We dread the unseen. Fear is always enervating; sometimes even deadly.
Who has not fearsomely anticipated that which never came and wasted
valuable energy and time in building bridges none are ever to cross?
The surgical patient actually suffers more at sight of somber
white-clad nurses, and the thought of the operation, than he does from
the ordeal itself. It may be that we subconsciously dread the helpless
state of unconsciousness into which the anæsthetic plunges us, and
hesitate at a trip, no matter how short, into death's borderland,
preferring to keep our own hands as long as possible on the helm of
the ship of life.
I wonder why we become terror-stricken at the thought of ghosts. The
untutored child needs only a hint to make him shy at the dark; and a
lad has to be pretty large before he can walk far at night without
once in a while looking behind him, just to be certain there is
nothing following.
Thus spirits, spooks, bogies, wraiths, and other uncanny apparitions
are unintentional inheritances of the race; a race that knows little
more about the impending and impinging unseen than did the Saxon
fathers who gave us our spooky speech.
I once had an experience which grows in interest as the years pass by.
I had no fear or thought of fear that night, and the scenes of the
evening were absolutely unannounced; they entered upon the sleety
stage for whose violent acts I held no program.
One afternoon I was to go to one of my appointments, a mining town in
Utah. In order to relieve home cares I took with me my four-year-old
son, who thus would get some novel entertainment as well. To the buggy
I hitched Jenny, the strawberry-roan cayuse, and started for the
distant point. It was a little stormy all the way, and by the time we
had well begun the service it had thickened so that a hard snow was
setting in. It was dead in the north and continued with such strength
that soon there appeared no slant to the falling columns. By the time
church was dismissed the blizzard was on in full force, and the roads
were already so filled with the new drifts that to return with the
buggy was hardly thinkable. I borrowed a saddle, and leaving the
little lad with friends, started for home, where I was under
appointment to preach that evening. My way lay in the north, in the
very teeth of the raging storm. With head tucked down, I trusted the
reins to Jenny, who had never disappointed me in many a mountain trip,
but I had not gone far until I found the storm was at my back. Peering
sharply through the fast falling darkness, I discovered that the
mountains were on my left instead of on my right, as they should have
been. Jenny had turned tail to the storm. Feeling herself unwilling to
face the arctic onset, she was retreating.
Only the dire necessity of the occasion made me compel her to face the
torturing attack of the icy shafts that were hurling themselves on us
like steel points.
We were forced, Jenny and I, to abandon the only road, now drift-filled,
and take an unbroken way through the sagebrush, junipers, buckbrush,
and other tangled chaparral, where there was no trail at all, and
farther to the right, that I might keep an eye on the mountains and not
get turned around again. I felt the force of Cardinal Newman's
immortal hymn,
... amid the encircling gloom,
Lead thou me on!
The night is dark and I am far from home;
Lead thou me on!
We had not gone far until I began to hear the sweetest music. I could
not imagine from whence it fell, as I knew there was not a human home
in all that plain between the two settlements. Then I heard personal
conversation; in fact, the night was full of pleasant travelers. The
awful storm seemed not to affect them in the least. They seemed to
have an open road too, while we were plunging through deep snowdrifts,
my feet already dragging along their tops.
When the first carriage load came up I saw it was only a desert
juniper. The boreal gale sweeping through its shivering branches made
converse in the music of the wild, Jenny and I being the only
seat-holders in that grand opera. Soon another caravan of belated
folks drove up; but it was only a load of hay that had been
over-tipped. Others came, but they were only bushes or some inanimate
object. There was little life out on that perishing night.
After hours of fearsome and benumbing travel, Jenny stumbled with me
into the little home town. A good feed of oats and a warm shelter
doubtless ended the story happily for her. But for me--the ghost of
the desert and the wraith of the blizzard had become real. They spoke
to me that night and I understood.