XI
OF PRESENTIMENTS
“Methinks I hear, methinks I see
Ghosts, goblins, fiends.”--_Burton._
We approach a still different class of evil omens, or such as are
believed by many to “cast their shadows before,” in such a manner
as to prey upon the spirits, or show their visible effects in the
daily actions of men, usually well balanced, with a feeling akin
to respectful fear. Let other forms of superstition be never so
mirth-provoking, the reality of this one, at least to those of an
imaginative or highly impressible nature, is such that we are sobered
at once. What concerns such momentous events as life and death is
really no jesting matter.
There may be, probably is, a scientific explanation for those fancies
that sometimes come over us, with a sinking feeling at the heart. Men
usually keep silent. Women more often give utterance to their feelings.
How many times have we heard this remark: “O dear, I feel as if
something was going to happen!”
There is still another phase of the subject. Probably hundreds,
perhaps thousands, could be found, who, at some time or other, have
passed through some strange experience, which they are wholly unable
to account for on any rational theory or ground whatever. Perhaps it
has been to the inner man what the skeleton in the closet is to the
family home. Unfortunately, it is only in moments when men lay bare
their inmost thoughts to each other that these things, so valuable from
the standpoint of psychology, leak out. What is, then, the secret
power, which, in our waking hours, our sober consciousness, is able
to oppress our spirits like some hideous nightmare? In its nature it
seems most often a warning of coming evil or future event,--in fact, an
omen of which we obtain the knowledge by accident, or without design or
premeditation. Were it not for the fear of ridicule, we are persuaded
that a multitude of persons could testify to some very interesting
phenomena of this kind, drawn from their own experiences.
There was a woman whom I knew very well, in a little seaport of Maine,
a respectable, middle-aged matron, who asserted that no one ever died
in that village unless she had a warning. Precisely what the nature of
that warning was she would never divulge; but it is nevertheless a fact
that she was often consulted by her neighbors when any one was taken
seriously ill, and that her oracular dictum received full and entire
credit among them.
In that same little seaport the superstition is current that a sick
person will not die till ebb tide. As that goes out, so does the life.
This particular article of superstitious faith still holds in some
parts of England, we understand, and is made use of by Dickens in
“David Copperfield.”
The following incident came to my knowledge while I was in the near
neighborhood of the place where a recent shocking railroad accident
had happened. Naturally, it was the one topic of conversation, far and
near. The engine-man, an old and trusted servant of the company, went
down with his engine in the wreck. While being dug out from under his
engine, crushed and bleeding, the poor fellow said to his rescuers:
“Three times I’ve seen a man on the track at this very place, and three
times I’ve stopped my engine. I said this morning that I wouldn’t go
over the road again; but couldn’t get any one to take my place, and
here I am.”
That a sinister presentiment should cross one in moments of extreme
peril, may be easily conceived, but why it should occur, and does
occur, at times when no known danger threatens, or any mental or
physical condition would seem to warrant it, is not so easily
understood. Yet history is full of such examples, related, too, not of
the weaker sort, but of the strongest characters. Mr. Motley, in his
“John of Barneveld,” gives a vivid picture of Henry IV. of France just
before his death. The great monarch was on the point of departure,
at the head of the best appointed army he had ever commanded, for
the war against Spain. “But he delayed for a few days to take part
in the public festivities in honor of the coronation of his queen.
These festivities he dreaded, and looked forward to them with gloomy
forebodings. He was haunted with fears that they involved his own
life, and that he should not survive them. He said many times to his
favorite minister, Sully: ‘I know not how it is, but my heart tells me
that some misfortune is to befall me. I shall never go out of it.’ He
had dreams, also, which assumed to him the force of revelations, that
he was to die in a carriage, and at the first magnificent festival he
gave. Sully asked him why he did not abandon the proposed festivities
at the coronation, and actually went to the queen to persuade her to
countermand them. But she refused in high indignation, being, as is
now supposed, in the conspiracy against his life. The result is well
known: the king was assassinated in his carriage by Ravaillac, as the
festivities were in progress.”
Every one remembers the curious incident in regard to Lord Thomas
Lyttleton’s vision, as related in Boswell’s “Johnson,” predicting the
time of his death, and its exact fulfilment; and Johnson’s solemn
comments thereon. “It is the most extraordinary thing that has happened
in my day. I heard it with my own ears from his uncle, Lord Westcote.”
Lord Byron once observed that several remarkable things had happened on
his birthday, as they also had to Napoleon. Marie Antoinette, too, was
a firm believer in these presentiments. She thus declares herself in
language that now seems prophetic: “At my wedding something whispered
to me that I was signing my death warrant. At the last moment I would
have retreated if I could have done so.”
Our early New England historian, Winthrop, mentions a singular case of
presentiment of death, experienced by one Baker, of Salem. This man, on
going forth to his work, in the morning, told his wife he should never
see her more. He was killed by a stick of timber, falling upon him,
that same day.
It is quite true that we do not attach nearly as much importance to
events happening a long time ago as to those occurring in our own
day; for one thing, perhaps, because they do not seem so easy of
verification; for another, because we choose to believe that they
merely reflect the ignorance of a past age. That there is really no
difference in the susceptibility of man to such premonitions, so
long as he shall be the creature of feeling, is proved by the most
irrefragable testimony. The poet Whittier, who took a peculiar delight
in the legendary tales of New England, has related one or two incidents
that came within his own knowledge, to this effect. “A very honest and
intelligent neighbor of mine,” says the narrator, “once told me that
at the precise moment when his brother was drowned in the Merrimack
River, many miles distant, he felt a sudden and painful sensation--a
death-like chill upon the heart, such as he had never before
experienced. And,” adds the poet, “I have heard many similar relations.”
The following, he says, “are the facts,” relative to another incident
that happened in his vicinity. “In September, 1831, a worthy and highly
esteemed inhabitant of this town (Haverhill, Mass.) died suddenly on
the bridge over the Merrimack, by the bursting of a blood-vessel.
It was just at daybreak, when he was engaged with another person
in raising the draw of the bridge for the passage of a sloop. The
suddenness of the event, the excellent character of the deceased,
and above all, a vague rumor that some extraordinary disclosure was
to be made, drew together a large concourse at the funeral. After
the solemn services were concluded, Thomas, the brother of the dead
man--himself a most exemplary Christian--rose up and desired to relate
some particulars regarding his brother’s death. He then stated--and his
manner was calm, solemn, impressive--that more than a month previous
to his death, his brother had told him that his feelings had been
painfully disturbed by seeing, at different times on the bridge, a
quantity of human blood; that sometimes while he was gazing upon it,
it suddenly disappeared, as if removed by an invisible hand; ... that
many times in the dusk of the evening, he had seen a vessel coming down
the river, which vanished just as it reached the draw; and that, at
the same time, he had heard a voice calling in a faint and lamentable
tone, ‘I am dying!’ and that the voice sounded like his own: that then
he knew the vision was for him, and that his hour of departure was at
hand. Thomas, moreover, stated that a few days before the melancholy
event took place, his brother, after assuring him that he would be
called upon to testify to the accounts which he had given of the vision
on the bridge, told him that he had actually seen the same vessel go up
the river whose spectral image he had seen in his vision, and that when
it returned the fatal fulfilment would take place.”
Though of still earlier date, the remarkable premonition of Rev. Samuel
Newman, of Rehoboth, will bear being repeated here. According to his
biographer, he not only felt a certain presage of the approach of
death, but seemed to triumph in the prospect of its being near. Yet
he was apparently in perfect health, and preached a sermon from Job
xiv. 14, “All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change
come.” In the afternoon of the following Lord’s Day, he asked the
deacon to pray with him, saying he had not long to live. As soon as he
had finished his prayer he said the time was come when he must leave
the world; but his friends seeing no sign of approaching dissolution,
thought it was merely the effect of imagination. Immediately he turned
away, saying, “Angels, do your office!” and expired on the spot.
Lord Roberts of Kandahar relates the following of himself: “My
intention, when I left Kabul, was to ride as far as the Khyber Pass;
but suddenly a presentiment, which I have never been able to explain
to myself, made me retrace my steps and hurry back toward Kabul--a
presentiment of coming trouble which I can only characterize as
instinctive.
“The feeling was justified when, about halfway between Butkhak and
Kabul, I was met by Sir Donald Stewart and my chief of the staff,
who brought me the astounding news of the total defeat by Ayab
Khan of Brigadier-general Burrows’s brigade at Malwand, and of
Lieutenant-general Primrose, with the remainder of his force, being
besieged at Kandahar.”[23]
Most people are familiar with the story told by President Lincoln to a
friend,--told too, in his own half-playful, half-pathetic way, as if to
minimize the effect upon that friend’s mind. It is given in the words
of that friend:--
“It was just after my election in 1860, when the news had been coming
in thick and fast all day and there had been a great ‘hurrah, boys,’
so that I was well tired out and went home to rest, throwing myself
down on a lounge in my chamber. Opposite where I lay was a bureau with
a swinging glass upon it (and here he got up and placed furniture
to illustrate the position), and looking in that glass I saw myself
reflected nearly at full length; but my face, I noticed, had _two_
separate and distinct images, the tip of the nose of one being about
three inches from the tip of the other. I was a little bothered,
perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass, but the illusion
vanished. On lying down again, I saw it a second time, plainer if
possible, than before; and then I noticed that one of the faces was a
little paler--say, five shades--than the other, I got up, and the thing
melted away; and I went off, and in the excitement of the hour forgot
all about it--nearly, but not quite, for the thing would once in a
while come up and give me a little pang, as if something uncomfortable
had happened. When I went home again that night, I told my wife about
it, and a few days afterward I made the experiment again, when (with
a laugh), sure enough! the thing came again; but I never succeeded
in bringing the ghost back after that, though I once tried very
industriously to show it to my wife, who was somewhat worried about it.
She thought it was a ‘sign’ that I was to be elected to a second term
of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I
should not see life through the last term.”
These are by no means isolated cases. It is said that General Hancock,
who had faced the King of Terrors on too many battle-fields to fear
him, was pursued by a presentiment of this sort, only too soon to
be fully verified. While present as an honored guest at a dinner,
surrounded by his old comrades in arms, the general remarked to a
friend that he had come there with a premonition that it would be his
last visit, and that he had but a short time longer to live. In fact,
his lamented death occurred within a short time after.
Instances of fatal presentiments before going into battle are familiar
to every veteran of our great Civil War. I have heard many of them
feelingly rehearsed by eye-witnesses. The same thing has occurred,
under precisely similar conditions, during the late war with Spain. But
here is a tale of that earlier conflict, as published broadcast to the
world, without question or qualification:--
“In a research for facts bearing upon psychology, Mrs. Bancroft (a
daughter-in-law of the historian) has brought to light a strange
story relating to either the record of odd ‘spirit communications’ or
coincidences. On July 2, 1863, the wives of Major Thomas Y. Brent
and Captain Eugene Barnes, two Confederate officers, were together
at a wedding in Fayette County, each wearing her bridal dress. While
dressing for the occasion Mrs. Brent’s companion discovered a blood
spot upon the dress of the major’s wife, which could not be accounted
for, and somewhat excitedly exclaimed, ‘It is a bad omen!’ Two days
after Mrs. Brent experienced a severe pain in the region of her
heart, although at the time in the best of health. This occurred at
the birthplace of her husband. Two days later she heard that, while
storming a Federal fortification, her husband was killed on July 4,
1863, as far as she could learn, at the identical time that she had
experienced the heart pain. The major was shot in the breast by a Minié
ball and instantly killed.”
There lies before me, as I write, the authoritative statement of an
army officer, a survivor of the terrible charge up San Juan Hill,
before Santiago de Cuba, to the effect that just before advancing to
the charge a brother officer had confided to him a conviction that
the speaker would be killed, entreating his friend to receive his last
messages for his relatives. In this case, too, the fatal premonition
was fully verified. The doomed man was shot while bravely storming the
Spanish stronghold.
Still another story of this war has been widely published, so lately as
this chapter was begun. It has reference to the death of the bandmaster
of the United States ship _Lancaster_, then cruising in the South
Atlantic. Upon learning that the _Lancaster_ was to touch at Rio de
Janeiro the bandmaster requested his discharge, giving as his reason
that he had for years been under the presentiment that if he went to
that port he would die of yellow fever. A discharge was refused him.
The ship entered the harbor of Rio, and the bandmaster immediately took
to his bed with all the symptoms of yellow fever. The identity of the
malady soon established itself. He was taken to the plague hospital
on shore and there died. One of the bandsmen who kissed him as he was
being removed from the ship also died. The account goes on to say that
“these two are the only cases reported at Rio for months. The fever
has not spread, and no man besides the unfortunate bandsman caught the
fever, the health of the ship’s crew remaining excellent.”
The number of persons who have testified to having seen the apparitions
or death wraiths of dying or deceased friends is already large, as
the records of various societies for psychical research bear witness.
These phenomena are not in their nature forewarnings of something that
is about to happen, but announcements of something that already has
happened. They therefore can have no relation to what was formerly
known as “second sight.”
In spite of all that our much-boasted civilization has done in the way
of freeing poor, fallible man from the thraldom of superstition, there
is indubitable evidence that a great many people still put faith in
direct revelations from the land of spirits. In the course of a quiet
chat one evening, where the subject was under discussion, one of the
company who had listened attentively, though silently all the while,
to all manner of theories, spiced with ridicule, abruptly asked how we
would account for the following incident which he went on to relate,
and I have here set down word for word:--
“My grandparents,” he began, “had a son whom they thought all the world
of. From all accounts I guess Tom was about one of the likeliest young
fellows that could be scared up in a day’s journey. Everybody said Tom
was bound to make his mark in the world, and at the time I speak of he
seemed in a fair way of doing it, too, for at one and twenty he was
first mate of the old _Argonaut_ which had just sailed for Calcutta.
This would make her tenth voyage. Well, as I am telling you, the very
day after the _Argonaut_ went to sea, a tremendous gale set in from the
eastward. It blew great guns. Actually, now, it seemed as if that gale
would never stop blowing.
“As day after day went by, and the storm raged on without intermission,
you may judge if the hearts of those who had friends at sea in that
ship did not sink down and down with the passing hours. Of course, the
old folks could think of nothing else.
“Let me see; it was a good bit ago. Ah, yes; it was on the third or
fourth night of the gale, I don’t rightly remember which, and it don’t
matter much, that grandfather and grandmother were sitting together,
as usual, in the old family sitting-room, he poring over the family
Bible as he was wont to do in such cases, she knitting and rocking,
or pretending to knit, but both full of the one ever present thought,
which each was trying so hard to hide from the other.
“Dismally splashed the raindrops against the window-panes, mournfully
the wind whined in the chimney-top, while every now and then the fire
would spit and sputter angrily on the hearth, or flare up fitfully when
some big gust came roaring down the chimney to fan the embers into a
fiercer flame. Then there would be a lull, during which, like an echo
of the tempest, the dull and distant booming of the sea was borne to
the affrighted listener’s ears. But nothing I could say would begin to
give you an idea of the great gale of 1817.
“Well, the old folks sat there as stiff as two statues, listening to
every sound. When a big gust tore over the house and shook it till it
rocked again, gran’ther would steal a look at grandmother over his
specs, but say never a word. The old lady would give a start, let her
hands fall idly upon her lap, sit for a moment as if dazed, and then go
on with her knitting again as if her very life depended on it.
“Unable at length to control her feelings, grandmother got up out of
her chair, with her work in her hand, went to the window, put aside the
curtain, and looked out. I say looked out, for of course all was so
pitch-dark outside that nothing could be seen, yet there she stood with
her white face pressed close to the wet panes, peering out into the
night, as if questioning the storm itself of the absent one.
“All at once she drew back from the window with a low cry, saying in a
broken voice: ‘My God, father, it’s Tom in his coffin! They’re bringing
him up here, to the house.’ Then she covered her face with her hands,
to shut out the horrid sight.
“‘Set down ’Mandy!’ sternly commanded the startled old man. ‘Don’t be
making a fool of yourself. Don’t ye know tain’t no sech a thing what
you’re sayin’? Set down, I say, this minnit!’
“But no one could ever convince grandmother that she had not actually
seen, with her own eyes, her dear boy Tom, the idol of her heart, lying
cold in death. To her indeed it was a revelation from the tomb, for the
ship in which Tom had sailed was never heard from.”
[Illustration]
XII
THE DIVINING-ROD
“One point must still be greatly dark,
The reason why they do it.”
It is a matter of common knowledge that certain expert “finders,” as
they are called, use a divining-rod for detecting underground springs
in New England; in Pennsylvania for the locating of oil springs; and in
the mineral regions of the Rockies for the discovery of hidden veins
of valuable ores. The Cornish miners, also, have long made use of the
divining-rod, or “dowsing-rod,” as they call it, for a like purpose. A
further research, probably, might reveal a similar practice in other
countries; but for our purpose it is enough to present two of the most
intelligent in the world as giving it their sanction and support.
Various implements are employed by the expert operator in his quest
for what lies hidden from mortal eyes; but the preferred agent is
usually a bough of witch-hazel, branching at one end like the tines
of a pitchfork.[24] Taking firm hold of each prong, with the palms of
the hands turned upward, the operator slowly walks around the locality
where it is desired to find water; and when he reaches the right spot,
_presto!_ the free end of the bough is bent downward toward the ground
as if by some invisible force, sometimes so strongly that the operator
is unable to overcome it by putting forth his whole strength. “Dig
here,” he says, with positive assurance that water will be found not
far below the surface of the ground.
On the face of it, this performance comes rather nearer to our idea of
a miracle than anything we can now call to mind. Certainly, Moses did
no more when he smote the rock of Scripture. Very possibly, former
generations of men may have associated the act with the operation of
sorcery or magic. An enlightened age, however, accepts neither of these
theories. We do not believe in miracles other than those recorded in
Scripture; and we have renounced magic and sorcery as too antiquated
for intelligent people to consider. Yet things are done every day
which would have passed for miracles with our forefathers, without
our knowing more than the bare fact that, by means of certain crude
agents, obtained from the earth itself, messages are sent from New York
to London under the Atlantic Ocean in a few minutes; that the most
remote parts of the habitable globe have been brought into practically
instantaneous communication, the one with the other; and that public
and private conveyances are moving about our thoroughfares without the
use of horses or steam. All these things looked to us like miracles,
at first, yet custom has brought us to regard them with no more wonder
than did the lighting of the first gas lamp the pedestrian of forty
odd years ago. Much as we know, there is probably yet much more that we
do not know.
The methods employed in finding oil springs or “leads” of ore are very
similar to those made use of in discovering water. It is a fact that
some of the most productive wells in the oil regions were located in
this manner. It is a further fact, that from time to time, search for
buried treasure has been carried on in precisely the same way. Now some
astute critics have said that the divining-rod was a humbug, because
when they have tried it the mystic bough would not bend for them. It
is, however, doubtful if any humbug could have stood the test of so
many years without exposure, or what so many witnesses stand ready to
affirm the truth of be cavalierly thrust aside as a palpable imposture.
Although I have never seen the operator at work, myself, I have often
talked with those who have, whose testimony was both direct and
explicit. Moreover, I do know of persons who continue to ply this
trade (for no more than this is claimed for it) in some parts of New
England to-day. Whether it should be classed among superstitions may be
an open question after all.
[Illustration]
XIII
WONDERS OF THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE
“The hag is astride
This night for a ride--
The devil and she together.”--_Herrick._