And is it not reasonable to infer, therefore, though we may not find the facts stated in every case, that all trees were created out of men and women, their bodies being miraculously clothed in woody tissue? In the time of Virgil this was certainly the established orthodox belief; for he relates an anecdote, expressing no doubt whatever of its truth, of a party of travellers who commenced one day in a forest the indiscriminate destruction of some young trees, when their roots forthwith began to bleed, and voices proceeded from them, begging to be spared from laceration. And, in fact, hundreds of instances, similarly weighty as evidence, from equally veracious and trustworthy classic authors, might be cited to the point, did time and space permit. But we hasten to the other proof of their essential humanity, which I set out with assuming as an undoubted fact, and which is already foreshadowed in the adventure of the Trojan wanderers just related,—namely, that they possess the faculty of speech.
Tasso, the author of a well-known metrical history, states distinctly, as you shall see in half a moment, that a tree upon one occasion discoursed with Major General Tancred,—
"Pur tragge alfin la spada e con gran forza
Percuote l' alta pianta. Oh, maraviglia!
——quasi di tomba, uscir ne sente
Un indistinto gemito dolente,
Che poi distinto in voci."
And then it goes on to tell the General how it once rejoiced in extensive hoops, wore a coal-scuttle on its head, and rubbed its face with prepared chalk,—(w-w-w-hy! what was I saying? such a mistake! I should say)—was a woman by the name of Clorinda, and is still animated and sentient both in trunk and limbs, and that he will presently be guilty of murder, if he continues to hack her with his sword.
The celebrated explorer, Sir John Mandeville, relates in the history of his discoveries that he heard whole groves of trees talking to one another. And when we come down to the present day, R.W. Emerson, of Concord, asseverates that trees have conversed with him,—that they speak Italian, English, German, Basque, Castilian, and several other languages perfectly,—
"Mountain speech to Highlanders,
Ocean tongues to islanders,"—
and that he himself was on one occasion transformed into a Pine (Pinus rigida) and talked quite a large volume of philosophy while in that condition. Walter Whitman, Esq., author of "Leaves of Grass," relates similar personal experience. Tennyson, (Alfred,) now the Laureate of England, and upon whom the University of Oxford, a few years ago, conferred the title of Doctor of Laws, gives us a long conversation he once held with an Oak, reporting the exact words it said to him: they are excellent English, and corroborate what I said above respecting the wisdom of trees.
If all this evidence, and I might add much more equally conclusive, did I think it necessary, does not, O skeptic, convince you of the humanity of trees, why, let me say that you hold for true a hundred things not based upon half so good testimony as this,—that I have seen juries persuaded of facts, and bring in verdicts in accordance with them, not nearly so well authenticated as these,—and that I have heard clergymen preach sermons two hours long, constructed out of arguments which they positively persisted you should regard as decisive, that were, to say the least, no better than those here advanced. And now, if these things be so, in the words of the great Grecian, John P., what are you going to do about it?
Trees, like animals, are righteously sacrificed only when required to supply our wants. A man does not go out into the fields and mutilate or destroy his horses and oxen: let him treat the oaks and the elms with the same humanity. I would that enough of the old mythology to which I have alluded, and which our fathers called religion, still lived among us to awaken a virtuous indignation in our breasts when we witnessed the wanton destruction of trees. I once remonstrated with a cruel wretch whom I saw engaged in taking the life of some beautiful elms inhabiting a piece of pasture-land. He replied, that in the hot days of summer the cattle did nothing but lie under them and chew their cud, when they should be at work feeding on the grass,—that his oxen did not get fat fast enough, nor his cows give as much milk as they should give,—"and so," said he, "I'm goin' to fix 'em,"—and down came every one of the hospitable old trees. We are not half so humane in our conduct towards the inferior races and tribes as the old Romans whom we calumniate with the epithet of Pagans. The Roman Senate degraded one of its members for putting to death a bird that had taken refuge in his bosom: would not the Senate of the United States "look pretty," undertaking such a thing? A complete Christian believes not only in the dogmas of the Bible, but also in the mythology, or religion of Nature, which teaches us, no less than it taught our fathers, to regard wanton cruelty towards any vegetable or animal creature which lives in the breath and smile of the Creator, as a sin against Heaven.
Having in the above paragraph got into the parson's private preserve, as I shall be liable anyhow to an action for trespass, I am tempted to commit the additional transgression of poaching, and to give you a few extracts from a sermon a friend of mine once delivered. [It was addressed to a small congregation of Monothelites in a village "out West," just after the annual spring freshet, when half the inhabitants of the place were down with the chills and fever. It was his maiden effort,—he having just left the Seminary,—and did not "take" at all, as he learned the next day, when Deacon Jenners (the pious philanthropist of the place) called to tell him that his style of preaching "would never do," that his thoughts were altogether of too worldly a nature, and his language, decidedly unfit for the sacred "desk." Besides,—though he would not assume the responsibility of deciding that point before he had consulted with the Standing Committee,—he did not think his sentiments exactly orthodox. My friend was disgusted on the spot, and, being seized with a chill shortly afterwards, concluded not to accept the "call," and, packing his trunk, started in quest of a healthier locality and a more enlightened congregation.]
"And here permit me to add a word or two for the purpose of correcting a very prevalent error.
"Most men, I find, suppose that this earth belongs to them,—to the human race alone. It does not,—no more than the United States belong to Rhode Island. Human life is not a ten-thousand-millionth of the life on the planet, nor the race of men more than an infinitesimal fraction of the creatures which it nourishes. A swarm of summer flies on a field of clover, or the grasshoppers in a patch of stubble, outnumber the men that have lived since Adam. And yet we assume the dignity of lords and masters of the globe! Is not this a flagrant delusion of self-conceit? Let a pack of hungry wolves surround you here in the forest, and who is master? Let a cloud of locusts descend upon a hundred square miles of this territory, and what means do you possess to arrest their ravages?…
"As a matter of fact, then, we do not own the world. And now let me say, that, as a matter of right, we ought not: man was the last created of creatures. When our race appeared on the earth, it had been for millions of years in quiet, exclusive, undisputed possession of the birds, beasts, fishes, and insects: it was their world then, and we were intruders and trespassers upon their domain….
"If, then, the other races have a right to exist on the planet as much as we, what follows? Surely, that they have a right to their share and proportion of the ground and its fruits, and the blessings of Heaven by which life here is sustained: man has no right to expect a monopoly of them. If we get a week of sunshine which supplies our wants, we have no reason to complain of the succeeding week of rain which supplies the wants of other races. If we raise a crop of wheat, and the insect foragers take tithes of it, we have no right to find fault: a share of it belongs to them. If you plant a field with corn, and the weeds spring up also along with it, why do you complain? Have not the weeds as much right there as the corn? If you encamp in one of the numberless swamps which surround this settlement, and get assailed by countless millions of robust mosquitoes, why do you rave and swear (as I know most of you would do under such circumstances) and want to know 'what in the —— mosquitoes were made for'? Why, to puncture the skin of blockheads and blasphemers like you, and suck the last drop of blood from their veins. Why, let me ask you, did you go out there? That place belonged to the mosquitoes, not to you; and you knew you were trespassing upon their land. The mosquitoes exist for themselves, and were created for the enjoyment of their own mosquito-life. Why was man created? The Bible does not answer the question directly; the divines in the Catechism say, 'To glorify God.' Now I should like to know if a Westminster Catechism of the mosquitoes would'nt make as good an answer for them?
"And here I am just in the act of annihilating with a logical stroke a multitude of grumblers and croakers. If this world does not belong exclusively to man, and the other races have as much right here as he, and, consequently, a claim to their proportion of land, water, and sky, and their share of food for the sustenance of life, what follows?
"A great many men, taking northeast storms, bleak winds, thunder-showers, flies, mosquitoes, Canada thistles, hot sunshine, cold snows, weeds, briers, thorns, wild beasts, snakes, alligators, and such like things, which they don't happen to like, and putting them all together, attempt to persuade you that this green earth is a complete failure, a wreck and blasted ruin. Don't you believe that, for it's wicked infidelity. I tell you the world is not all so bad as Indiana, and especially that part of the State which you, unfortunately, inhabit. I have seen, my friends, a large portion of the planet, and if there is another spot anywhere quite so infernal as Wabashville, why, I solemnly assure you I never found it.—And now for the point which shall prick your conscience and penetrate your understanding! Do the bears and wolves, the coons and foxes, the owls and wild-geese, find this region unhealthy, and get the chills and fever, and go around grumbling and cursing? Don't they find this climate especially salubrious and suited exactly to their constitutions? Well, then, that's because they belong here, and you don't. This region was never intended for the habitation of man: it belongs exclusively to the wild beasts and the fowls of the air, and you have no business here. [Manifest signs of disapprobation on part of Deacon Taylor, an extensive owner of town-lots.] And if you persist in remaining here, what moral right have you to complain of God?…
"Remember, then, in conclusion, that, for millions of years before our race existed, mosquitoes, weeds, briers, thorns, thistles, snow-storms, and northeast winds prevailed upon this planet, and that during all this time it was pronounced by the Deity himself to be 'very good.' If, then, the earth appears to be evil, is it not because 'thine eye is evil'? We share this world, my friends, with other races, whose wants are different from ours; and we are all of equal importance in the eyes of our Maker, who distributes to each its share of blessings—man and monster both alike—with impartial favor. Is not thus the fallacy of the corruption of Nature exposed, and the lie against our Creator's wisdom, love, and goodness dragged into noonday light?"
* * * * *
But it is time to recommence our rambles through the City of the Dead.
Right here I come across on a tombstone,—"All our children. Emma, aged 1 mo. 23 days. John, 3 years 5 days. Anna, aged 1 year 1 mo." As a physiologist, I might make some very instructive comments upon this; but I forbear.
And here, upon another, a few rods farther on, is an epitaph in verse:—
(FIRST VERSE.)
"Calm be her slumbers near kindred are sighing,
A husband deplores in deep anguish of heart,
Beneath the cold earth unconsciously lying,
No murmur can reach her, no tempest can start."
(SECOND VERSE.)
"Calm be her sleep as the silence of even
When hearts unto deep invocation give birth.
With a prayer she has knelt at the portal of heaven
And found the admission she hoped for on earth_."
Not to speak of the "poetry" just here, how charmingly consistent with each other are the ideas contained in the passages I have italicized! In the first verse, you observe, the inmate is sleeping unconscious beneath the ground: in the second verse, she has ascended to heaven and found admittance to mansions in the skies!—A similar confusion and contradiction of ideas occur in most of the epitaphs I see. Does our theology furnish us with no clear conception of the state of the soul after death? The Catholic Church teaches that the spirit at death descends into the interior of the earth to a place called Hades, where it is detained until the day of judgment, when it is reunited with the dust of the body, and ascends to a heaven in the sky. This doctrine has the merit of being positive, clear, and comprehensible, and, consequently, whenever expressed, it always means something exact and well-defined. Has the Protestant Church equally definite notions on the subject, or, in fact, any fixed opinions respecting it whatever? If not, why, as a matter of good taste, for no weightier reason, in records almost imperishable like these, leave the matter alone! Silence is better than nonsense. Suppose a few thousand years hence our civilization to have become extinct, and that some antiquary from the antipodes should visit this desolate hill to excavate, like Layard at Nineveh, for relics of the old Americans. Suppose, having collected a ship-load of broken tombstones, he should forward them to the Polynesian Museum, and set the savans of the age at work deciphering their inscriptions, what sense would be made out of these epitaphs? How would they interpret our notions of a future state? Taking our own monuments, cut with our own hands, inscribed with our own signs-manual, what would they infer our system of religion to have been? If the Egyptians were as vague and careless as we in this matter, our archaeologists must have made some amusing blunders.
Here are two epitaphs which suggest something else:—
No. I.
"I loved him in his beauty,
A mother boy while here,
I knew he was an angel bright
Formed for another sphere."
No. II.
"Farewell my wife and children dear
God calls you home to rest.
Still Angels wisper in my ear
We'll meet in heavenly bliss."
I want to make two annotations upon these. In No. 1 you will notice that a possessive 's is wanting, and in No. 2 that the h is omitted from whisper. A marble-cutter told me once, that a Pennsylvania Dutchman came to him one day to have an inscription cut upon a gravestone for his daughter, whose name was Fanny. The father, upon learning that the price of the inscription would be ten cents a letter, insisted that Fanny should be spelt with one n, as he should thereby save a dime! The marble-cutter, unable to overcome the obstinacy of the frugal Teuton, and unwilling to set up such a monument of his ignorance of spelling, compromised the matter by conforming to the current orthography, and inserted the superfluous consonant for nothing. And my second annotation shall consist of an inquiry: What is there in corrupt and diseased human nature which makes persons prefer such execrable rhyme as that quoted above, and that which I find upon two-thirds of the tombstones here, to decent English prose, which one would suppose might have been produced at a much less expenditure of intellectual effort? But since it is an unquestionable fact that we are thus totally depraved in taste and feeling, why don't some of our bards, to whom the Muse has not been propitious in other departments of metrical composition, and who, to be blunt, are good for nothing else, such as ——, or ——, and many others you know, come out here among the marble-cutters and open an epitaph-shop? Mournful stanzas might then be procured of every size and pattern, composed with decent reverence for the rules of grammar, respect for the feet and limbs of the linear members, and possibly some regard for consistency in the ideas they might chance occasionally to express. Genin the hatter, and Cockroach Lyon, each keeps a poet. Why cannot the marble-cutters procure some of the Heliconian fraternity as partners? Bards would thus serve the cause of education, benefit future antiquaries, and earn more hard dimes ten times over than they do in writing lines for the blank corners of newspapers and the waste spaces between articles in magazines. I throw this hint out of the window of the "Atlantic," in the fervent hope that it will be seen, picked up, and pocketed by some reformer who is now out of business; and I would earnestly urge such individual to agitate the question with all his might, and wake up the community to the vital importance, by making use of "poetic fire" and "inspired frenzy" now going to waste, or some other instrumentality, of a reformation in epitaphic necrology.
Seriously, modern epitaphs are a burlesque upon religion, a caricature of all things holy, divine, and beautiful, and an outrage upon the common sense and culture of the community. A collection of comic churchyard poetry might be made in this place which would eclipse the productions of Mr. K.N. Pepper, and cause a greater "army of readers to explode" than his "Noad to a Whealbarrer" or the "Grek Slaiv" has done.
* * * * *
During our rambles among the tombstones the sun has long since passed the meridian, and the streets and avenues of the cemetery are crowded with carriages and thronged with pedestrians, the tramping of horses' feet, the rumbling of wheels, and the voices of men fill the air, and the place which was so silent and deserted this morning is now as noisy and bustling as the metropolis yonder. And soon begin to arrive thick and fast the funeral trains. Many of the black-plumed hearses are followed by only a single hired coach or omnibus, others by long trails of splendid equipages. Upon the broad slope of a hill, whither the greater number of the processions move, entirely destitute of trees and flooded with sunshine, many thousand graves, mostly unmarked by headstones, lie close together, resembling in appearance a corn-field which has been permitted to run to grass unploughed. Standing upon an elevated point near the summit, and looking down those acres of hillocks to where the busy laborers are engaged in putting bodies into the ground, covering them with earth, and rounding the soil over them, one is perhaps struck for the first time with the full force, meaning, and beauty of the language of Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians:—"That which thou sowest is not that body which shall be, but bare grain. It [the human body] is sown in corruption, is sown in dishonor, is sown in weakness. It is sown a natural body; it is raised [or springs up, to complete the figure] a spiritual body. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven."—I once heard a distinguished botanist dispute the accuracy of this simile, inasmuch, he said, as the seed, when it is sown in the ground, does not die, but in fact then first begins to live and to display the vital force which was previously asleep in it; while the human body decays and is resolved into its primitive gaseous, mineral, and vegetable elements, the particles of which, disseminated everywhere, and transferred through chemical affinities into other and new organisms, lose all traces of their former connection.—In answer to such a finical criticism as this, intended to invalidate the authority of the great Apostolic Theologian, I replied, that Paul was not an inspired botanist,—in fact, that he probably knew nothing whatever about botany as a science,—but an inspired religious teacher, who employed the language of his people and the measure of knowledge to which his age had attained, to expound to his contemporaries the principles of his Master's religion. I am not familiar with the nicer points of strict theological orthodoxy, but, from modern sermons and commentaries, I should infer that few doctors of even the most straitest school of divinity hold to the doctrine of verbal inspiration. That the Prophets and Apostles were acquainted with botany, chemistry, geology, or any other modern science, is a notion as unfounded in truth as it is hostile and foreign to the object and purpose of Revelation, which is strictly confined to religion and ethics. Those persons, therefore, (and they are a numerous class,) who resort to the Bible, assuming that it professes to be an inspired manual of universal knowledge, and then, because they find in its figurative Oriental phraseology, or in its metaphors and illustrations, some inaccuracies of expression or misstatements of scientific facts, would throw discredit upon the essential religious dogmas and doctrines which it is its object to state and unfold, are, to say the least, extremely disingenuous, if not deficient in understanding.
But a much more prolific source of injury to the character of the Bible than that just mentioned is the injudicious and impertinent labors of many who volunteer in its defence. "Oh, save me from my friends!" might the Prophets and Apostles, each and all, too often exclaim of their supporters.—It is said that all men are insane upon some point: so are classes and communities. The popular monomania which at present prevails among a class of persons whose zeal surpasses their prudence and knowledge is a foolish fear and trembling lest the tendencies of science should result in the overthrow of the Bible. They seem, somehow, to be fully persuaded that the inspired word of God has no inherent power to stand alone,—that it has fallen among thieves and robbers,—is being pelted with fossil coprolites, suffocated with fire-mist and primitive gases, or beaten over the head with the shank-bones of Silurian monsters, and is bawling aloud for assistance. Therefore, not stopping to dress, they dash out into the public notice without hat or coat, in such unclothed intellectual condition as they happen to be in,—in their shirt, or stark naked often,—and rush frantically to its aid.
The most melancholy case of this intellectual delirium tremens that probably ever came under the notice of any reader is found in a professed apology for the Scriptures, recently published, under the pompous and bombastic title of "COSMOGONY, OR THE MYSTERIES OF CREATION."—A volume of such puerile trash, such rubbish, twaddle, balderdash, and crazy drivelling[A] as this, was never before vomited from the press of any land, and beside it the "REVELATIONS" of Andrew Jackson Davis, the "Poughkeepsie Seer," rises to the lofty grandeur of the "Novum Organon,"—a sight that makes one who really respects the Bible hang his head for shame.
[Footnote A: As the reader may never have seen this unique volume, and will be amused by a specimen of its grammar, rhetoric, wisdom, and learning, let him take a morceau or two from the commencement of a chapter entitled, "Naturalists.—Their Classification of Man and Beasts."—"We look upon the animal in no different light from that of a vegetable, a plant, or a rock-crystal, which forms under the Creative hand, performs its part for the use of man, dissolves and reproduces by its parts another comfort for him. The animal bears no resemblance to man, not even in his brain."—"One tree may bear apples, and another acorns, but they are not to be compared, the one as bearing a relation to the other, because they have each a body and limbs. They are distinct trees, and one will always produce apples and the other acorns, as long as they produce anything." (Indeed!)—"The usual classification of animals, is that of Vertebrata, Articulata, Mollusca, and Radiata. This is not only offensive to man,—but is impiety towards God." (Why?)—"We are told by these naturalists that man belongs to the class called 'Vertebrata.' So does the snake, the monkey, the lizard and crocodile, and many other low and mean animals.—Have these creatures the reasoning faculties of man? Do they walk erect like man? Have they feet, hands, legs, arms, hair upon their heads, or beards upon their faces? Do they speak languages and congregate and worship at the altar?" (!!)—"Those who are ambitious of such relations, may plant their heraldic coat-of-arms in the serpent, the lizard, the crocodile, or the monkey, but we disclaim such relationship—we do not think it good taste or good morals to place the fair daughters of Eve on a level with horrid and hideous animals, simply from some apparent similarity, which we are certain never existed.">[
The belligerent pundit who has flung in the face of peaceful geologists this octavo camouflet of his scientific lucubrations professes to have scoured the surface and ravaged the bottom (in a suit of patent sub-marine Scriptural armor) of a no less abysmal subject than the cryptology of Genesis,—to have undermined with his sapping intellect and blown up with his explosive wisdom the walled secrets of time and eternity, carrying away with him in the shape of plunder a whole cargo of the plans and purposes of the Omnipotent in the Creation. I have not the least doubt, if he were respectfully approached and interrogated upon the subject, he would answer with the greatest ease and accuracy the famous question with which Dean Swift posed the theological tailor. The man who can tell us all about the institution of the law of gravity, how the inspired prophet thought and felt while writing his history, and who knows everything respecting "affinity and attraction when they were in Creation's womb," could not hesitate a moment to measure an arch-angel for a pair of breeches.—But I was talking of funerals.
* * * * *
A friend once assured me that the heartiest laugh of which he was ever guilty on a solemn occasion occurred at a funeral. A trusty Irish servant, who had lived with him for many years, and for whom he had great affection, died suddenly at his house. As he was attending the funeral in the Catholic burial-place, and stood with his wife and children listening to the service which the priest was reading, his heart filled with grief and his eyes moist with tears, the inscription on a gravestone just before him happened to attract his attention. It was this_:—"Gloria in Excelsis Deo! Patrick Donahoe died July 12. 18—." Now the exclamation-point after "Deo"_ and the statement of the fact of Mr. D.'s demise following immediately thereafter made the epitaph to read, "Glory to God in the highest! Patrick is dead." This, which at another time would perhaps have caused no more than a smile, struck him as irresistibly funny, and drove in a moment every trace of sadness from his face and sorrow from his heart,—to give place to violent emotions of another nature, which his utmost exertions could not conceal.
["I beg your pardon! I've been afloat," was the graceful parenthetical apology which a distinguished naval officer used to make, when by mistake he let drop one of "those big words which lie at the bottom of the best man's vocabulary," in conversation with sensitive persons whose ears he feared it might offend. I ought possibly, at the end of the following anecdote, to make some such excuse to the scrupulous reader, whose notions of propriety it will perhaps slightly infringe: "I beg your pardon! I couldn't help telling it.">[
An eminent divine once described to me a scene he witnessed at a funeral, which he said nearly caused him to expire with—well, you shall see. An intimate acquaintance of his, who belonged to a neighboring parish, having died, he was naturally induced to assist at the burial-service. The rector of this parish was a man who, though sensitive in the extreme to the absurdities of others,—being, in fact, a regular son of Momus,—was entirely unconscious of his own amusing eccentricities. Among these, numerous and singular, he had the habit of suddenly stopping in the middle of a sentence, while preaching, and calling out to the sexton, across the church, "Dooke, turn on more gas!" or "Dooke, shut that window!" or "Dooke, do"—something else which was pretty sure to be wanting itself done during the delivery of his discourse. Nearly every Sunday, strangers not acquainted with his ways were startled out of their propriety by some such unexpected behavior.
On the occasion referred to, the funeral procession having entered the churchyard, and my informant and the officiating clergyman having taken their places at the head of the grave, the undertaker and his assistants having removed the coffin from the hearse, and the mourners, of whom there was a large crowd, having gathered into a circular audience, the Reverend Doctor —— began the service.
"'Man that is born of a woman'—Oh, stop those carriages! don't you see where they are going to?" (he suddenly broke out, rushing from the place where he stood, frantically, among the bystanders; and then returning to his former position, continued,)—"'hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up'—Oh, don't let that coffin down yet! wait till I tell you to," (addressed to the undertaker, who was anticipating the proper place in the service,)—"'and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow,'—Please to hold the umbrella a little further over my head," (sotto voce to the man who was endeavoring to protect his head from the sun,)-"'and never continueth in one stay.'—Hold the umbrella a little higher, will you?" (sotto voce again to the man holding the umbrella.)—"'In the midst of life we are in death.'—Stand down from there, boys, and be quiet!" (addressed to some urchins who were crowding and pushing one another about the grave, in their efforts to look at the coffin.) At length he had proceeded without further interruptions as far as the sentence, "'We therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,'"—when Dooke, the sexton,—a queer, impetuous fellow,—who was vainly endeavoring to keep the boys away from the edge of the grave, seized suddenly the rope with which the coffin had just been lowered down, and, stooping forward, laid it like a whip-lash, "cut!" across the shins of a dozen youngsters, making them leap with "Oh! oh! oh!" a foot from the ground, and scatter in short order,—"'looking for the'"—(turning to my friend, as he witnessed the successful exploit of his favorite sexton, and whispering in his ear,) "Dooke made 'em hop that time, didn't he!—'general resurrection in the last day, and the life of the world to come.'"
Dooke's mode of dispersing the boys, and the officiating clergyman's comment upon it, parenthesized into the middle of the most solemn sentence of the burial-service, were too much for the usual stern gravity of my clerical friend, and, under pretence of shedding tears, he buried his face in his handkerchief and his handkerchief in his hat and shook with laughter.
Speaking of funerals reminds me of a congenial subject.—Nothing in New York astonishes visitors from the country so much as the magnificent coffin-shops, rivalling, in the ostentatious and tempting display of their wares, the most elegant stores on Broadway. Model coffins, of the latest style and pattern, are set up on end in long rows and protected by splendid show-cases, with the lids removed to exhibit their rich satin lining. Fancy coffins, decorated with glittering ornaments, are placed seductively in bright plate-glass windows, and put out for baiting advertisements upon the side-walks: as much as to say, "Walk in, walk in, ladies and gentlemen! Now's your chance! here's your fine, nice coffins!"—while in ornamental letters upon extensive placards hung about the doors, "IRON COFFINS," "ROSEWOOD COFFINS," "AIR-TIGHT COFFINS," "MAHOGANY COFFINS," "PATENT SARCOPHAGI," address the eyes and appeal to the purses of the passers-by. And I saw in one of these places, the other day, painted on glass and inclosed in an elegant gilt frame, "ICE COFFINS," which struck me as queer enough. As though it were not sufficiently cool to be dead!
It seems to me, that, in this matter, the undertakers, digging a little too deep below the surface of the present age, have thrown out some of the mystical and grotesque remains of a very antique religious faith, which look as singular just now to the eyes of common people as would an Egyptian temple with its sacred Apis in Broadway, or a Sphinx on Boston Common. To the eyes of an old Egyptian, no object could be more grateful than the sarcophagus in which he was to repose at death. He purchased it as early in life as he could raise the means, and displayed it in his parlor as an attractive and costly ornament. Indeed, I do not know but it was useful as well, and the children kept their playthings in it, or the young ladies their knitting-work and embroidery.
Are we not, in this class of our tastes and feelings, becoming rapidly Egyptianized? Why, I expect in a year or two to see coffins introduced into the parlors of the Fifth Avenue, and to find them, when their owners fail or absquatulate, advertised for sale at auction, with the rest of the household furniture, at a great sacrifice on the original cost.
"—> ONE SUPERB COFFIN OF ELEGANT PATTERN AND SUPERIOR WORKMANSHIP, AS GOOD AS NEW. TWO DITTO, SLIGHTLY DAMAGED."
And then the fashion will become popular with the less aristocratic portion of the community, and you will see crowds of servant-girls and street-loungers around the windows of our magnificent coffin-bazaars, and hear from them such exclamations as these: "Oh! do look here, Matilda! Wouldn't you like to have such a nice coffin as that?" or, "What a dear, sweet sarcophagus that one is there!" or, "Faith, I should like to own that air-tight!"
* * * * *
But the day is now far advanced. The funeral processions have ceased to arrive, and the husbandmen, having sown the immortal seed furnished by the metropolis, with shovels and empty dinner-pails, are on their way, whistling and talking in groups, homeward. The number of loungers and sight-seers is rapidly diminishing as the light in the more thickly shaded walks becomes dim, and the clock at the gateway indicates the near approach of the hour when the portals will be closed.
—Alone with the dead! Alone in the night among tombs and graves! How many readers do not at the sight of these words feel an involuntary soupçon of a shudder? Would not the cause of this indefinable secret dread of the darkness which covers a graveyard be a curious matter of inquiry? Let one ever so cultivated and skeptical, familiar as a physician or a soldier with the spectacle of death, ever so full of mental and physical courage, passing alone late at night through a graveyard, hear the least sound among the graves, or see a moving object of any kind, especially a white one, and he will instantly feel an alloverishness foreign to ordinary experience, and I will not answer for him that his hair does not stand on end and his flesh grow rough as a nutmeg-grater. A company of three or four persons would feel far less disturbed. This proves the emotion to be genuine fear. And with this recognized as a fact, ask the question, Of what are you afraid? What makes your feet stick to the ground so fast, or inspires you to take to your legs and run for your life? "A ridiculous, foolish superstition," reason answers.
I do not intend by this to intimate that you, reader, bold and courageous person that I know you to be, would not dare to go through a graveyard at night. By no means. I only predicate the existence within you of this ridiculous, foolish superstition, and maintain that you would do so under all circumstances with peculiar feelings which you did not possess before you entered it and which you will not possess as soon as you have left it, and under certain circumstances with a trembling of the nerves and a palpitation of the heart, and that the occasion might occur when you would be still more strongly and strangely affected. To illustrate the latter case I have an anecdote à-propos.
A college class-mate, (Poor B——! the shadows of the Pyramids now fall upon his early grave!) a young man easily agitated, to be sure, and possibly timid, on his way home, late one autumn night, from the house of a relative in the country, was hurrying past a dismal old burying-yard in the midst of a gloomy wood, when he was suddenly startled by a strange noise a short distance from the road. Turning his head, alarmed, in the direction whence it proceeded, he was horror-struck at seeing through the darkness a white object on the ground, struggling as if in the grasp of some terrible monster. Instantly the blood froze in his veins; he stood petrified,—the howlings of the wind, clanking of chains, and groans of agony, filling his ears,—with his eyes fixed in terror upon the white shape rolling and plunging and writhing among the tombs. Attempting to run, his feet refused to move, and he swooned and fell senseless in the road. A party of travellers, happening shortly to pass, stumbled over his body. Raising him upon his feet, they succeeded by vigorous shakes in restoring him to a state of consciousness.
While explaining to them the cause of his fright, the noise was renewed. The men, although somewhat alarmed, clubbed their individual courage, climbed the wall, and found—nearly in the centre of the graveyard—an old white horse thrown down by his fetters and struggling violently to regain his feet.
B—— assured me, the explanation of the spectacle instinctively occurring to his mind at the moment as indubitable was that some reprobate had just been buried there, and that the Devil, coming for his body, was engaged in binding his unwilling limbs, preparatory to carrying him away!
The reader may smile at the weakness and folly displayed in this case, but the assertion may nevertheless be safely ventured, that there is not one person in a hundred who would not under the same circumstances have been greatly disturbed, or would have invented a much less frightfully absurd solution of the phenomenon than poor B——'s.
I think the singular feelings associated with graveyard darkness, which the wisest and bravest of men find slumbering beneath all their courage and philosophy, would be found upon investigation to proceed principally from two sources,—a constitutional inclination to religious superstition, and an acquired educational belief in the reality of the dreams and fancies of poets, mingled, of course, with some natural cowardice.
The dryest and hardest men have more poetry in them than they or we begin to suspect. Indeed, if we could take our individual or collective culture to pieces and award to each separate influence its due and just share of results, I should not be surprised at finding that the poet had done more in the way of fashioning our education than the scientist or any other teacher. Milton, to give but a single example, with his speculations concerning the Fall,—its effects upon humanity, the brute creation, and physical nature,—and his imaginary conflicts between the hostile armies of heaven, and his celestial and Satanic personifications, has had so much influence in Anglo-Saxon culture, that nine-tenths of the people believe, without knowing it, as firmly in "Paradise Lost" as in the text of the Bible. The Governor of Texas, citing in his proclamation a familiar passage in Shakspeare as emanating from the inspired pen of the Psalmist, is not to so great extent an example of ignorance as an illustration of the lofty peerage instinctively assigned the great dramatist in the ordinary associations of our thoughts. This faith in the visionary world of poets is instilled into us (and it is for this reason that Rousseau, in his masterly work on education, the "Émile," reprobates the custom as promotive of superstition) in early infancy by our parents and nurses with their stories of nymphs, fairies, elves, dwarfs, giants, witches, hobgoblins, and the like fabulous beings, and, as soon as we are able to read, by the tales of genii, sorcerers, demons, ghouls, enchanted caves and castles, and monsters and monstrosities of every name. The exceedingly impressible and poetical nature of children (for all children are poets and talk poetry as soon as they can lisp) appropriates and absorbs with intense relish these fanciful myths, and for years they believe more firmly in their truth than in the realities of the actual world. And I more than suspect that this child-credulity rather slumbers in the grown man, smothered beneath superimposed skepticisms and cognitions, than is ever eradicated from his mind, and thus, upon the shock of an emergency disturbing him suddenly to the foundation, is ready to burst up through the crevices of his shattered practical experience and appear on the surface of his judgment and understanding.
In addition, then, to an instinctive tendency to religious superstition, (of which I shall here say nothing,) to the fairy mythology of the nursery, and the phantom machinery invented by poets to clothe with the semblance of reality their dreams and fancies, can be traced in a great measure the existence in the mind of the credulity which renders the fear in question possible, opening an introduction for it into the heart excited by inexplicable phenomena or circumstanced where such phenomena might, according to our superstitious beliefs, easily occur.
Without entering into an analysis of the fear itself, beyond the remark that any extraordinary sight or sound not immediately explicable by the eye or ear to the understanding (as a steamboat to the Indians or a comet to our ancestors) is a legitimate cause of the emotion, as well as the possibility of the occurrence of such sights and sounds, for believing which we have seen man prepared, first by natural superstitious inclination, and secondly by a peculiar education,—I will only further add, for the purpose of a brief introduction to an anecdote I wish to relate, that there is another fountain of knowledge, from which we drink at a later period than childhood, as well as then, whose waters are strongly impregnated with this superstitious, fear-provoking credulity: I mean the stories of ghosts which have been seen and heard in all ages and countries, revealing important secrets, pointing out the places where murder has been committed or treasure concealed, foretelling deaths and calamities, and forewarning men of impending dangers. Hundreds of books familiar to all have been written upon this subject and form an extensive department of our literature, especially of our older literature.
The philosopher attempts to account for such phenomena by referring them to optical illusions or a disordered condition of the brain, making them subjective semblances instead of objective realities. But one is continually being puzzled and perplexed with evidence contradicting this hypothesis, which, upon any other subject a priori credible to the reason and judgment, would be received as satisfactory and decisive without a moment's hesitation. In truth, with all the light which science is able to shed upon it, and all the resolute shutting of the eyes at points which no elucidating theory is available to explain, there are facts in this department of supernaturalism which stagger the unbelief of the stoutest skeptic.
It is constantly urged, among other objections to the credibility of supernatural apparitions, that the names of the witnesses have singularly and suspiciously disappeared,—that you find them, upon investigation, substantiated thus: A very worthy gentleman told another very worthy gentleman, who told a very intelligent lady, who told somebody else, who told the individual who finally communicated the incident to the world. There are, however, as just intimated, instances in which such ambiguity is altogether wanting. Among these is one so well authenticated by well-known witnesses of undoubted veracity, that, having never before been published, I venture to relate it here.
My informant was Professor Tholuck, of Halle University, the most eminent living theologian in Germany, and the principal ecclesiarch of the Prussian Church. He prefaced the account by assuring me that it was received from the lips of De Wette himself, immediately after the occurrence,—that De Wette was an intimate personal friend, a plain, practical man, of remarkably clear and vigorous intellect, with no more poetry and imagination in his nature than just sufficient to keep him alive,—in a word, that he would rely upon his coolness of judgment and accuracy of observation, under any possible combination of circumstances, as confidently as upon those of any man in the world.
Dr. De Wette, the famous German Biblical critic, returning home one evening between nine and ten o'clock, was surprised, upon arriving opposite the house in which he resided, to see a bright light burning in his study. In fact, he was rather more than surprised; for he distinctly remembered to have extinguished the candles when he went out, an hour or two previously, locked the door, and put the key in his pocket, which, upon feeling for it, was still there. Pausing a moment to wonder by what means and for what purpose any one could have entered the room, he perceived the shadow of a person apparently occupied about something in a remote corner. Supposing it to be a burglar employed in rifling his trunk, he was upon the point of alarming the police, when the man advanced to the window, into full view, as if for the purpose of looking out into the street. It was De Wette himself!—the scholar, author, professor,—his height, size, figure, stoop,—his head, his face, his features, eyes, mouth, nose, chin, every one,—skullcap, study-gown, neck-tie, all, everything: there was no mistaking him, no deception whatever: there stood Dr. De Wette in his own library, and he out in the street:—why, he must be somebody else! The Doctor instinctively grasped his body with his hands, and tried himself with the psychological tests of self-consciousness and identity, doubtful, if he could believe his senses and black were not white, that he longer existed his former self, and stood, perplexed, bewildered, and confounded, gazing at his other likeness looking out of the window. Upon the person's retiring from the window, which occurred in a few moments, De Wette resolved not to dispute the possession of his study with the other Doctor before morning, and ringing at the door of a house opposite, where an acquaintance resided, he asked permission to remain over night.
The chamber occupied by him commanded a full view of the interior of his library, and from the window he could see his other self engaged in study and meditation, now walking up and down the room, immersed in thought, now sitting down at the desk to write, now rising to search for a volume among the book-shelves, and imitating in all respects the peculiar habits of the great Doctor engaged at work and busy with cogitations. At length, when the cathedral clock had finished striking through first four and then eleven strokes, as German clocks are wont to do an hour before twelve, De Wette Number Two manifested signs of retiring to rest,—took out his watch, the identical large gold one the other Doctor in the other chamber felt sure was at that moment safe in his waistcoat-pocket, and wound it up, removed a portion of his clothing, came to the window, closed the curtains, and in a few moments the light disappeared. De Wette Number One, waiting a little time until convinced that Number Two had disposed himself to sleep, retired also his-self to bed, wondering very much what all this could mean.
Rising the next morning, he crossed the street, and passed up-stairs to his library. The door was fastened; he applied the key, opened it, and entered. No one was there; everything appeared in precisely the same condition in which he had left it the evening before,—his pen lying upon the paper as he had dropped it on going out, the candles on the table and the mantel-piece evidently not having been lighted, the window-curtains drawn aside as he had left them; in fine, there was not a single trace of any person's having been in the room. "Had he been insane the night before? He must have been. He was growing old; something was the matter with his eyes or brain; anyhow, he had been deceived, and it was very foolish of him to have remained away all night." Endeavoring to satisfy his mind with some such reflections as these, he remembered he had not yet examined his bed-room. Almost ashamed to make the search, now convinced it was all an hallucination of the senses, he crossed the narrow passageway and opened the door. He was thunderstruck. The ceiling, a lofty, massive brick arch, had fallen during the night, filling the room with rubbish and crushing his bed into atoms. De Wette the Apparition had saved the life of the great German scholar.
Tholuck, who was walking with me in the fields near Halle when relating the anecdote, added, upon concluding, "I do not pretend to account for the phenomenon; no knowledge, scientific or metaphysical, in my possession, is adequate to explain it; but I have no more doubt it actually, positively, literally did occur, than I have of the existence of the sun im Himmel da."