“Wal an’ good. Now tell me how’s yer mother an’ all the family.”
“Mother’s middlin’ bright now; but Malviny, she died in a fit last March, and Tom, the innocent, he died too; and Charlotte Ann, she was buried the week afore your letter cum; and mother, she had about gi’n up; for we hadn’t a shinplaster left after payin’ for the buryin’, and we thowt as how we should have ter starve, sure; and lame Andrew Jackson and the two young ’uns, they wahr lookin’ pretty considerable peakid, I kn tell yer, when all at wunst your letter cum with four hunderd dollars in it. Crikee! Didn’t the old woman scream for joy? Didn’t she hug the childern, and cry, and laugh, and take on, till we all thowt she was crazy-like? And didn’t she jounce down on her knees, and pray, jest like a minister does?”
“Did she? Did she, Delancy? Tell it over to me again. Did she raally pray?”
“I reckon she didn’t do nothin’ else.”
“Try ter think what she said, Delancy. Try ter think. It’s important.”
“Wal, ’ was all about the Lord Jesus, and Brother D’lancy, and not forsakin’ the righteous, and bless the Lord, O my soul, and the dear angels that was took away, and then about Brother D’lancy again, and might the Lord put his everlastin’ arms about him, and might the Lord save his soul alive, and all that wild sort of talk, yer know. Why, uncle! Uncle D’lancy! What’s the matter with yer?”
Yes! the old sinner had boo-hooed outright; and then, covering[covering] his face with his hands, he wept as if he were making up for a long period of drought in the lachrymal line.
We have spoken of the influence which Vance had applied to this stony nature. We should have spoken of other influences, perhaps more potent still, that had reached it through Peek. Before the exodus from New Orleans, Peek had introduced him to certain phenomena which had shaken the Colonel’s very soul, by the proofs they gave him of powers transcending those usually ascribed to mortals, or admitted as possible by science. The proofs were irresistible to his common sense, First, That there was a power outside of himself that could read, not only his inmost nature, but his individual thoughts, as they arose, and this without any aid from him by look, word, or act.
Here was a test in which there was no room left for deception. The savans can only explain it by denying it; and there are in America more than three millions of men and women who khow what the denial amounts to. Given a belief in clairvoyance, and that in spirits and immortality follows. The motto of the ancient Pagan theists was, “Si divinatio est, dii sunt.”[[45]]
Secondly, Hyde saw heavy physical objects moved about, floated in the air, made to perform intelligent offices, and all without the intervention of any agencies recognized as material.