By misapprehension and misinformation, piety and veracity may give you an account very different from mine. But ask those people of piety and veracity, who were present when the greatest of these events took place, I tell you they will not deny these facts. I am yours, &c.
LETTER VI.
Miscellany.
Dear Sir:—If the preceding arguments can be received, perhaps you will not indulge distrust, if I subjoin something of my own experience, confirmed by two other persons who saw the apparition in the same field in the same half hour.
Sometime in July, 1806, in the evening, I was informed by two persons that they had just seen the Spectre in the field.
About ten minutes after, I went out, not to see a miracle, for I believed that they had been mistaken. Looking toward an eminence, twelve rods distance from the house, I saw there, as I supposed, one of the white rocks. This confirmed my opinion of their spectre, and I paid no more attention to it. Three minutes after, I accidentally looked in the same direction, and the white rock was in the air; its form a complete Globe, white with a tincture of red, like the damask rose, and its diameter about two feet.
Fully satisfied that this was nothing ordinary, I went toward it for more accurate examination.
While my eye was constantly upon it, I went on four or five steps, when it came to me from the distance of eleven rods, as quick as lightning, and instantly assumed a personal form with a female dress, but did not appear taller than a girl seven years old. While I looked upon her, I said in my mind, “you are not tall enough for the woman who has so frequently appeared among us.” Immediately she grew up as large and as tall as I considered that woman to be. Now she appeared glorious. On her head was the representation of the sun diffusing the luminous, rectilinear rays every way to the ground. Through the rays I saw the personal form, and the woman’s dress. Then I recollected the objection of the Encylopedia, that, “Ghosts always appear to one alone.” Now, said my mind, I see you as plainly as ever I saw a person on earth; but were I to converse with you an hour, what proof could I produce that I ever conversed with you at all. This, with my fear, was the reason why I did not speak to her. But my fear was connected with ineffable pleasure.
Life, simplicity, purity, glory, all harmonizing in this celestial form, had the most delightful effect on my mind. And there appeared such a dullness afterwards upon all corporeal objects as I never perceived before. I went into the house and gave the information, not doubting that she had come to spend some time with us, as she had before. We went out to see her again; but to my great disappointment, she had vanished. Then I saw one of the great errors of my life. That I had not spoken to her has been the matter of my regret from that hour to this.
My word without witness has not been tedious. Believed or rejected, it may do you no harm.