FINDING THE WAY.
On an early December evening, in a bright, quiet room, at the Delavan
House, in Albany, sat Bart Ridgeley alone, thoughtfully and sadly
contemplating a manuscript, that lay before him, which ran as follows:
"UNIONVILLE, Nov. 27, 1838.
"_My Dear Bart_:--Poor Sartliff has, it seems, finally found the way.
It was that short, direct, everlasting old way, so crowded, which
everybody finds, and nobody loses or mistakes. You told me of your
last interview with him, as did he, not long after you left. It seemed
to have depressed him. He spoke of you as one who could have greatly
aided him, but did not blame you.
"The next time I saw him, I found him much changed for the worse.
He was thin and haggard--more so than I had ever seen him. His old
hopefulness and buoyancy were gone, and he was given to very gloomy
and depressing views of things. He thought he had made great progress,
in fact had reached a new discovery, and it was not in the least
encouraging.
"He finally concluded that the grand and wondrously beautiful spirits
that he seemed to get glimpses of, and whose voices he used to hear,
were really convict spirits, or angels, imprisoned on or banished
to this earth, for a period of years, or for eternity, for crimes
committed in the sun, or some less luminous abode; and I presume are
cutting up here, much after their old way. Though it must be conceded
that this world is a place of severe punishment.
"He went on to a more depressing view of us mortals, and said he
had concluded that our souls were also the souls of beings who had
inhabited some more favored region of the universe, also sent here for
punishment; and that each was compelled to enter and inhabit a human
body, for the lifetime of that body; and to suffer by partaking of
all of its wretched, sensual, and degrading vicissitudes; and that
whenever the soul is sufficiently punished, the body dies and permits
it to escape.
"I suggested that it made no difference where the soul came from, if
there was one, nor how many bodies it had inhabited; and that it made
against his idea, that the soul was older than the body; for if it
was, it would be conscious of that pre-existence. He said that every
soul did at times have a consciousness of existence in another and
older form, which was very dark from its transgressions. But he took
the part of the native body against this alien soul, and felt hurt and
grieved that our world was a mere penal colony--a penitentiary for
all the scabbed and leprous souls and spirits of the rest of God's
creation. It was bad economy; and he grieved over it as a deep and
irreparable personal injury.
"This was a month ago; and I never saw him again. He wandered off down
into the neighborhood of Erie, where he had many acquaintances, took
less care of himself, went more scantily clad, was more abstemious in
diet, and more and more disregarded the conditions of human existence.
Finally, his mind became as wandering as his body.
"He wanted nothing, asked for nothing, rejected food, and refused
shelter, and as often as taken in and cared for, he managed to escape,
and wander away, feebly and helplessly, from human association and
ministration. He complained to himself that his great mother, Nature,
had deserted him, a helpless child, to wander and perish in the
wilderness. He said he had gone after her, until weary, starving,
and worn, he must lie down and die. He had called after her until
his voice had sunk to a wail; and he finally died of a child's
heart-broken sense of abandonment and desertion.
"He was found one day, nearly unconscious, with the tears frozen in
his eyes, and on being cared for, wailed his life out in broken sobs.
"Let us not grieve that he has found rest.
"I am too sad to write of other things, and you will be melancholy
over this for a month.
"CASE."