Pale and fleecy, ghosty and white,
Onward borne in their unknown flight—
Flimsy and fragile, pure and fair—
Mystic things the thistles are.
Drifting about on a windy day—
Ghosty children at their play—
Revelling up above the trees,
Hither and thither on the breeze.
Slow and sadly, how they fly,
Chasing shadows in the sky!
Never resting, never still,
Through the valley, o'er the hill.
Walking round o'er the churchyard mould,
Up above the bosoms cold;
Flitting past each marble door,
Sadly breathing: 'Gone before!'
Spectres wild with their viewless steeds,
Riding on where nothing leads;
Up to the sky when the earth gets brown—
Ever restless thistle-down.
Through the forest cool and dark,
Never hitting the destined mark;
Over the earth and through the air,
Downy thistles everywhere.
Darting in at the open door,
Telling of joys that come no more;
Robed in grave clothes fine and thin—
Shades of phantoms, ever dim.
Up the church-aisles Sabbath-days,
Where the dusky twilight plays;
Round the altar, o'er the bier,
Preaching more than priests do here.
Solemn are the words they say—
Silent sermons free ofPAY;
And the lessons they impart,
Never vanish from the heart.
THE LOVE LUCIFER.
[The author of 'The Love Lucifer' says in regard to it: 'I enclose a narration of facts. Not noted for assurance, I yet feel well assured that its publication in The Continental 'will do uses.'' Should there be any among our readers who have inquired into our modern necromancy, they will not fail to recognize in the excited, wild, incoherent, and uncultured jargon of the spirits of 'The Love Lucifer,' the same style and character evinced by those to whom they may have been introduced by the 'mejums.' The two Bulwers, the Howitts, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the Halls, the De Morgans, &c., have taken a deep interest in these half-comic, half-serious, and always incoherent demonstrations.
Perhaps the matter-of-fact experience of our author may shield some of our readers from 'obsessions, delusions, magnetic streams of Od,' be they angelic, human, demoniac, or Koboldic in their origin.—Ed. Con.]
CHAPTER I.
The things herein might well remain in soak for one decade, at least. The writer certainly did well to let a dozen sane, practical years pass between these experiences and their narration.
I was a youth after the own heart of my Presbyterian preceptors—proposed to become a Presbyterian preceptor. The son of a New York merchant, I was schooled in the schooling of such; and was steadfastly minded to know no life-purpose but the salvation of sinners. But I was a little restive—felt that the limits of the Shorter Catechism were too short and strait for me. The shadow of Schleiermacher's readjustment of Christianity was upon me. I felt that some old things were passing away. In common with so many others who inclined toward the sacerdotal office, I was unconsciously turning my back upon it, on account of the crudities contained in the only existing creeds for which I had any respect. American Protestant youth have not been alone in this regard. Says the London Times, 'The number of men of education and social position who enter into orders is becoming less and less every year.' Let then ancient, true, everlasting Christianity be speedily adjusted to modern facts, lest it further lapse.
Free thoughted, earnestly disposed toward the acquirement and dissemination of absolute spiritual truth, as was not unnatural, I thoroughly investigated the 'Supernaturalism' of the day. I soon assented to the general proposition that sociability with the invisibles is practicable, if not profitable; but ever held at a cheap rate the philosophies and religions, harmonious and other, which the full-blooded ghost-mongers so zealously promulgated. I still maintain that great good will result from these chaotic developments; for instance, that the impartial mind will find in them that scientific foundation for belief in much of the supernaturalism (to repeat the absurd expression) of the Bible, of which the age stands in such woful need. That this generation does experience such a lack is made sufficiently apparent in the 'Essays and Reviews.' On no other point are the noble freemen who therein and thereby grope after the 'readjustment,' so utterly deaf, dumb, halt, and blind, as they are in respect to Scripture miracles. In fact, these writers cast the most wondrous of the actæ sanctorum to the winds. Methinks the more thoughtful and earnest men of Christendom must, then, assent to the proposition that we have pressing need of a new flood of such practical phenomena as sturdy old Baxter gave to the Sadducees of his day, in his 'Certainty of the World of Spirits.' Whether these strange doings gradually cease, or take on new and more striking aspects, I doubt not they will help to give a healthy vigor to our emaciated faith in the existence of an unseen and spiritual world. Let us not, then, utterly scorn the strange rabble who have rushed headlong after this curiousest curiosity of modern times—except the rebellion—even though they may remind us of 'the Queen's ragged regiment of literature.' It should be taken for granted that so startling a novelty would attract the floating scum of society, whether the solid folk heeded or derided it.
Though the following narrative may bring upon me an infinite derision, I have long felt that it should be published, on account of the light it throws upon some of the most mysterious facts of existence. Others may have had similar experiences; but, if so, pride keeps them from confessing how utterly they have been hoodwinked and enslaved by those invisible loafers who form so large a portion of the newcomers and who are permitted—not to put on too fine a point—to do the dirty work of cleansing the modern mind of its gross Augean Sadduceeism. The only theory promotive of self-complacency that I could ever concoct, as to why I was put through such an ordeal, is, that I was suffered for my own and the general benefit to see the dangers of necromancy, and especially the awful psychodynamical methods used by spirits to obsess and gradually craze human brains. I, at least, received a scare that made me careful, ever after, how I called spirits from the vasty deep, or elsewhere. After passing perils manifold, both carnal and spiritual—having gone, torrent-borne, through the yawning chasms represented in Cole's 'Voyage of Life' pictures, I come into calmer seas, the lines fall in pleasant places; and now I sit me down, in life's high noon—having lighted on a certain place where was a den (a pleasanter than Bunyan's)—to write the strange things that befell me in the seeming long ago—the dew and freshness of my youth. And though I be reckoned of many a dreamer of dreams, he shall not, I think, go unprofited, who can rightly 'read my rede.'