PIN-HOLES IN THE CURTAIN.
“The reader will here be led into the great, ill-famed land of the
marvellous.”
_Ennemoser._
The conversation between the English traveller and the Virginia Doctor
of Divinity was brought to a close, and Peek jumped down from the table
on which he had been listening, refreshed and inspired by the eloquent
words he had taken in.
A week afterwards he made a second attempt to escape from bondage. He
was caught and sold to Mr. Carberry Ratcliff, who had an estate on the
Red River. Here, failing in obedience to an atrocious order, he received
a punishment, the scars of which always remained to show the degree of
its barbarity. He was soon after sent to Texas, where he became the
slave of Mr. Barnwell.
Here he was at first put to the roughest work in the cotton-field. It
tasked all his ingenuity to slight or dodge it. Luckily for him, about
the time of his arrival he found an opportunity to make profitable use
of the ecclesiastical knowledge he had derived from the Rev. Messrs.
Bloom and Palmer.
Braxton, the overseer, had been frightened into a concern for his soul.
He had a heart-complaint which the doctor told him might carry him off
any day in a flash. A travelling preacher completed the work of terror
by satisfying him he was in a fair way of being damned. The prospect did
not seem cheerful to Braxton. He had found exhilaration and comfort in
whipping intractable niggers. The amusement now began to pall. Besides,
the doctor had told him to shun excitement.
In this state of things, enter Mr. Peculiar Institution. That gentleman
soon learnt what was the matter; and he contrived that the overseer,
seemingly by accident, should overhear him at prayers. Braxton had heard
praying, but never any that had the unction of Peek’s. From that time
forth Peek had him completely under his control.
Peek did not abuse his authority. He ruled wisely, though despotically.
At last the accidental encounter with his dying mother introduced a new
world of thoughts and emotions. Short as was his opportunity for
acquaintance with her, such a wealth of tenderness and love as she
lavished upon him developed a hitherto inactive and undreamed-of force
in his soul. The affectional part of his nature was touched. She told
him of the delight his father used to take in playing with him, an
infant; and when he thought of that father’s fate, shot down for
resisting the lash, he felt as if he could tear the first upholder of
slavery he might meet limb from limb, in his rage.
The mother died, and then all seemed worthless and insipid to Peek.
Having seen how little heed was paid to the feelings of slaves in
separating those of opposite sex who had become attached to each other,
he early in life resolved to shun all sexual intimacies, till he should
be free. He saw that in slavery the distinction between licit and
illicit connections was a playful mockery. The thought of being the
father of a slave was horrible to him; and neither threats of the lash
nor coaxings from masters and overseers could induce him to enter into
those temporary alliances which Mr. Herbert used pleasantly to call “the
holy bonds of matrimony.” His resolution grew to be a passion stronger
even than desire.
Thus the affections were undeveloped in him till he encountered his
mother. He knew of no relative on earth, after her, to love,—no one to
be loved by. Life stretched before him flat, dull, and unprofitable; and
death,—what was that but the plunge into nothingness?
True, Mr. Herbert and the clergyman who drank claret with Mr. Herbert
after the latter had shot down Big Sam talked of a life beyond the
grave; but could such humbugs as they were be believed? Could the
stories be trustworthy, which were based mainly on the truth of a book
which all the preachers (so he supposed) declared was the all-sufficient
authority for slavery? Well might Peek distrust the promise that was
said to rest only on writings that were made to supply the apology of
injustice and bloody wrong!
While in this state of mind, he heard of Corinna, the quadroon girl.
Unattractive in person, slow of apprehension, and rarely uttering a
word, she had hitherto excited only his pity. But now she fell into
trances during which she seemed to be a new and entirely different
being. At his first interview with her when she fell into one of these
inexplicable states, she seized his hand, and imitating the look,
actions, and very tone of his dying mother, poured forth such a flood of
exhortations, comfortings, warnings, and encouragements, that he was
bewildered and confounded.
What could it all mean? The power that spoke through Corinna claimed to
be his mother, and seemed to identify itself, as far as revelations to
the understanding could go. It recalled the little incidents that had
passed between them in the presence of no other witness. It pierced to
his inmost secrets,—secrets which he well knew he had communicated to no
human being.
And yet Peek saw upon reflection that, though a preternatural faculty
was plainly at work,—a faculty that took possession of his mind as a
photographer does of all the stones, flaws, and stains in the wall of a
building,—there was no sufficient identification of that faculty with
the individual he knew as his mother. Little that might not already have
been in his own mind, long hidden, perhaps, and forgotten, was revealed
to him.
He also concluded that the intelligence, whatever it might be, was a
fallible one, and that it would be folly to give up to its guidance his
own free judgment.
He renewed his interviews daily as long as the quadroon girl lived.
Skeptical, cautious, and meditative, he must test all these phenomena
over and over again. And he did test them. He established conditions. He
made records on the spot. He removed all possibilities of collusion and
deception. And still the same phenomena!
Nor were they confined to the imperfect wonders of clairvoyance and
prophecy. Once in the broad daylight, when he was alone with the invalid
girl in her hut, and no other human being within a distance of a quarter
of a mile, she was lifted horizontally before his eyes into the air, and
kept there swaying about at least a third of a minute, while the drapery
of her dress clung to her person as if held by an invisible hand.[5]
A bandore—a stringed musical instrument the name of which has been
converted by the negroes into _banjo_—hung on a nail in the wall. One
moonlight evening, when no third person was present, this African lute
was detached by some invisible force and carried by it through the room
from one end to the other! It would touch Peek on the head, then float
away through the air, visible to sight, and sending forth from its
chords, smitten by no mortal fingers, delectable strains. The same
invisible power would tune the instrument, tightening the strings and
trying them with a delicate skill; and then it would hang the banjo on
its nail.
After this improvised concert, Peek felt all at once a warm living hand
upon his forehead, first lovingly patting it and then passing round his
cheek, under his chin, and up on the other side of his face. He grasped
the hand, and it returned his pressure. It was a hand much larger than
Corinna’s, and she lay on her back several feet from him, too far to
touch him with any part of her person. Plainly in the moonlight he could
see it,—a perfect hand, resembling his mother’s! It shaded off into
vacuity above the wrist, and, even while he held it solid and
flesh-like, melted all at once, like an impalpable ether, in his
grasp.[6]
These phenomena, with continual variations, were repeated day after day
and night after night. Flowers would drop from the ceiling into his
hands, delicious odors of fruits would diffuse themselves through the
room. A music like that of the Swiss bell-ringers would break upon the
silence, continuing for a minute or more. A pen would start up from the
table and write an intelligible sentence. A castanet would be played on
and dashed about furiously, as if by some invisible Bacchante. A
clatter, as of the hammering of a hundred carpenters, would suddenly
make itself heard. A voice would speak intelligible sentences, sometimes
using a tin trumpet for the purpose. Articles of furniture would pass
about the room and cross each other with a swiftness and precision that
no mortal could imitate. The noise of dancers, using their feet, and
keeping time, would be heard on the floor.
Once Corinna asked him to leave his watch with her. He did so. When he
was several rods from the house she called to him, “You are sure you
haven’t your watch?” “Yes, sure,” replied Peek. He hurried home, a
distance of two miles, without meeting a human being. On undressing to
go to bed, he found his watch in his vest pocket.
These physical thaumaturgies produced upon Peek a more astounding effect
than all the evidences of mind-reading and clairvoyance. In the
communications made to him by the “power,” there was generally something
unsatisfying or incomplete. He would, for instance, think of some
departed friend,—a white man, perhaps,—and, without uttering or writing
a word, would desire some manifestation from that friend. Immediately
Corinna would strip from her arm the drapery, and show on her skin,
written in clear crimson letters, some brief message signed by the right
name. And then the supposed bearer of that name (speaking through
Corinna) would correctly recall incidents of his acquaintance with
Peek.[7]
Thus much was amazing and satisfactory; but when Peek analyzed it all in
thought, he found that no sufficient proof of identification had been
given. A “power,” able to probe his own mind, might get from it all that
was spoken relative to the individual claiming identity; might even know
how to imitate that individual’s handwriting. Peek concluded that one
must be himself in a spiritual state in order to identify a spirit. The
so-called “communications” he found, for the most part, monotonous. They
were, some of them, above Corinna’s capacity, but not above his own.
Erroneous answers were not unfrequently given, especially in reply to
questions upon matters of worldly concern. He was repeatedly told of
places where he could find silver and gold, and never truly.
He concluded that to surrender one’s faith implicitly to the word of a
spirit _out_ of the flesh, either on moral or on secular questions, was
about as unwise as it would be to give one’s self up to the control of a
spirit _in_ the flesh,—a mere mortal like himself. He was satisfied by
his experience that it was not in the power of spirits to impair his own
freedom of will and independence of thought, so long as he exercised
them manfully. And this assurance was to his mind not only a guaranty of
his own spiritual relationship, but it pointed to a supreme, omniscient
Spirit, the gracious Father of all. If the words that came through
Corinna had proved, in every instance, infallible, what would Peek have
become but a passive, unreasoning recipient, as sluggish in thought as
Corinna herself!
We have said that the “communications” were generally on a level with
Peek’s own mind. There was once an exception. Said a very learned spirit
(learned, as to him it seemed) one night, speaking through Corinna:—
“Attend, even if you do not understand all that I may utter. The great
purpose of creation is to exercise and develop independent, individual
thought, and through that, a will in harmony with the Supreme Wisdom.
Men are subjected to the discipline of the earth-sphere, not to be happy
there, but to qualify themselves for happiness,—to deserve happiness.
“What would all created wonders be without thought to appreciate and
admire them? Study is worship. Admiration is worship. Of what account
would be the starry heavens, if there were not _mind_ to study and to
wonder at creation, and thus to fit itself for adoration of the Creator?
“My friend Lessing, when he was on your earth, once said, that, if God
would _give_ him truth, he would decline the gift, and prefer the labor
of seeking it for himself. But most men are mentally so inert, they
would rather believe than examine; and so they flatter themselves that
their loose, unreasoning acquiescence is a saving belief. Pernicious
error! All the mistakes and transgressions of men arise either from
feeble, imperfect thinking, or from not thinking at all.
“The heart is much,—is principal; but men must not hope to rise until
they do their own thinking. They cannot think by proxy. They must
exercise the mind on all that pertains to their moral and mental growth.
You may perhaps sometimes wish that you too, like this poor, torpid,
parasitical creature, Corinna, might be a medium for outside spirits to
influence and speak through. But beware! You know not what you wish.
Learn to prize your individuality. The wisdom Corinna may utter does not
become hers by appropriation. In her mind it falls on barren soil.
“We all are more or less mediums; but the innocent man is he who resists
and overcomes temptation, not he who never felt its power; and the wise
man is he who, at once recipient and repellent, seeks to appropriate and
assimilate with his being whatever of good he can get from all the
instrumentalities of nature, divine and human, angelic and demoniac.”
Peek derived an indefinable but awakening impression from these words,
and asked, “Is the Bible true?”
The reply was: “It is true only to him who construes it aright. If you
find in it the justification of American slavery, then to you it is not
true. All the theologies which would impose, as essentials of faith,
speculative dogmas or historical declarations which do not pertain to
the practice of the highest human morality and goodness, as taught in
the words and the example of Christ, are, in this respect at least,
irreverent, mischievous, and untrue.”
“How do I know,” asked Peek, “that you are not a devil?”
“I am aware of no way,” was the reply, “by which, in your present state,
you can know absolutely that I am not a devil,—even Beelzebub, the
prince of devils. Each man’s measure of truth must be the reason God has
given him. But of this you may rest assured: it is a great point gained
to be able to believe really even in a devil. Given a devil, you will
one day work yourself so far into the light as to believe in an angel.”
“Is there a God?” asked the slave.
“God is,” said the spirit, “and says to thee, as once to Pascal, ‘=Be
consoled! Thou wouldst not seek me, if thou hadst not found me.=’”
These were almost the only words Peek ever received through Corinna that
struck him by their superiority to what he himself could have imagined;
and he was impressed by them accordingly. Though they were above his
comprehension at the moment, he thought he might grow up to them, and he
caused them to be repeated slowly while he wrote them down.
Corinna died, and Peek kept on thinking.
What rapture in thought now! What a new meaning in life! What a new
universe for the heart was there in love! Henceforth the burden and the
mystery of “all this unintelligible world” was lightened if not
dissolved; for death was but the step to a higher plane of life. The
old, trite emblem of the chrysalis was no mere barren fancy. Continuous
life was now to his mind a _certainty_; arrived at, too, by the
deductions of experience, sense, and reason, as well as intimated by the
eager thirst of the heart.
The process by which he made the phenomena he had witnessed conduce to
this conclusion was briefly this. An invisible, intelligent _force_ had
lifted heavy articles before his eyes, played on musical instruments,
written sentences, and spoken words. This _force_ claimed to be a human
spirit in a human form, of tissues too fine to be visible to our grosser
senses. It could pass, like heat and electricity, through what might
seem material impediments. It had a plastic power to reincarnate itself
at will, and imitate human forms and colors, under certain
circumstances, and it gave partial proof of this by showing a hand, an
arm, or a foot undistinguishable from one of flesh and blood. On one
occasion the human form entire had been displayed, been touched, and had
then dissolved into invisibility and intangibility before him.
Now he must either take the word of this intelligent “force,” that it
was an independent spiritual entity, or he must account for its acts by
some other supposition. The “force,” in its communications to his mind,
had shown it was not infallible; it had erred in some of its
predictions, although in others it had been wonderfully correct. If its
explanation of itself was untrue,—if no outside intelligent force were
operating,—the other supposition was, that the phenomena were a
proceeding either from himself, the spectator, or from Corinna. And
here, without knowing it, Peek found himself speculating on the theory
of Count Gasparin,[8] who has had the candor to brave the laugh of
modern science (a very different thing from _scientia_) by recounting as
facts what Professor Faraday and our Cambridge _savans_ denounce as
impositions or delusions.
Peek was therefore reduced to these two explanations: either the “force”
was a spirit (call it, if you please, an outside power), as it claimed
to be, or it was a faculty unconsciously exerted by the mortals present.
In either case, it supplied an assurance of spirit and immortality; for
it might fairly be presumed that such wonderful powers would not be
wrapt up in the human organism except for a purpose; and that purpose,
what could it be but the future development of those powers under
suitable conditions? So either of Peek’s hypotheses led to the same
precious and ineffable conviction of continuous life,—of the soul’s
immortality!
On one occasion a Northern Professor, who had given his days to the
positive sciences, and who believed in matter and motion, and nothing
else, passed a week, while visiting the South for his health, with his
old friend and classmate, Mr. Barnwell; and Peek overheard the following
conversation.
“How do you get rid of all this testimony on the subject?” asked Mr.
Barnwell.
“Stuff and nonsense!” exclaimed the Professor. “That a poor benighted
nigger should believe this trash isn’t surprising. That poets, like
Willis and Mrs. Browning, should give in to it may be tolerated, for
they are privileged. In them the imaginative faculty is irregularly
developed. But that sane and intelligent white men like Edmonds, and
Tallmadge, and Bowditch, and Brownson, and Bishop Clark of Rhode Island,
and Howitt, and Chambers, and Coleman, and Dr. Gray, and Wilkinson, and
Mountford, and Robert Dale Owen, should gravely swallow these idiotic
stories, is lamentable indeed. The spectacle becomes humiliating, and I
sigh, ‘Poor human nature!’”
“But Peek is far from being a benighted nigger,” replied Barnwell; “he
can read and write as well as you can; he is the best shot in the
county; he is a good mechanic; for a time he waited on one of the great
jugglers at the St. Charles; he can explain or cleverly imitate all the
tricks of all the conjurers; he is not a man to be humbugged, especially
by a poor sick girl in a hut with no cellar, no apparatus, no rooms
where any coadjutor could hide. It has been the greatest puzzle of my
life to know how to explain Peek’s stories.”
“Half that is extraordinary in them,” said the Professor, “is probably a
lie, and the other half is delusion. Not one man in fifty is competent
to test such occurrences. Men’s senses have not been scientifically
trained; their love of the marvellous blinds them to the simplest
solutions of a mystery. _How to observe_ is one of the most difficult of
arts; and one must undergo rigid scientific culture in the practical
branches before he can observe properly.”
“Under your theory, Professor, ninety-eight men out of every hundred
ought to be excluded as witnesses from our courts of justice. It strikes
me that a fellow like Peek—with his senses always in good working trim,
who never misses his aim, who can hit a mark by moonlight at forty
paces, and shoot a bird on the wing in bright noonday, who can detect a
tread or a flutter of wings when to your ear all is silence—is as
competent to see straight and judge of sights and sounds as any blinkard
from a college, even though he wear spectacles and call himself
professor of mathematics. Remember, Peek is not a superstitious nigger.
He will feel personally obliged to any ghost who will show himself. He
shrinks from no haunted room, no solitude, no darkness.”
“Truly, Horace, you speak as if you half believed these absurdities.”
“No,—I wish I could. Peek once said to me, that he wouldn’t have
believed these things on _my_ testimony, and couldn’t expect me to
believe them on _his_.”
“Our business,” said the Professor, “is with the life before us. I agree
with Comte, that we ought to confine ourselves to positive, demonstrable
facts; with Humboldt, that ‘there is not much to boast of after our
dissolution,’ and that ‘the blue regions on the other side of the
grave’[9] are probably a poet’s dream. Let us not trouble ourselves
about the inexplicable or the uncertain.”
“But you do not consider, Professor, that Peek’s facts _are_ positive to
his experience. Besides, to say, with Comte, that a fact is
inexplicable, and that we can’t go beyond it, is not to demonstrate that
the fact has its cause in itself; it is merely to confess the mystery of
a cause unknown.”[10]
“Well, Horace, I’m sleepy, and must retire. I’ll find an opportunity to
cross-examine Peek before I go, and you shall see how he will contradict
and stultify himself.”
Before the opportunity was found, the Professor had _passed on_. Less
modest than Rabelais was in his last moments, he did not condescend to
say, “I go to inquire into a great possibility.” The physician in
attendance, who was a young man, and had recently “experienced
religion,” asked the Professor if he had found the Lord Jesus. To which
the Professor, making a wry face, replied, “Jargon!” “Have you no regard
for your soul?” asked the well-meaning doctor. “Can you prove to me,
young man, that I _have_ a soul?” returned the Professor, trying to
raise himself on his pillow, in an argumentative posture. “Don’t you
believe in a future state?” asked the doctor. “I believe what can be
proved,” said the Professor; “and there are two things, and only two,
that can be proved,—though Berkeley thinks we can’t prove even
those,—matter and motion.[11] All phenomena are reducible to matter and
motion,—matter and motion,—matter and mo-o-o—”
The effort was too much for the moribund Professor. He did not complete
the utterance of his formula, at least on this side of the great
curtain. Probably when he awoke in the next life, conscious of his
identity, he felt very much in the mood of that other man of science,
who, on being told that the microscope would confute an elaborate theory
he had raised, refused to look through the impertinent instrument.
For several months Peek retained his place under Braxton. But even
overseers, whip in hand, cannot frighten off Death. Braxton disappeared
through the common portal. His successor, Hawks, had a theory that the
true mode of managing niggers was to overawe them by extreme severity at
the start, and then taper off into clemency. He had been lord of the
lash a week or two, when he was asked by Mr. Barnwell how he got along
with Peek.
“Capitally!” replied Hawks. “I took care to put him through his paces at
our first meeting,—took the starch right out of him. He’d score his own
mother now if I told him to. He’s a thorough nigger—is Peek. A nigger
must fear a white man before he can like him. Peek would go through fire
and water for me now. He has behaved so well, I have given him a pass to
visit his sister at Carter’s.”
“I never knew before that Peek had a sister,” said Barnwell.
Peek did not come back from that visit.