One of the most attractive, blood-curdling, hair-raising and
goose-flesh causing legends in the whole history of superstition is
that of the appearance of the “White Lady” as the precursor of death
in the royal family of Prussia. In the first place the “White Lady” is
duplex; there are two of her. One is the unhappy ghost of the Countess
Agnes of Orlamunde, who is alleged to have departed this life after the
procrastinating fashion peculiar to the middle ages, by being walled
up alive in a vault in the palace at Berlin. The occasion for this
incarceration is said to have been her poisoning of the two sons of
the then Margrave of Brandenburgh (incidentally her own, by the way),
who stood in the road to her promised marriage to the Margrave. The
other personality of the “White Lady” was, while in the flesh, the
Princess Bertha von Rosenberg, who lived in the fifteenth century died
in the odor of sanctity, bequeathed a gift to the poor and this gift
having been falsely discontinued, “walks” at periods inconvenient to
the Hohenzollern family, to remind them of the impropriety of their
course. Once in 1628, the “White Lady” made her appearance at the
palace in Berlin and made the remark, in Latin, “I wait for judgment.”
Pending the incident for which she waited, a Hohenzollern departed
this life. Again, some hundred or so of years later, she was seen at
the Castle of Neuhaus, in Bohemia, when she casually observed to the
princess who encountered her, “It is ten o’clock.” This chronological
information so affected the princess that she died in a few weeks. The
latest appearance of La Dame Blanche was in 1879, again in the palace
in Berlin; immediately there occured the death of Prince Wald[emar].
We are informed that this persistent and long-lived spectre was seen
not long since by the night sentinels on guard at the royal castle at
Berlin―and now Berlin society is all agog with a delicious fear and
wonderment, waiting for grim Death to cry.―_Telegram._
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One of the most singular freaks of nature ever falling under our
observation is the fungus growth in the possession of Mr. Simon Snyder,
keeper of the hotel at Conville, Iowa. In May, 1882, Mr. Snyder lost
a hand while working in a planing mill at Portsmouth, Ohio, and the
amputated member was buried in his garden. Two weeks after there grew
out of the mound covering the cairn a fungus plant of the exact form of
the hand. It was visited by hundreds of people many of whom thought it
was a portent of evil. On his removal to Conville, Mr. Snyder brought
the fungus preserved in alcohol. They are of a dark brown color, and
what is as remarkable as the growth itself, the fore-finger in its
shortened length is a reproduction of the original which had been
amputated two years before. It will pay visitors to Conville to see
this wonderful duplication.
HOW DID IT GET THERE?―We saw on Tuesday afternoon a perfectly formed,
apparently human hand, that of an infant, taken from the centre of a
new-grown potato, in a field near town. The formation is so perfect
that the smallest fibres and ligaments are quite apparent, and by
touching the thumb or wrist the motion is felt throughout the whole
hand.―_From the Cape Breton Advocate._