[XI]
OF PRESENTIMENTS
“Methinks I hear, methinks I see
Ghosts, goblins, fiends.”—Burton.
We approach a still different class of evil omens, or such as are believed by many to “cast their shadows before,” in such a manner as to prey upon the spirits, or show their visible effects in the daily actions of men, usually well balanced, with a feeling akin to respectful fear. Let other forms of superstition be never so mirth-provoking, the reality of this one, at least to those of an imaginative or highly impressible nature, is such that we are sobered at once. What concerns such momentous events as life and death is really no jesting matter.
There may be, probably is, a scientific explanation for those fancies that sometimes come over us, with a sinking feeling at the heart. Men usually keep silent. Women more often give utterance to their feelings. How many times have we heard this remark: “O dear, I feel as if something was going to happen!”
There is still another phase of the subject. Probably hundreds, perhaps thousands, could be found, who, at some time or other, have passed through some strange experience, which they are wholly unable to account for on any rational theory or ground whatever. Perhaps it has been to the inner man what the skeleton in the closet is to the family home. Unfortunately, it is only in moments when men lay bare their inmost thoughts to each other that these things, so valuable from the standpoint of psychology, leak out. What is, then, the secret power, which, in our waking hours, our sober consciousness, is able to oppress our spirits like some hideous nightmare? In its nature it seems most often a warning of coming evil or future event,—in fact, an omen of which we obtain the knowledge by accident, or without design or premeditation. Were it not for the fear of ridicule, we are persuaded that a multitude of persons could testify to some very interesting phenomena of this kind, drawn from their own experiences.
There was a woman whom I knew very well, in a little seaport of Maine, a respectable, middle-aged matron, who asserted that no one ever died in that village unless she had a warning. Precisely what the nature of that warning was she would never divulge; but it is nevertheless a fact that she was often consulted by her neighbors when any one was taken seriously ill, and that her oracular dictum received full and entire credit among them.
In that same little seaport the superstition is current that a sick person will not die till ebb tide. As that goes out, so does the life. This particular article of superstitious faith still holds in some parts of England, we understand, and is made use of by Dickens in “David Copperfield.”
The following incident came to my knowledge while I was in the near neighborhood of the place where a recent shocking railroad accident had happened. Naturally, it was the one topic of conversation, far and near. The engine-man, an old and trusted servant of the company, went down with his engine in the wreck. While being dug out from under his engine, crushed and bleeding, the poor fellow said to his rescuers: “Three times I’ve seen a man on the track at this very place, and three times I’ve stopped my engine. I said this morning that I wouldn’t go over the road again; but couldn’t get any one to take my place, and here I am.”
That a sinister presentiment should cross one in moments of extreme peril, may be easily conceived, but why it should occur, and does occur, at times when no known danger threatens, or any mental or physical condition would seem to warrant it, is not so easily understood. Yet history is full of such examples, related, too, not of the weaker sort, but of the strongest characters. Mr. Motley, in his “John of Barneveld,” gives a vivid picture of Henry IV. of France just before his death. The great monarch was on the point of departure, at the head of the best appointed army he had ever commanded, for the war against Spain. “But he delayed for a few days to take part in the public festivities in honor of the coronation of his queen. These festivities he dreaded, and looked forward to them with gloomy forebodings. He was haunted with fears that they involved his own life, and that he should not survive them. He said many times to his favorite minister, Sully: ‘I know not how it is, but my heart tells me that some misfortune is to befall me. I shall never go out of it.’ He had dreams, also, which assumed to him the force of revelations, that he was to die in a carriage, and at the first magnificent festival he gave. Sully asked him why he did not abandon the proposed festivities at the coronation, and actually went to the queen to persuade her to countermand them. But she refused in high indignation, being, as is now supposed, in the conspiracy against his life. The result is well known: the king was assassinated in his carriage by Ravaillac, as the festivities were in progress.”
Every one remembers the curious incident in regard to Lord Thomas Lyttleton’s vision, as related in Boswell’s “Johnson,” predicting the time of his death, and its exact fulfilment; and Johnson’s solemn comments thereon. “It is the most extraordinary thing that has happened in my day. I heard it with my own ears from his uncle, Lord Westcote.” Lord Byron once observed that several remarkable things had happened on his birthday, as they also had to Napoleon. Marie Antoinette, too, was a firm believer in these presentiments. She thus declares herself in language that now seems prophetic: “At my wedding something whispered to me that I was signing my death warrant. At the last moment I would have retreated if I could have done so.”