Above all other visitors in my alcove, I liked Frank Norton. He also was in the Patent Department, but I never saw a man so far out of his place. It was hard enough for young Balestier to be working over some old mechanical patent, when he was dreaming of love and ladies and great adventures; but the darkly handsome Professor N—— dwelt constantly among the stars, and believed himself to be spiritually related to them. He came into my alcove one day, and began talking about our earth having once been part of the sun, and he declared that her day and night, her tides and seasons, and simplest phenomena, would be unintelligible without taking into account her heavenly companions. He then attempted to prove to me how these extra-telluric influences, have also dominion over the phenomena of mind, because man, being a product not only of the earth but of the universe, is influenced by the stars as well as the earth. I confess that his wisdom was mostly beyond me, but I was greatly delighted with the word “telluric” and when he talked of “extra-telluric influences” I was eager and anxious to know what the word might mean. As soon therefore as he left me, I went to a dictionary and found out. I might have asked him, and saved some stair-climbing and research, but I knew if I compelled myself to look for the meaning, I would never forget it. Ever since the word has had a charm for my ear, 359 and I have wanted to use it in the books I have written; but this is the first opportunity I have found. Professor N—— was then a young, handsome man, enthusiastically full of dreams, and of an extra-telluric nature; yet apparently under very good telluric influences, for he was always happy, always well dressed, and always had the air of a man well supplied with money. I wonder where he is today, and I hope sincerely that the stars and all other extra-telluric powers, have been very kind and generous to him.
And on the evening of the day on which this conversation with Professor N—— occurred, after thinking it over, I said to myself, “This earth, with its days and nights, its change of seasons, its tides and earthquakes, and magnetic storms, may be under extra-telluric influences; but the phenomena of the soul, is beyond all such control. By some mysterious exercise of its own powers, it moves on from phase to phase, from gloom to sunshine, from doubt to faith, from repose to activity, and natural laws are of no importance to it. What telluric, or extra-telluric influence, can govern thought?”
Lilly had always been the manager of our home affairs, and now that this employment was taken away, her mind reverted to mission work; and she went on a journey for the American Missionary Society that promised her a great deal of the kind of adventure she liked. She was to go to the southern states where schools and home missions had been established to report on the work they were doing, and the success or failure that had attended it. I do not remember how long she was thus occupied, but it was not long, for she was soon busy in her own way “among southern cabins;” for in Charleston she met Mr. Tourgee, and he advised her to go to John’s Island, which lay some miles off the coast of South Carolina and was famous for its long staple cotton. Here, he told her, she would find negroes far different from the usual type, and natural surroundings of great beauty and interest.
On this island there was a fine old manor house called “Headquarters,” then owned by a Mr. and Mrs. Peck, and she went there to see it. Every brick in this house had been 360 brought from England by Lord Fenwick its builder, and its noble entrance hall, leaded library windows, and magnificent cypress paneling were still in beautiful preservation. It received its name from having been headquarters during the war of the Revolution, the war of A.D. 1812, and twice during the war of A.D. 1860. A very sincere friendship grew up between its owners and Lilly, and she stayed at “Headquarters” more than a year, writing charming papers about its woods and lagoons, its birds and reptiles, and its picturesque and exceedingly interesting negro life and character. These papers were all bought by the Independent and Harper’s Weekly.
Immediately after her settlement at “Headquarters,” she began to dream of, or to see in a kind of vision, an old lady and gentleman who appeared to be much interested in her. Their dress was that prevalent among the nobles and gentry during the reign of Queen Anne, or the early Georges, and they impressed her with a strong persuasion of their constant care and guardianship. She was sure that it was not only interest, but love that prompted them. Phantoms, of course! Yes, but phantoms of remarkable clearness and evidence, and all the time she was at “Headquarters” she saw, or she dreamed of them.
Now the singular point in this experience, was not known until this summer, when I received officially from the county clerk a list of all the references to my family, the Huddlestons of Millom, to be found in the county histories of the shires of Cumberland and Westmoreland. It will be remembered that I have just stated, that this fine old mansion was built by Lord Fenwick, and in the historical list just referred to, I find the following record:
“John Huddleston, son of the above-named Richard, who succeeded his father in 1337, married a daughter of Henry Fenwick, Lord of Fenwick, county of Northumberland.”
These few lines gave me food for some very pleasant thoughts, which I followed further than I can do here, but it was evident that these early Fenwicks who built “Headquarters,” still remembered that their family and the Huddlestons were kindred. 361 After more than five hundred years had elapsed, as we count them, they remembered it, and knew that the alliance still influenced the Huddleston strain. Well, then the dead do not forget in the next life what happened in this life. Also, the affections of the dead remain in the same channel as when they were on earth. Far off from the original strain as Lilly was, they knew her, and they felt an interest in her welfare and safety. My readers can of themselves follow out these trains of thoughts; they may find comfort and explanations in so doing. And I think those of our families who are in another world like us to remember them.
Truly Lilly needed some protection, for she was surrounded by many dangers; the climate was dangerous, the reptile life was dangerous, and the negro element was tremendously in the ascendant; there being only forty white families on the whole island, while the negroes probably numbered four thousand, more or less. And Lilly knew not the word fear; she stood an hour in the hot swamp one day, and watched the long battle between a very large rattlesnake and an equally large black snake, watched them at close quarters until the black snake tore the skin off his antagonist, and left him flayed from head to tail in the burning sun. It never struck her that there was any danger to herself. “The snakes,” she said, “paid no attention to me. They were too busy with themselves. I was in no danger whatever.”