_OR ORIGINAL SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATIONS_
When I first saw the table, dingy and dusty, in the furthest corner
of the old hopper-shaped garret, and set out with broken, be-crusted
old purple vials and flasks, and a ghostly, dismantled old quarto, it
seemed just such a necromantic little old table as might have belonged
to Friar Bacon. Two plain features it had, significant of conjurations
and charms--the circle and tripod; the slab being round, supported by
a twisted little pillar, which, about a foot from the bottom, sprawled
out into three crooked legs, terminating in three cloven feet. A very
satanic-looking little old table, indeed.
In order to convey a better idea of it, some account may as well be
given of the place it came from. A very old garret of a very old house
in an old-fashioned quarter of one of the oldest towns in America.
This garret had been closed for years. It was thought to be haunted;
a rumor, I confess, which, however absurd (in my opinion), I did not,
at the time of purchasing, very vehemently contradict; since, not
improbably, it tended to place the property the more conveniently
within my means.
It was, therefore, from no dread of the reputed goblins aloft, that,
for five years after first taking up my residence in the house, I
never entered the garret. There was no special inducement. The roof
was well slated, and thoroughly tight. The company that insured the
house, waived all visitation of the garret; why, then, should the
owner be over-anxious about it?--particularly, as he had no use for
it, the house having ample room below. Then the key of the stair-door
leading to it was lost. The lock was a huge old-fashioned one. To
open it, a smith would have to be called; an unnecessary trouble, I
thought. Besides, though I had taken some care to keep my two daughters
in ignorance of the rumor above-mentioned, still, they had, by some
means, got an inkling of it, and were well enough pleased to see the
entrance to the haunted ground closed. It might have remained so for a
still longer time, had it not been for my accidentally discovering, in
a corner of our glen-like, old, terraced garden, a large and curious
key, very old and rusty, which I at once concluded must belong to the
garret-door--a supposition which, upon trial, proved correct. Now, the
possession of a key to anything, at once provokes a desire to unlock
and explore; and this, too, from a mere instinct of gratification,
irrespective of any particular benefit to accrue.
Behold me, then, turning the rusty old key, and going up, alone, into
the haunted garret. It embraced the entire area of the mansion. Its
ceiling was formed by the roof, showing the rafters and boards on
which the slates were laid. The roof shedding the water four ways from
a high point in the centre, the space beneath was much like that of
a general's marquee--only midway broken by a labyrinth of timbers,
for braces, from which waved innumerable cobwebs, that, of a summer's
noon, shone like Bagdad tissues and gauzes. On every hand, some strange
insect was seen, flying, or running, or creeping, on rafter and floor.
Under the apex of the roof was a rude, narrow, decrepit step-ladder,
something like a Gothic pulpit-stairway, leading to a pulpit-like
platform, from which a still narrower ladder--a sort of Jacob's
ladder--led somewhat higher to the lofty scuttle. The slide of this
scuttle was about two feet square, all in one piece, furnishing a
massive frame for a single small pane of glass, inserted into it like
a bull's-eye. The light of the garret came from this sole source,
filtrated through a dense curtain of cobwebs. Indeed, the whole stairs,
and platform, and ladder, were festooned, and carpeted, and canopied
with cobwebs; which, in funereal accumulations, hung, too, from the
groined, murky ceiling, like the Carolina moss in the cypress forest.
In these cobwebs, swung, as in aerial catacombs, myriads of all tribes
of mummied insects.
Climbing the stairs to the platform, and pausing there, to recover my
breath, a curious scene was presented. The sun was about half-way up.
Piercing the little sky-light, it slopingly bored a rainbowed tunnel
clear across the darkness of the garret. Here, millions of butterfly
moles were swarming. Against the sky-light itself, with a cymbal-like
buzzing, thousands of insects clustered in a golden mob.
Wishing to shed a clearer light through the place, I sought to
withdraw the scuttle-slide. But no sign of latch or hasp was visible.
Only after long peering, did I discover a little padlock, imbedded,
like an oyster at the bottom of the sea, amid matted masses of weedy
webs, chrysalides, and insectivorous eggs. Brushing these away, I found
it locked. With a crooked nail, I tried to pick the lock, when scores
of small ants and flies, half-torpid, crawled forth from the keyhole,
and, feeling the warmth of the sun in the pane, began frisking around
me. Others appeared. Presently, I was overrun by them. As if incensed
at this invasion of their retreat, countless bands darted up from
below, beating about my head, like hornets. At last, with a sudden
jerk, I burst open the scuttle. And ah! what a change. As from the
gloom of the grave and the companionship of worms, men shall at last
rapturously rise into the living greenness and glory-immortal, so, from
my cobwebbed old garret, I thrust forth my head into the balmy air, and
found myself hailed by the verdant tops of great trees, growing in the
little garden below--trees, whose leaves soared high above my topmost
slate.
Refreshed by this outlook, I turned inward to behold the garret, now
unwontedly lit up. Such humped masses of obsolete furniture. An old
escritoire, from whose pigeon-holes sprang mice, and from whose secret
drawers came subterranean squeakings, as from chipmunks' holes in the
woods; and broken-down old chairs, with strange carvings, which seemed
fit to seat a conclave of conjurors. And a rusty, iron-bound chest,
lidless, and packed full of mildewed old documents; one of which, with
a faded red ink-blot at the end, looked as if it might have been the
original bond that Doctor Faust gave to Mephistopheles. And, finally,
in the least lighted corner of all, where was a profuse litter of
indescribable old rubbish--among which was a broken telescope, and a
celestial globe staved in--stood the little old table, one hoofed foot,
like that of the Evil One, dimly revealed through the cobwebs. What
a thick dust, half paste, had settled upon the old vials and flasks;
how their once liquid contents had caked, and how strangely looked the
mouldy old book in the middle--Cotton Mather's _Magnalia_.
Table and book I removed below, and had the dislocations of the one and
the tatters of the other repaired. I resolved to surround this sad
little hermit of a table, so long banished from genial neighborhood,
with all the kindly influences of warm urns, warm fires, and warm
hearts, little dreaming what all this warm nursing would hatch.
I was pleased by the discovery that the table was not of the ordinary
mahogany, but of apple-tree-wood, which age had darkened nearly to
walnut. It struck me as being an appropriate piece of furniture for
our cedar-parlor--so called, from its being, after the old fashion,
wainscoted with that wood. The table's round slab, or orb, was so
contrived as to be readily changed from a horizontal to a perpendicular
position; so that, when not in use, it could be snugly placed in a
corner. For myself, wife, and two daughters, I thought it would make
a nice little breakfast and tea-table. It was just the thing for a
whist-table, too. And I also pleased myself with the idea that it would
make a famous reading-table.
In these fancies, my wife, for one, took little interest. She
disrelished the idea of so unfashionable and indigent-looking a
stranger as the table intruding into the polished society of more
prosperous furniture. But when, after seeking its fortune at the
cabinet-maker's, the table came home, varnished over, bright as a
guinea, no one exceeded my wife in a gracious reception of it. It was
advanced to an honorable position in the cedar-parlor.
But, as for my daughter Julia, she never got over her strange emotions
upon first accidentally encountering the table. Unfortunately, it was
just as I was in the act of bringing it down from the garret. Holding
it by the slab, I was carrying it before me, one cobwebbed hoof thrust
out, which weird object at a turn of the stairs, suddenly touched my
girl, as she was ascending; whereupon, turning, and seeing no living
creature--for I was quite hidden behind my shield--seeing nothing
indeed, but the apparition of the Evil One's foot, as it seemed, she
cried out, and there is no knowing what might have followed, had I not
immediately spoken.
From the impression thus produced, my poor girl, of a very nervous
temperament, was long recovering. Superstitiously grieved at my
violating the forbidden solitude above, she associated in her
mind the cloven-footed table with the reputed goblins there. She
besought me to give up the idea of domesticating the table. Nor did
her sister fail to add her entreaties. Between my girls there was a
constitutional sympathy. But my matter-of-fact wife had now declared in
the table's favor. She was not wanting in firmness and energy. To her,
the prejudices of Julia and Anna were simply ridiculous. It was her
maternal duty, she thought, to drive such weakness away. By degrees,
the girls, at breakfast and tea, were induced to sit down with us at
the table. Continual proximity was not without effect. By and by, they
would sit pretty tranquilly, though Julia, as much as possible, avoided
glancing at the hoofed feet, and, when at this I smiled, she would look
at me seriously--as much as to say, Ah, papa, you, too, may yet do the
same. She prophesied that, in connection with the table, something
strange would yet happen. But I would only smile the more, while my
wife indignantly chided.
Meantime, I took particular satisfaction in my table, as a night
reading-table. At a ladies' fair, I bought me a beautifully worked
reading-cushion, and, with elbow leaning thereon, and hand shading my
eyes from the light, spent many a long hour--nobody by, but the queer
old book I had brought down from the garret.
All went well, till the incident now about to be given--an incident, be
it remembered, which, like every other in this narration, happened long
before the time of the "Fox Girls."
It was late on a Saturday night in December. In the little old
cedar-parlor, before the little old apple-tree table, I was sitting
up, as usual, alone. I had made more than one effort to get up and go
to bed; but I could not. I was, in fact, under a sort of fascination.
Somehow, too, certain reasonable opinions of mine, seemed not so
reasonable as before. I felt nervous. The truth was, that though, in
my previous night-readings, Cotton Mather had but amused me, upon
this particular night he terrified me. A thousand times I had laughed
at such stories. Old wives' fables, I thought, however entertaining.
But now, how different. They began to put on the aspect of reality.
Now, for the first time it struck me that this was no romantic
Mrs. Radcliffe, who had written the _Magnalia_; but a practical,
hard-working, earnest, upright man, a learned doctor, too, as well
as a good Christian and orthodox clergyman. What possible motive
could such a man have to deceive? His style had all the plainness
and unpoetic boldness of truth. In the most straightforward way, he
laid before me detailed accounts of New England witchcraft, each
important item corroborated by respectable townsfolk, and, of not a
few of the most surprising, he himself had been eye-witness. Cotton
Mather testified himself whereof he had seen. But, is it possible? I
asked myself. Then I remembered that Dr. Johnson, the matter-of-fact
compiler of a dictionary, had been a believer in ghosts, besides many
other sound, worthy men. Yielding to the fascination, I read deeper and
deeper into the night. At last, I found myself starting at the least
chance sound, and yet wishing that it were not so very still.
A tumbler of warm punch stood by my side, with which beverage, in a
moderate way, I was accustomed to treat myself every Saturday night;
a habit, however, against which my good wife had long remonstrated;
predicting that, unless I gave it up, I would yet die a miserable sot.
Indeed, I may here mention that, on the Sunday mornings following
my Saturday nights, I had to be exceedingly cautious how I gave way
to the slightest impatience at any accidental annoyance; because
such impatience was sure to be quoted against me as evidence of the
melancholy consequences of over-night indulgence. As for my wife, she,
never sipping punch, could yield to any little passing peevishness as
much as she pleased.
But, upon the night in question, I found myself wishing that, instead
of my usual mild mixture, I had concocted some potent draught. I felt
the need of stimulus. I wanted something to hearten me against Cotton
Mather--doleful, ghostly, ghastly Cotton Mather. I grew more and more
nervous. Nothing but fascination kept me from fleeing the room. The
candles burnt low, with long snuffs, and huge winding-sheets. But I
durst not raise the snuffers to them. It would make too much noise. And
yet, previously, I had been wishing for noise. I read on and on. My
hair began to have a sensation. My eyes felt strained; they pained me.
I was conscious of it. I knew I was injuring them. I knew I should rue
this abuse of them next day; but I read on and on. I could not help
it. The skinny hand was on me.
All at once--Hark!
My hair felt like growing grass.
A faint sort of inward rapping or rasping--a strange, inexplicable
sound, mixed with a slight kind of wood-pecking or ticking.
Tick! Tick!
Yes, it was a faint sort of ticking.
I looked up at my great Strasbourg clock in one corner. It was not
that. The clock had stopped.
Tick! Tick!
Was it my watch?
According to her usual practice at night, my wife had, upon retiring,
carried my watch off to our chamber to hang it up on its nail.