“I was,” said Mr. St. S——, of S——, “the son of a man who had no fortune but his business, in which he was ultimately successful. At first, however, his means being narrow, he was perhaps too anxious and inclined to parsimony; so that when my mother, careful housewife as she was, asked him for money, the demand generally led to a quarrel. This occasioned her great uneasiness, and having mentioned this characteristic of her husband to her father, the old man advised her to get a second key made to the money-chest, unknown to her husband, considering this expedient allowable and even preferable to the destruction of their conjugal felicity, and feeling satisfied that she would make no ill use of the power possessed. My mother followed his advice, very much to the advantage of all parties; and nobody suspected the existence of this second key except myself, whom she had admitted into her confidence.
“Two-and-twenty years my parents lived happily together, when I, being at the time about eighteen hours’ journey from home, received a letter from my father informing me that she was ill—that he hoped for her speedy amendment—but that if she grew worse he would send a horse to fetch me home to see her. I was extremely busy at that time, and therefore waited for further intelligence; and as several days elapsed without any reaching me, I trusted my mother was convalescent. One night, feeling myself unwell, I had lain down on the bed with my clothes on to take a little rest. It was between 11 and 12 o’clock, and I had not been asleep, when some one knocked at the door, and my mother entered, dressed as she usually was. She saluted me, and said: ‘We shall see each other no more in this world: but I have an injunction to give you. I have given that key to R—— (naming a servant we then had), and she will remit it to you. Keep it carefully, or throw it into the water, but never let your father see it—it would trouble him. Farewell, and walk virtuously through life.’ And with these words she turned and quitted the room by the door, as she had entered it. I immediately arose, called up my people, expressed my apprehension that my mother was dead, and, without further delay, started for home. As I approached the house, R——, the maid, came out and informed me that my mother had expired between the hours of 11 and 12 on the preceding night. As there was another person present at the moment, she said nothing further to me, but she took an early opportunity of remitting me the key, saying that my mother had given it to her just before she expired, desiring her to place it in my hands, with an injunction that I should keep it carefully, or fling it into the water, so that my father might never know anything about it. I took the key, kept it for some years, and at length threw it into the Lahne.”
I am aware that it may be objected by those who believe in wraiths, but in no other kind of apparition, that this phenomenon occurred before the death of the lady, and that it was produced by her energetic anxiety with regard to the key. It may be so, or it may not; but, at all events, we see in this case how a comparatively trifling uneasiness may disturb a dying person, and how, therefore—if memory remains to them—they may carry it with them, and seek, by such means as they have, to obtain relief from it.
A remarkable instance of anxiety for the welfare of those left behind, is exhibited in the following story, which I received from a member of the family concerned: Mrs. R——, a lady very well connected, lost her husband when in the prime of life, and found herself with fourteen children, unprovided for. The overwhelming nature of the calamity depressed her energies to such a degree as to render her incapable of those exertions which could alone redeem them from ruin. The flood of misfortune seemed too strong for her, and she yielded to it without resistance. She had thus given way to despondency some time, when one day, as she was sitting alone, the door opened, and her mother, who had been a considerable time dead, entered the room and addressed her, reproving her for this weak indulgence of useless sorrow, and bidding her exert herself for the sake of her children. From that period she threw off the depression, set actively to work to promote the fortunes of her family, and succeeded so well that they ultimately emerged from all their difficulties. I asked the gentleman who related this circumstance to me whether he believed it. He answered, that he could only assure me that she herself affirmed the fact, and that she avowedly attributed the sudden change in her character and conduct to this cause;—for his own part, he did not know what to say, finding it difficult to believe in the possibility of such a visit from the dead.
A somewhat similar instance is related by Dr. Kerner, which he says he received from the party himself, a man of sense and probity. This gentleman, Mr. F——, at an early age lost his mother. Two-and-twenty years afterward he formed an attachment to a young person, whose hand he resolved to ask in marriage. Having one evening seated himself at his desk, for the purpose of writing his proposal, he was amazed, on accidentally lifting his eyes from the paper, to see his mother, looking exactly as if alive, seated opposite to him, while she, raising her finger with a warning gesture, said: “Do not that thing!” Not the least alarmed, Mr. F—— started up to approach her, whereupon she disappeared. Being very much attached to the lady, however, he did not feel disposed to follow her counsel; but having read the letter to his father, who highly approved of the match and laughed at the ghost, he returned to his chamber to seal it; when, while he was adding the superscription, she again appeared as before and reiterated her injunction. But love conquered; the letter was despatched, the marriage ensued, and, after ten years of strife and unhappiness, was dissolved by a judicial process.
A remarkable circumstance occurred about forty years ago, in the family of Dr. Paulus, at Stuttgard. The wife of the head of the family having died, they, with some of their connections, were sitting at table a few days afterward, in the room adjoining that in which the corpse lay; suddenly the door of the latter apartment opened, and the figure of the mother clad in white robes entered, and, saluting them as she passed, walked slowly and noiselessly through the room, and then disappeared again through the door by which she had entered. The whole company saw the apparition; but the father, who was at that time quite in health, died eight days afterward.
Madame R—— had promised an old wood-cutter—who had a particular horror of dying in the poor-house, because he knew his body would be given to the surgeons—that she would take care to see him properly interred. The old man lived some years afterward, and she had quite lost sight of him, and indeed forgotten the circumstance, when she was one night awakened by the sound of some one cutting wood in her bed-chamber; and so perfect was the imitation, that she heard, every log flung aside as separated. She started up, exclaiming, “The old man must be dead!” and so it proved,—his last anxiety having been that Madame R—— should remember her promise.
That our interest in whatever has much concerned us in this life accompanies us beyond the grave, seems to be proved by many stories I meet with, and the following is of undoubted authenticity: Some years ago, a music-master died at Erfert at the age of seventy. He was a miser, and had never looked with very friendly eyes on Professor Rinck, the composer, who he knew was likely to succeed to his classes. The old man had lived and died in an apartment adjoining the class-room; and the first day that Rinck entered on his office, while the scholars were singing Aus der tiefe ruf ich dich, which is a paraphrase of the De profundis, he thought he saw, through a hole or bull’s eye in the door, something moving about the inner chamber. As the room was void of every kind of furniture, and nobody could possibly be in it, Rinck looked more fixedly, when he distinctly saw a shadow, whose movements were accompanied by a strange rustling sound. Perplexed at the circumstance, he told his pupils that on the following day he should require them to repeat the same choral. They did so; and while they were singing, Rinck saw a person walking backward and forward in the next room, who frequently approached the hole in the door. Very much struck with so extraordinary a circumstance, Rinck had the choral repeated on the ensuing day,—and this time his suspicions were fully confirmed; the old man, his predecessor, approaching the door, and gazing steadfastly into the class-room. “His face,” said Rinck—in relating the story to Dr. Mainzer, who has obligingly furnished it to me as entered in his journal at the time—“was of an ashy-gray. The apparition,” he added, “never more appeared to me, although I frequently had the choral repeated.”
“I am no believer in ghost-stories,” he added, “nor in the least superstitious; nevertheless, I can not help admitting that I have seen this: it is impossible for me ever to doubt or to deny that which I know I saw.”