Various implements are employed by the expert operator in his quest for what lies hidden from mortal eyes; but the preferred agent is usually a bough of witch-hazel, branching at one end like the tines of a pitchfork.[24] Taking firm hold of each prong, with the palms of the hands turned upward, the operator slowly walks around the locality where it is desired to find water; and when he reaches the right spot, presto! the free end of the bough is bent downward toward the ground as if by some invisible force, sometimes so strongly that the operator is unable to overcome it by putting forth his whole strength. “Dig here,” he says, with positive assurance that water will be found not far below the surface of the ground.
On the face of it, this performance comes rather nearer to our idea of a miracle than anything we can now call to mind. Certainly, Moses did no more when he smote the rock of Scripture. Very possibly, former generations of men may have associated the act with the operation of sorcery or magic. An enlightened age, however, accepts neither of these theories. We do not believe in miracles other than those recorded in Scripture; and we have renounced magic and sorcery as too antiquated for intelligent people to consider. Yet things are done every day which would have passed for miracles with our forefathers, without our knowing more than the bare fact that, by means of certain crude agents, obtained from the earth itself, messages are sent from New York to London under the Atlantic Ocean in a few minutes; that the most remote parts of the habitable globe have been brought into practically instantaneous communication, the one with the other; and that public and private conveyances are moving about our thoroughfares without the use of horses or steam. All these things looked to us like miracles, at first, yet custom has brought us to regard them with no more wonder than did the lighting of the first gas lamp the pedestrian of forty odd years ago. Much as we know, there is probably yet much more that we do not know.
The methods employed in finding oil springs or “leads” of ore are very similar to those made use of in discovering water. It is a fact that some of the most productive wells in the oil regions were located in this manner. It is a further fact, that from time to time, search for buried treasure has been carried on in precisely the same way. Now some astute critics have said that the divining-rod was a humbug, because when they have tried it the mystic bough would not bend for them. It is, however, doubtful if any humbug could have stood the test of so many years without exposure, or what so many witnesses stand ready to affirm the truth of be cavalierly thrust aside as a palpable imposture.
Although I have never seen the operator at work, myself, I have often talked with those who have, whose testimony was both direct and explicit. Moreover, I do know of persons who continue to ply this trade (for no more than this is claimed for it) in some parts of New England to-day. Whether it should be classed among superstitions may be an open question after all.
[XIII]
WONDERS OF THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE
“The hag is astride
This night for a ride—
The devil and she together.”—Herrick.
All abnormal exhibitions of nature, or in fact any departure from the regular order of things, such as great and unusual storms, earthquakes, eclipses of the sun or moon, the appearance of a comet in the heavens, or of a plague of flies, caterpillars, or locusts were once held to be so many infallible signs of impending calamity. All of our early historians give full and entire credit to the evil import of these startling phenomena, which were invariably referred to the wrath of an offended deity, only to be appeased by a special season of fasting and prayer. Of course ample warrant exists for such belief in the Bible, which was something no man dared question or gainsay in those primitive days. For example, in his history of Philip’s War, Increase Mather lays down this, to our age, startling proposition. “It is,” says the learned divine, “a common observation, verified by the experience of many ages, that great and publick calamityes seldome come upon any place without prodigious warnings to forerun and signify what is to be expected.” He had just noted the appearance “in the aire,” at Plymouth, of something shaped in the perfect form of an Indian bow, which some of the terror-stricken people looked upon as a “prodigious apparition.” The learned divine cleverly interpreted it as a favorable omen, however, portending that the Lord would presently “break the bow and spear asunder,” thus calming their fears.