Mrs. Winslow, under the Influence of "Spirits" of an earthly
Order, becomes romantic, religious, and poetical.-- A
Trance.-- Detective Bristol also proves a Poet.-- A Drama
to be written.
When the evening came and Mrs. Winslow came with it, she was observed to
be in a high state of nervous and vinous excitement, and at such times
she contrived to inaugurate a series of actions which proved not only
interesting, but illustrative of her strange character.
She declared to Bristol and Fox that the Lord was hardening Lyon's heart
as in the olden times the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, so that he
should rush upon his fated disgrace as the Egyptian king rushed upon his
fate while forcing the children of Israel into deliverance, and
destruction upon himself; and like the unrelenting Mrs. Clennam in
"Little Dorrit," had at command any number of scriptural parallels to
prove the righteousness of her sin. This sort of blasphemy is the most
pitiable imaginable, and to hear the woman in her semi-intoxicated,
semi-crazed condition, mingling her vile catch-words with scraps of
spiritualistic sayings, snatches of holy songs, couplets of roystering
ballads, and crowning the hideousness of the whole with countless Bible
quotations, was to be in the presence of supreme garrulousness,
temperamental religious frenzy, and superstitious vileness.
It appeared that after she had escaped from the excitement she had
created in the Arcade, she had been driven to the apartments of every
clairvoyant of note in the city and had a "sitting" with each. In her
excited condition, and being noted for having plenty of money, it was
both easy to rob her and secure what was uppermost in her mind.
Consequently, it was revealed to her by every medium that Lyon would
settle with her for a large sum of money.
One medium averred that in her vision Lyon was seen, as it were, bending
a suppliant at her feet, and, at the last moment, admiring her character
as much as fearing the nature of the testimony he knew she could bring
against him, he declared his love for her and begged that they might be
married in open court.
Another depicted the sorrows she would be obliged to endure before her
affairs culminated. She would be watched, annoyed, harassed; but her way
would be well watched by the spirit-forms which were evidently floating
around promiscuously to protect the pests of society; and, whether she
got the man or not, she should share his fortune. This much could be
surely promised.
Another was wonderfully favored with divine "spirit light" upon the
subject--so favored, indeed, that time without number her other-life had
insensibly and unconsciously wandered away in search of correct
information regarding the result of the Winslow-Lyon suit, and, without
her volition or bidding, it had delved into the mysteries for her
suffering sister. She could assure her suffering sister, the clairvoyant
said, that Lyon was spiritually at her feet. All the trouble had arisen
between them from Mrs. Winslow's standing upon a higher spiritual plane
than Mr. Lyon. He, as was natural to man, had more of the sensual
element beclouding his spirit-life. Now, pleaded the clairvoyant,
couldn't she adjust an average between them? She was certain--yes, the
spirits, who never lie, had positively revealed to her that all that was
needed was some one to properly discover each of these affinities to the
other. In any case, all would eventually be well, and there was peace,
prosperity, and a large amount of money in waiting for her.
This sort of absurdity was related by Mrs. Winslow to an unlimited
extent that evening, as the three sipped the liquor she had provided,
and she insisted with great fervor that all these revelations strongly
corroborated the light she herself had received on the same subject.
As a long pause ensued after one of these heated asseverations, Bristol
ventured to ask how she had been enlightened concerning the matter.
Raising her flushed face towards the ceiling, then lifting her right arm
above her head and holding it there for a moment, she allowed it to
slowly descend with a coiling, serpentine motion, when she burst into a
sudden ecstasy of speech, movement and feature, and partly as in answer
to the inquiry, and partly as if struck with a swift and irresistible
inspiration, she said in a low, unearthly voice, and with weird effect:
"Yes, yes, I hear your angel voices calling; I see your beautiful forms;
I feel your tender fingers touching my aching head; I am listening to
your sweet, soft whispers. Ah! what is it you say?--yes, yes, yes! You
_are_ with me. You will watch over and guard me. You will ward off the
evil influences that surround me, and despite the darkness which
envelops me, even as the glorious sun leaps from his couch of crimson
and with his burnished lances drives the grim hosts of shadows before
him with the speed of the light!--What! are you now leaving?"
Here Mrs. Winslow gasped and kicked with her pretty feet alarmingly.
"What--what is that?--that rosy, effulgent light that fills all space?
Ah, yes! I see they beckon for me to look up, to not be cast down or
despair. I _will_ look up. See! in their hands are long, feathery wands
with which they sweep the flaming sky, while across its burnished arc I
see, yes, I see in letters of purple that oft-recurring
legend--_Twenty-five thousand dollars!_"
Now, although I am not arguing this question of Spiritualism, and am
only giving to the public the history so far as I dare of an
extraordinary woman and practical Spiritualist, I cannot resist asking
the question, or putting forward the theory, which, during the progress
of this case particularly, and a thousand times before and since in a
general way, has irresistibly forced itself into my mind. I give it in
all fairness, I am sure, and only with a view that it may dispel
certain feelings of squeamishness with which a good many people approach
the subject to investigate it. I may be accused of presenting it with
too little delicacy; but the public must recollect that the nature of my
business compels me _to get at the truth_ of things, and to do that,
matters must in a majority of cases be handled without gloves. This is
my only excuse, and perhaps it may be a good defence; but in any event
this is the question: Has there ever been a so-called Spiritual
"manifestation" that has not subsequently been explained as trickery by
persons more credible of belief than its medium or originator? After
that has been answered in the affirmative, for it can be answered in no
other way, all there is left of this Spiritualistic structure is, how
account for such exhibitions as that given by Mrs. Winslow and those
given by others of her craft, even granting their personal purity, which
is undoubtedly exceptional?
This is the question which has oftenest come into my mind in my
necessarily almost constant study of these people, and the answers,
though continually varying, have all eventually forced upon me the
conviction that this religion, as it is sacrilegiously called, only
takes hold of people of abnormal or diseased temperaments--people
diseased in mind, in morals, in body, or in all; and if that is true, as
I sincerely believe it to be, the dignifying of a disease or infirmity
as a religion is simply an absurdity too foolish for even ridicule.
She sat rigid as a church-spire for a few moments, as if the sight of
so much money, even if only in purple letters upon a burnished sky, had
transfixed her, and then, after a little hysterical struggling, became
as limp as a camp-meeting tent after a thunder-storm; and after a few
passes of her long, white and deft fingers over her eyes in a scared
way, asked, "Oh, gentlemen, where--where am I?"
"On the boundaries of the spirit-land," gravely replied Bristol, pushing
the bottle of liquor to the side of the table.
The woman was certainly exhausted, for she had worked herself into such
a state mentally--precisely the same as in all similar demonstrations,
whether visions are claimed to be seen, or not--that she was completely
enervated physically, and said in a really grateful tone, "Thank you,
Mr. Bristol," and, pouring out a large portion of liquor, tossed it off
at one gulp, like a well-practised bar-room toper.
"Yes, yes," she continued languidly, "I have a certain promise of
eventually being victorious. When the good spirits are with one, there's
no cause for fear."
"Not the slightest," affirmed Fox sympathetically.
"But it seems," replied Mrs. Winslow in a discouraged, desolate tone,
"as though everybody's hand is raised against me--as though the dreary
days pass so slowly--and that I haven't a true friend in the world!"
"My dear Mrs. Winslow," interrupted Bristol in a calm, fatherly, even
affectionate tone, "that melancholy's all very fine; but we are your
friends, and we will stand by you through thick and thin to the end of
the suit. A few fast friends, you know, are better than a thousand
sunny-weather friends."
"Oh, yes; oh, yes," returned the woman in a tone of voice that said, "I
can't argue this, but I somehow _know_ you are both betraying me," and
then, closing her eyes, and clasping her hands tightly together, sang in
a weird contralto voice, cracked and unsteady from her excitement and
exhaustion, some stanza of an evidently religious nature, the burden of
which was:
"I am weary, weary waiting
While the shadows deeper fall;
I am weary, weary waiting
For some holy voice's call!"
Undoubtedly the song, though desecrated by the singer, the place, and
the occasion, was a wailing plaint from the depths of the woman's soul,
for moments of utter desolation and absolute remorse come to even such
as she.
"Now," said Bristol, becoming suddenly interested, "I'm something of a
poet myself. When the seat of government was moved from Quebec to
Ottawa, I constructed a lampoon on the government that set all Canada
awhirl. Really, Mrs. Winslow, I'm surprised at your poetical nature."
"Poetical nature?" repeated the woman excitedly. "Why! that is what Lyon
loved in me most. My trance-sittings are wonderful exhibitions of
poetical power. In that state I can compose poems of great length and
power."
The gentlemen of course seemed incredulous at this statement, and
challenged her to a test of her poetical trance-power, which she
instantly accepted, the wager being a quart of the best brandy that
could be had in the city of Rochester.
Putting herself in position, she asked: "What subject?" Bristol replied,
"Lyon," when she struggled a little in her chair, kicked the floor a
little with her heels, rubbed up her eyes, gasped, and after a moment of
rest began to incant in a kind of monotone tenor:
"Oh, Lyon, Lyon! don't you run;
The suit's begun; we'll have our fun
Before we're done. I'll tell your son
That I have won, although you shun
Your darling one!"
"Oh, Lyon, pray, why speed away?
To fight a woman is but play.
Although you're old, and bald, and gray,
Do right by your Amanda J.--
You'll soon be clay!"
Amanda J. Winslow, for this was the woman's assumed name in full, might
have continued in this divine strain for an indefinite period, had not
the operatives burst into loud and prolonged laughter at her ludicrous
appearance, which so disgusted the woman that, though communicating with
celestial spheres, as she assumed to be, and undoubtedly was doing as
much as any of her craft ever did, she jumped up with a bound, savagely
told the men they were a brace of fools, and with a lively remark or
two, which had something very like an oath in it, went to bed, leaving
the men to finish the bottle and the poetry as they saw fit.
Mrs. Winslow was a thorough church-goer, and distributed the favor of
her attendance among the orthodox churches and the "meetings" of the
members of her own faith, quite fairly--perhaps, as was natural, giving
the Washington Hall Sunday evening Spiritualistic lectures a slight
preference; and soon after the Arcade affair, which had launched her
into poetry, she returned to the rooms one Sunday evening, declaring
that all her evil spirits had left her, and that her former passionate
love for Lyon had also departed, her only desire now being for his
money.
To show how thoroughly she had been dispossessed of her evil spirits,
she remarked that she now thoroughly hated Lyon, but it would not do to
let this appear on trial, or she would lose the sympathy of the jury.
Every effort should now be bent towards compelling him to divide his
wealth with her, whom he had so deeply wronged. There should be no
compromise; she would not even be led to the altar by him now. She would
have from him what would most annoy him, and that was his money.
Having resolved on this, the darkness that surrounded her was dispelled
and the spirits of light rallied as a sort of standing army; and in this
beneficent condition she wished to either go into the country to
recuperate for a few weeks, or seek the retirement of Fox's room and
there expend her superfluous brain and spirit power upon a play to be
entitled "His Breach of Promise." To this end she proposed removing the
elegant furnishings of her apartments and storing them in a spare room,
giving out to callers that she was absent from the city, and then, after
having secured Fox's room, she would be able to burn the midnight oil
unmolested so long as her inspiration might continue.
She also favored Fox and Bristol with a sketch of the play, which was to
be a sort of spectacular comedy-drama, which, according to the lady's
description, would contain certainly seven acts of five scenes each, and
would be preceded by a prologue which would play at least an hour; in
fact, it seemed that the great play "His Breach of Promise" was to be
constructed on the Chinese plan, to be continued indefinitely, and
admission only to be secured in the form of course tickets. Outside of
these great aids to the popularity of the play, it was to have the
additional startling and novel attractions of representations of her
first meeting with Lyon, his regret because she was married, his copious
tears whenever in her presence, his securing her divorce, the death of
Lyon's wife, and every manner of pathetic and ludicrous incident
connected with the case; how they each wooed and won the other,
including a grand transformation scene typical of Lyon's subsequent
treachery, and her reward of virtue in a fifty thousand dollar verdict
for damages.