“In a research for facts bearing upon psychology, Mrs. Bancroft (a daughter-in-law of the historian) has brought to light a strange story relating to either the record of odd ‘spirit communications’ or coincidences. On July 2, 1863, the wives of Major Thomas Y. Brent and Captain Eugene Barnes, two Confederate officers, were together at a wedding in Fayette County, each wearing her bridal dress. While dressing for the occasion Mrs. Brent’s companion discovered a blood spot upon the dress of the major’s wife, which could not be accounted for, and somewhat excitedly exclaimed, ‘It is a bad omen!’ Two days after Mrs. Brent experienced a severe pain in the region of her heart, although at the time in the best of health. This occurred at the birthplace of her husband. Two days later she heard that, while storming a Federal fortification, her husband was killed on July 4, 1863, as far as she could learn, at the identical time that she had experienced the heart pain. The major was shot in the breast by a Minié ball and instantly killed.”
There lies before me, as I write, the authoritative statement of an army officer, a survivor of the terrible charge up San Juan Hill, before Santiago de Cuba, to the effect that just before advancing to the charge a brother officer had confided to him a conviction that the speaker would be killed, entreating his friend to receive his last messages for his relatives. In this case, too, the fatal premonition was fully verified. The doomed man was shot while bravely storming the Spanish stronghold.
Still another story of this war has been widely published, so lately as this chapter was begun. It has reference to the death of the bandmaster of the United States ship Lancaster, then cruising in the South Atlantic. Upon learning that the Lancaster was to touch at Rio de Janeiro the bandmaster requested his discharge, giving as his reason that he had for years been under the presentiment that if he went to that port he would die of yellow fever. A discharge was refused him. The ship entered the harbor of Rio, and the bandmaster immediately took to his bed with all the symptoms of yellow fever. The identity of the malady soon established itself. He was taken to the plague hospital on shore and there died. One of the bandsmen who kissed him as he was being removed from the ship also died. The account goes on to say that “these two are the only cases reported at Rio for months. The fever has not spread, and no man besides the unfortunate bandsman caught the fever, the health of the ship’s crew remaining excellent.”
The number of persons who have testified to having seen the apparitions or death wraiths of dying or deceased friends is already large, as the records of various societies for psychical research bear witness. These phenomena are not in their nature forewarnings of something that is about to happen, but announcements of something that already has happened. They therefore can have no relation to what was formerly known as “second sight.”
In spite of all that our much-boasted civilization has done in the way of freeing poor, fallible man from the thraldom of superstition, there is indubitable evidence that a great many people still put faith in direct revelations from the land of spirits. In the course of a quiet chat one evening, where the subject was under discussion, one of the company who had listened attentively, though silently all the while, to all manner of theories, spiced with ridicule, abruptly asked how we would account for the following incident which he went on to relate, and I have here set down word for word:—
“My grandparents,” he began, “had a son whom they thought all the world of. From all accounts I guess Tom was about one of the likeliest young fellows that could be scared up in a day’s journey. Everybody said Tom was bound to make his mark in the world, and at the time I speak of he seemed in a fair way of doing it, too, for at one and twenty he was first mate of the old Argonaut which had just sailed for Calcutta. This would make her tenth voyage. Well, as I am telling you, the very day after the Argonaut went to sea, a tremendous gale set in from the eastward. It blew great guns. Actually, now, it seemed as if that gale would never stop blowing.
“As day after day went by, and the storm raged on without intermission, you may judge if the hearts of those who had friends at sea in that ship did not sink down and down with the passing hours. Of course, the old folks could think of nothing else.
“Let me see; it was a good bit ago. Ah, yes; it was on the third or fourth night of the gale, I don’t rightly remember which, and it don’t matter much, that grandfather and grandmother were sitting together, as usual, in the old family sitting-room, he poring over the family Bible as he was wont to do in such cases, she knitting and rocking, or pretending to knit, but both full of the one ever present thought, which each was trying so hard to hide from the other.
“Dismally splashed the raindrops against the window-panes, mournfully the wind whined in the chimney-top, while every now and then the fire would spit and sputter angrily on the hearth, or flare up fitfully when some big gust came roaring down the chimney to fan the embers into a fiercer flame. Then there would be a lull, during which, like an echo of the tempest, the dull and distant booming of the sea was borne to the affrighted listener’s ears. But nothing I could say would begin to give you an idea of the great gale of 1817.
“Well, the old folks sat there as stiff as two statues, listening to every sound. When a big gust tore over the house and shook it till it rocked again, gran’ther would steal a look at grandmother over his specs, but say never a word. The old lady would give a start, let her hands fall idly upon her lap, sit for a moment as if dazed, and then go on with her knitting again as if her very life depended on it.