Colonel Elijah Prowley, like all good and true genealogists, held the
mother-country in tender reverence. For, if there be any truth in the
well-known _mot_ which calls Paris the Paradise of virtuous Yankees, it
is limited to a few city-bucks of mongrel caste. England must be the
Promised Land for the genuine representative of the Puritan. Whatever we
may have felt about her lately,--and I confess there have been times
when the declaration of the Fee-Faw-Fum giant of nursery-romance seemed
to be of a moral and praiseworthy character,--there is no doubt, that,
in the year of grace of which I write, and in the regards of many
ratherish-scholarly gentlemen of our country-towns, the British Islands
were the nearest terrestrial correspondences to the Islands of the
Blest. About the massive Past Colonel Prowley never ceased to thrust his
epistolary tendrils. Was not Great Britain a genealogical hunting-ground
where game of rarest plumage might be started? Was not a
family-connection with Sir Walter Raleigh (whose name should be written
_Praleigh_, a common corruption of "Prowley" in the sixteenth century)
susceptible of the clearest proof? There were, in fact, few
distinguished Englishmen of the present day, who, if a provoking
ancestor or two could be unearthed, might not be shown to have the
Prowley fluid in their veins. To many of these eminent personages the
head of the American branch of the family had written, and with several
he had succeeded in establishing a correspondence. Old sermons, moral
obituaries of public characters, celebrations of centennial
anniversaries, and heavy reading of like description, constantly left
the Foxden Post-Office addressed to the British Museum. The printed
formulas of acknowledgment which arrived in return were preserved as the
rarest treasures.
And in fulness of time all this corresponding and presenting produced a
glorious result. Elijah Prowley, of Foxden, was chosen an Honorary
Member of the Royal Society of British Sextons,--an association than
which there is none more mouldy in the whole world. Certainly, this was
glory enough for any Western genealogist,--yet Fortune had a higher
gratification to bestow. For, in His Worship, the Most Primordial, the
High Senior Governour and Primitive Patriarch of all Sextons, Colonel
Prowley soon discovered a relative of his own. Sir Joseph Barley, a
rubicund old knight, and the Most Primordial in question, after an
elaborate investigation and counter-investigation, a jockeying of the
wits of very old women, and a raid into divers registers, scrolls,
schedules, archives, and the like,--Sir Joseph Barley, I say, turned out
to be _a long-lost cousin_. "Barley," it appeared, had anciently been
written "Parley," and "Praley," and even "Proley." Having arrived at
this point, Sir Joseph conjectured that his ancestor Proley might have
dropped a _w_ out of his name, and the Colonel conjectured that his
progenitor, the Puritan, might have put one into his. Now it did not
matter which was right, for, as was convincingly underscored in one of
my letters from Foxden, "_upon either hypothesis_, the relationship of
the Barleys of Old England to the Prowleys of New England was positively
established."
And so Sir Joseph Barley was dead!
Although shocked, when the fact of his demise was abruptly announced in
the familiar chirography of my old friend, I was unable to prevent a
certain sense of the grotesque from mingling with the idea. A portrait
in pastel, which hung over the chimney-piece in the Colonel's study, had
given me a thorough acquaintance with the outward Sir Joseph. That
brief, but bulky figure, clad in official robes as High Senior
Governour, that weighty seal of the Sextons which dangled from the fob,
those impressive spectacles with the glasses cut in parallelograms,
above all, that full-blown face blandly contemplating our American
rudeness like a smiling Phoebus from British skies,--how could all
these things, which had so individualized the natural body of Sir Joseph
Barley, be dispensed with in its spiritual counterpart? No answer to
such question,--only the grim facts, that one brother more had "gone
over to the majority," and that the living minority got on very
comfortably without him. Comfortably? Ay, truly; for in the very letter
that brought the news I was begged to spend the approaching Fast-Day in
Foxden, just as if nothing had happened. The season, so I was assured,
was unusually advanced, and already the flavor of spring was perceptible
in the air; moreover, the different congregations in town were to unite
in services at the Orthodox Church, and, by extraordinary favor, one of
the Colonel's Boston correspondents, no less a man than the
distinguished Dr. Burge, was to preach the sermon.
A noble specimen of our New-England clergy was this Dr. Burge. He held
the old creed-formulas through which Wilson and Mather declared their
faith, yet warmed them into ruddy life by whatever fire the last
transcendental Prometheus or Comte-devoted scientist filched from aërial
or material heaven. A good diner-out, a good visitor among the poor. His
parishioners supplied him with a wood-fire, a saddle-horse, and, it was
maliciously said, a boxing-master; and he, on his part,--so ran the idle
rumor of the street,--covenanted never to call upon them for cod-liver
oil, Bourbon whiskey, or a tour to Europe. In his majestic presence
there was a total impression sanative to body and soul. The full powers
of manner and tone, of pause and emphasis, were at his command. He would
rise in a shingled meeting-house as effective as choir, organ, and
sacerdotal vestments in full cathedral-service. I was glad to learn that
this stalwart servant of the Word would be at Foxden. He had formerly
been well acquainted with the Reverend Charles Clifton, late pastor of a
church in that place. He might deal wisely with the evil intelligence,
or, possibly, the infatuated egotism, which controlled that unfortunate
man. Dr. Burge would possess his soul in calmness in presence of the
singular epidemic which was then running through Foxden, as it had
previously run through, and run out of, other river-towns.
And now it has come in my way to speak of that strange murmuring of
phantoms and their attendant seers, psychometers, and dactylomancers,
which in these latter days has revived among us. And what I may have to
say about what is called Spiritualism will reflect actual observations.
I do not forget that to the advocacy of the "New Dispensation" are
devoted many men of earnestness and a few of ability. It is possible
that the facts they build upon may render mine exceptional and
unimportant. What is here set down is but a trifling contribution to
that mass of human testimony and human opinion from which the truth must
be finally elicited.
Mr. Stellato had been celestially commissioned to Barnum the spirits in
their Foxden exhibitions. Two years previously this gentleman was to be
seen at the head of a fanatical and tumultuary offshoot from a cause the
most humane and noble. He had done whatever his slender abilities
permitted to bring into discredit large-hearted and devoted men and
women whom history will honorably remember as New-England Reformers. But
to lead anything on a large scale, without a continual winding-up by his
companion, the fibrous Mrs. Romulus, was beyond the crassitude of
Stellato's pursy nature. Now it had come to pass that this acidulated
lady, essaying fresh flurries of progression, discovering higher
passional affinities and new duties of demolition, proving that in
Church and State every brick was loose and every timber rotten,
testifying ever to the existence of a certain harmonial mortar by which
the rubbish of a demolished civilization could be rebuilt into
unexceptionable forms,--it happened that this woman, having towered for
one proud moment at the very apex of her mission, slipped suddenly into
the Romish communion, and was no more seen of men. Stellato, perceiving
that the peculiar machinery be had been taught to manage was now out of
repair and impracticable, looked about for some new invention whereby to
gain a livelihood from the credulity of his neighbors. "The spirits,"
then at the height of their profit and renown, were adapted to his
purpose. A blank and vacant mind was freely offered to any power of
earth or air which would condescend to enter and possess it. And so Mr.
Stellato, with his three parts knavery and two parts delusion, became a
popular and successful ghost-monger.
The parsonage had been closed since Charles Clifton terminated his
connection with the parish two years before. The newest lights of the
Liberal persuasion, fledglings from divinity-schools, youths of every
possible variety of creed and no creed, had by turns occupied the vacant
pulpit. The Gospel vibrated at all points between the interpretations of
Calvin and Strauss. The congregation grew more and more critical, and
could agree upon no candidate for settlement. They demanded the
respectability of belief with the showy talents of skepticism,--an
impossible combination, at least for a parish which offered only eight
hundred dollars and a decrepit house. At length Colonel Prowley took a
pew in the Orthodox Church;--it was a temporary arrangement, he said, to
be terminated whenever a settled minister should be provided for the
First Parish.
The Reverend Charles Clifton seldom left the rooms which he had taken in
a farmer's family on the outskirts of the town. We have seen how this
man had once believed that Providence had called him to an exceptional
and brilliant destiny. The total renouncement of what once glowed as a
mission requires a sturdy nature and plenty of active work. Clifton
possessed an exceeding susceptibility of nervous organization; he was
full of subtile intimations of what was passing in the minds of other
men, and at times seemed to have a strange power of controlling them.
The deep passion for metaphysical knowledge, which in his youth had been
kindled, was stilled, but never overcome. Wifeless, childless, he was
put under no bonds to struggle with the world. He knew the coldness of
the church in which he had been ordained to minister,--the hard and
dreary lives of those whom he had undertaken to illumine. But he made
the fatal mistake--inexcusable, it would seem, in a man of his liberal
nurture--of supposing that this world's evil was owing to the absence of
right opinion, and not of right feeling. It is to be feared that it was
not principle, but only a paroxysm of cowardice, which caused Clifton to
bury Vannelle's legacy in the Mather Safe. At all events, the minister
found himself unable to dismiss a certain thin and impalpable fantasy
which lingered behind that ponderous speculation of an all-embracing
philosophy. For the past two years he had fitfully sought, or rather
persuaded himself that he sought, some clue through the sad labyrinth of
his fate. He had indulged in the most morbid conditions of his physical
organism; there was neither steadiness in his purpose nor firmness in
his action. He yearned for that proximity to hidden things, which, if
not forbidden to all men, yet is dangerous to most men. At length he
succeeded in freeing his soul from the weight of conscious intellectual
life which had become too heavy for it to bear. And while the Foxden
people were wondering about the occupation of a late pastor in one of
their churches, and inquiring of each other whether he would again speak
before them, their gossiping solicitude was suddenly set at rest.
Printed show-bills were posted about the streets: "Grand Festival of
Spiritualists at the Town Hall." "The Reverend Charles Clifton will
speak"--a line of largest type gloated upon the scandal--"IN A
TRANCE-STATE."
"I really ought to apologize," said Colonel Prowley, upon opening the
hall-door for my admittance, on the afternoon of the second Wednesday in
April, and this after repeated summons had been sounded by the brazen
knocker,--"I ought to apologize for keeping you here so long; but there
has been so much knocking about the house of late, and our cook and
housemaid having turned out to be such excellent mediums, taking just as
much interest in their circle down-stairs as we do in ours in the
parlor, and then Mrs. Colfodder being so positive that it was either Sir
Joseph Barley or Roger Williams,--though I am sure neither of them ever
knocked half so satisfactorily before, and besides"----
"My dear Sir," interrupted I, "no excuse is necessary. I have
seen enough of 'the spirits' to know how they put aside all
conventionalities. I should have accompanied Dr. Burge to the hotel, had
I anticipated disturbing the circle which, I infer, is at present in
session."
"You would have grieved me very much by doing so," rejoined the kind old
gentleman. "Dr. Burge dines with me to-morrow, and I confess--not yet
calling myself a convert to these miracles which are now vouchsafed in
Foxden--it would not be amiss to rid my premises of the amiable
magicians congregated in my parlor before a minister were invited to
enter. But a layman, as I take it, might witness these thaumaturgical
matters without scandal,--nay, perchance you may help me to that
wholesome credence in their reality which my celestial visitants so
unceasingly demand."
Colonel Prowley was in the state of mind not unusual to many
well-meaning, unoccupied people, when this modern necromancy was thrust
upon them by those pecuniarily or socially interested in its advocacy.
The upheaval to the air of that dark inward nature which is ever working
in us,--the startling proof of that loudly proclaimed, faintly realized
truth, that this mind, so pervading every fibre of the body, is yet
separate in its essence,--the novel gratification of the petty vanities
and petty questionings which beset undecided men,--what wonder that
persons not accustomed to sound analysis of evidence should be beguiled
by these subtilest adaptations to their conditions, and hold dalliance
with the feeble shades that imposture or enthusiasm vended about the
towns? Historical personages--a nerveless mimicry of the conventional
stage-representation of them--stalked the Colonel's parlor. Departed
friends, Indians _à discrétion_, local celebrities, Deacon Golly, who in
the year '90 took the ten first shares in the Wrexford Turnpike, the
very Pelatiah Brimble from whom "Brimble's Corner" had taken its name,
the identical Timson forever immortal in "Timson's Common,"--these
defunct worthies were audibly, visibly, or tangibly present, pecking at
great subjects in ghostly feebleness, swimming in Tupperic dilutions of
cheapest wisdom, and finally inducing in their patrons strange
derangements of mind and body.
The circle, which was very select, consisted of three highly susceptible
ladies and Stellato as medium-in-chief. Miss Turligood, a sort of
Oroveso to the Druidical chorus, was a muscular spinster, fierce and
forty, sporting steel spectacles, a frizette of the most scrupulous
honesty, and a towering comb which formed what the landscape-gardeners
call "an object" in the distance. Next this commanding lady, with fat
hands sprawled upon the table, sat Mrs. Colfodder, widow, according to
the flesh, of a respectable Foxden grocer. By later spiritual
communications, however, it appeared that matters stood very
differently; for no sooner had the departed Colfodder looked about him a
little in the world to come than he proceeded to contract marriage with
Queen Elizabeth of England, thereby leaving his mortal relict quite free
to receive the addresses of the late Lord Byron, whose proposals were of
the most honorable as well as amatory character. Miss Branly, by far the
most pleasing of the lady-patronesses, was a fragile, stove-dried
mantua-maker,--and, truly, it seemed something like poetic justice to
recompense her depressed existence with the satisfactions of a material
heaven full of marryings and givings in marriage.
"Will Sir Joseph tip for us again?" inquired Miss Turligood, with her
eyes fixed upon a crack in the mahogany table. "Will he? Will he not?
Will he?"
Sir Joseph vouchsafed no answer.
"Hark! wasn't that a rap?" cried Stellato, in a husky whisper.
Here every one pricked an ear towards the table.
"Doctor Franklin, is that you?"
"The Doctor promised to be present to give a scientific and
philosophical view of these communications," parenthesized the
interrogator.
"Doctor Franklin, is that _you_?"
A faint creaking is audible.
"Byron's sign, as I'm a living woman!" ejaculated the Widow Colfodder.
"Her spiritual partner and guardian-angel," explained Miss
Turligood,--and this for my satisfaction as the last-comer.