spectral thread of ghastly tissue running through its woof, what
should they say of the king of the ink-plume, Shakespeare himself?
He fairly revels in ghosts. In the second part of “King Henry the
Sixth,” Bolingbroke, the conjurer, invokes a spirit. In “Julius
Cæsar,” Brutus has his celebrated interview with the ghost of Cæsar.
In “Macbeth,” the ghost of Banquo comes to the king’s table and nods
between the libations, frightening the king out of his royal wits;
and in the “witch scene” we have the bubbling caldron, the armed
head, a bloody child, a child crowned, with a tree in his hand, and
“eight kings,” who pass across the stage, the last with a glass in
his hand. What would the play of “Hamlet” be without the father’s
spirit wandering on the moonlit battlement, or the interview with
the queen-mother, known as the miniature scene? In “Richard the
Third,” crowds of ghosts stalk through the tent of the hunchback
king, and start him from his sleep; and Richmond, too, holds converse
with them. The ghosts of Prince Edward, Henry the Sixth, Clarence,
Rivers, Grey, Vaughan, Hastings, the two young Princes, Queen Ann,
and Buckingham, stalk before the tyrant’s vision, and curse him as
they pass. Otway makes use of ghosts in his “Venice Preserved,” and
Sir Walter Scott welded them in the machinery of his novels; and
the ponderous-brained Sam Johnson religiously believed in them.
The ghosts of Shakespeare were born of the poetic faculty, and the
legendary creed of the world’s experience. Place a rose, the sweetest
you can find, under a glass case, and you shut out the odor that
belongs to it. Is that odor dead and imperceptible because you have
raised a barrier between it and your senses? Does it not exist, even
more potently, within its crystal prison? Because you do not perceive
that sweetness, would you say it is not? Are our direct senses to
settle all points of doubt and difficulty? Or, let a man enter, then,
who had never seen a rose, and you were to tell him of the great
fragrance of the flower of which bards have sung and Scriptures made
similes,—would you not scoff him if he said such things were not
possible to a plant like that, that looked like painted paper? Then
how can you say anything about it who have never seen a ghost? To
your senses it may be as yet hidden by a barrier stronger than glass,
but yet as transparent to others. But I do not write to argue, but
only to suggest. I admit my own weakness and confess to doubts, and
cannot place myself with indisputable certainty on any solid basis
of logic, and therefore must allow great scope to others; but since
I have ventured to tell my story, I had a strong and natural desire
to stand, as well as it was possible upon the platform of rational
opinion, and felt that I had a right to attempt to place myself
there. If any man can prove that I did not see exactly what I say I
saw, let him do so, but let him not attempt to “pshaw” me out of the
evidences of my senses, and proclaim from his stolid pedestal, called
the “impossible,” that I am a dreamer, a madman, and all that sort
of adjectiveness which grows from ignorance of the noun substantives
of reason. When he can come to me and show me the authority, not
derived from his metaphysics or his sectarianism, or his prejudice,
by which he is empowered to deny the possibility or the probability
and actuality of ghosts, and settle then and forever that such things
cannot be, I will admit that I was crazy; bereft of reason; at one
moment gifted with eyesight, and the next deprived of it: things
which, by the way, would be more at variance with the “order of
Heaven,” and more extraordinary, in fact, than the assumed appearance
of that thing we call ghost; and which, after all said, and done,
and laughed, and sneered at, is that idea of the human hope baptized
in our dreams and our theology, by the name of “Immortality.” You
cannot prove to a drowning man that he is not surrounded by water.
You may tell him that he can swim; but he will tell you that, though
he can, he has the cramp. You may tell him that a ship without
volition can float where he is struggling; but he will tell you that
the ship has nothing to do with it. He believes in the things that
he feels and sees around him, but which you do not experience, and
he will not take your arguments and suggestions as the embodiment
of an infallible life-preserver. I saw what I saw; prove to me that
I did not see it,—for the question is with me and nobody else,—and
prove it without the usual insolence, if you can; remembering, in
your endeavor to convince, that insult is more of an offence than an
argument; indeed, it is only used when argument is exhausted.
The composing of an epic poem is held to be the highest achievement
of the human mind. Ideality, or imagination, is the means used
in the performance of the work. Ideality is the inspiration of
religion, and without it religion would simply be a form of law,
to be broken like other laws, and to be vindicated by penalties and
processes similar to those imposed and employed in the vindication
and substantiation of any other law. The ecclesiastical synonym for
ideality is faith.
If ideality be the source of the highest results of intellectual
effort, and of religious belief, who can venture to fabricate a chain
with which to bind and circumscribe its flights? If man in power, for
the supposed benefit of the man out of power, does so, it is merely
the result of policy, or passion, or human prejudice, or selfishness;
and no man that ever lived, from the Pope of Rome to the backwood
preacher, and from the preacher to the ethical moralist, has had that
right inherent in his particular nature, to tax as a royalty the
patent of the human mind to the grand prerogative of thought.
Canute, the king, tried an experiment of mastery with the tide.
What other despot of school theory will make the same effort with
the tidings of the brain of man, hoping for better success than
the Danish fool? If there be such, so sure as the first known
madman of the Hamlet race was driven from the beech, will the
other be overwhelmed by the resistless force of that great wave of
intelligence which has already grappled with the lightning, and
taught it the babel language by which man expresses his endless
wants. Man, when he seizes upon the great faculties of electricity,
does not stultify himself by establishing a limit to its capacity.
At first it was a rod upon a chimney that drew a spark from the
thunder-storm; then the galvanic battery, to draw paralysis from
limbs; then the wire from city to city; and now it passes beneath
the throbbing bosom of the sea, and whispers the price of stocks or
the policy of cabinets into the ear of a man who sits at his table,
like a musician at his piano, taking out of the thunderbolts of Jove
a language and a spirit that ignorance would deny the possibility of
being there. And what more will be accomplished by electricity? We
stand upon the threshold of its domain, enlightened by flashes that
invite and illumine to farther experiments.
Doubt is the genius of discovery, but, at present, with regard to
the supernatural, there is nothing proved except what we believe;
otherwise, the world would have but one creed.
XVII.
MANIFESTATIONS.
As may be well imagined, a subject so conspicuous and mysterious
as the dark deeds done in Bussey’s wood, would not be allowed to
pass over without some professional attempts on the part of the
spiritualistic community to discover their hidden secret. “Seances”
were called, and the force of mediumistic power enlisted and put in
operation to extract the terrible revelation from some detective
spirit among the dead; with what result the police are best able to
judge, and the culprit, too; but it occurred to me that it might
possibly amuse my readers to read some of the communications relating
to the topics I have been treating of, from the spirit world, through
what is called trance mediums. The two or three that I shall take
occasion to abridge were sent to the police head-quarters, and
I have no doubt they were sent in good faith. The result of the
incantations is of little moment, but I have understood that it
was said somewhere by a presumed spirit, that they would tell all
about the murders, and expose the culprit, if a sum of money would
be raised competent to the support of the bereaved mother of the
children. The fact that there were large rewards offered—and I
believe they have not been withdrawn—should have satisfied them that
if, through their agency, the murderer was detected, they could make
over the amount to Mrs. Joyce. I do not vouch for the truth of the
rumor, but think it improbable, because it was an unnecessary demand
under the circumstances. The occasions when, actuated by a mixed
motive of curiosity and a desire to examine, I have witnessed the
proceedings at these sittings of the faithful, have not had a very
strong tendency to convince me that good spirits put their feet under
the mahogany. To be sure my experience has been limited, but it has
been definite up to this period. I have not attended the public or
professional seances; but there are many persons who are sceptics,
yet strongly mediumistic, and able to make the table move across the
room by the mere imposition of their hands. I have heard the alphabet
repeated at my own room, where only one gentleman was present beside
myself; and this gentleman, an involuntary and unprofessional medium,
was of considerable power, and used that power for the purposes of
investigation. Answers I have there witnessed to questions, that
astonished me,—direct, satisfactory, and going back into the far
and dim years of childhood, astonishing to my friend, as well as
to myself,—facts that my own mind had entirely lost in the lapse
of years, but which came up to my recollection as vivid as if of
yesterday’s happening. Sometimes my recollection has been corrected,
and in such a way as to convince me that my idea of the circumstance
had been erroneous. And then again, a something of intelligence would
move the table, in answer to the alphabet, and tell such self-evident
lies, with so enthusiastic a vivacity as to startle me into the
belief that he had been the writer of bulletins for some newspaper
during the late Southern conflict. And this assumed spirit would
pass himself off as a deceased member of my family, staggering me
with his knowledge, and from which bewilderment I confess I can find
no present means of rational escape. I have, however, come pretty
nearly to the conclusion that the spirit, or whatever it is, that I
have alluded to above, has been our only visitor; but the imagination
cannot conceive a scheme so subtle as his has been to deceive us
into the belief that those persons, whose character he pretended to
represent, were in fact the very individuals themselves; and under
ordinary circumstances few men could have been blamed had they been
credulous of his representations.
I have frequently tried by the most determined exercise of will,
to force the responses into the channel I had mentally prepared
for them; but in no case, I must candidly confess, could I command
obedience. This fact shook my theory of sympathetic influence, and
settled in that small sphere of experiment the vexed question of
the power of mind to operate upon matter. My friend, who has the
mediumistic faculty, made similar attempts, and always with like
result. Let wiser heads than mine unravel and explain, by cogent and
irresistible logic, these eccentric incidents, for I must admit my
utter inability to explain them by any rules outside of those adopted
by the spiritualist. But though I may have been a witness of these
phenomena, it does not follow that I am a spiritualist, any more than
I am of the mythological faith of pagan Greece, because, forsooth, I
take delight in the statue of Minerva, go into raptures over that of
Venus, and read with unfeigned enjoyment the poems of that prince of
old idolaters, blind but immortal Homer.
I have before me a package of manuscript purporting to have been
written by inhabitants of another world,—by hands that have felt the
pressure of the hand of death, and yet, it would seem, are able to
express thought with the intelligence usually attributed to life. One
of these communications purports to have been written by Isabella
Joyce, the murdered girl, and another by her father, Stephen Joyce.
The manuscript of the girl strikes me as of a better order of
chirography than is usually to be found in that of children of her
age; while the father’s is large and roughly emphatic, and bears the
impress of a passionate desire to discover the murderer and avenge
the deaths of his children. Friends of Stephen Joyce assert that the
formation of the writing is unmistakably similar to his; but, as I
have not been able to compare the dead man’s penmanship with anything
done by him while on earth, I cannot pass judgment either of denial
or verification.
It would appear that, speedily after the murders were discovered,
meetings were called of the spiritualists, in the hope that some
revelation would be made that might lead to the arrest of the party
or parties engaged in the atrocious deed.
Not later than a month or two ago, I read in a spiritualistic paper,
of the city of Boston,—conducted, by the way, with great editorial
ability,—a communication from the boy murdered; but which contained
no clue that could direct detection safely and judicially to any
desired result.
In the written communication, signed “Isabella Joyce,” to which
I have alluded, there are references to parties that had been
previously arrested or suspected. She, however, distinctly exonerates
the young man of the factory, whose flight is as yet unaccounted for;
but whose innocence is beyond all question. She speaks, also, of
that inebriated unfortunate to whom Dedham jail has become a matter
of practical and suggestive recollection. The name of that eminent
individual known to the police and the public by the euphonic
appellation of Scratch Gravel, makes no figure in her revelations;
though he confessed to many circumstances that would have led in
ordinary cases to his implication in the deed. His admissions were
tortured by over-zealous detectives into positive confession; but
after strict comparison of his statements, made under the pressure of
prison and terror, or rum reaction, with the exact incidents of his
maudlin staggerings and stutterings, he was given up as not worthy of
belief, though he madly made the attempt to get himself hanged.
It is my intention to give merely the pith and essence of these
strange writings,—having placed the original papers in the hands of
my publisher,—where any person, curious in such matters, can examine
them.
The girl commences by appealing to her mother, and declaring that
she cannot be happy until they have found that “terrible man.”
She cries frequently to her mother, as if under some great spasm
of alarm,—hints at certain persons,—exonerates others, who were
suspected, and in such manner as to remind us of the terrible ravings
and charges of the “afflicted children” who figured as the juvenile
fiends and denouncers of the Salem Witchcraft tragedies.
In her outcries she speaks of a returned soldier, and checks her
mother’s suspicions, that appeared to have gone astray in the
wrong direction, and then directly charges the crime upon our poor
dilapidated young friend, whose greatest misfortune it was to have
been drunk on that fatal day, and been whipped or blackeyed in the
evening.
The girl proceeds with repeated exclamations of Mother! Mother! and
emphasizes the sufferings through which she passed. Be it remembered
that she speaks only of murder throughout her disclosures, if
disclosures they can be called.
Her second declaration is more minute and connected, but still it
is a jumbled and very unsatisfactory narrative, or rather child
gossip, of the circumstances and incidents as they occurred previous
and up to the instant of the catastrophe. She again speaks of a
soldier,—_the one whose hand was cut_; says she saw him in a garden
as they passed along,—the garden across the brook; that he followed
them into the woods. She now goes back to her trip out of Boston
toward the wood, and tells that they got out at Burroughs Street,
walked up the plain or plank (hard to decipher), till they came to a
juncture of the road where it crosses the track of the steam cars,
then to the right, and round a store or stone house to the left, over
the brook to the other side. She expressly and suddenly declares, at
this point of her recital, that _she does not remember him_. After
they climbed over the gate (supposed to be the gate very near where
she was found, and which opens from the Dedham road; there is another
gate between the murder spot and Mr. Motley’s house), they saw the
man. He followed, but up to that moment had not spoken to her. He now
seems to have turned back, but, changing his mind, returned quickly
and addressed her. At this she became alarmed and fled; he pursued.
There is much confusion here,—a scuffling and tussling of sentences
as if a mimic was giving to the life some quickly whirling scene of
trouble and irritation and surprise, wherein there was the essence of
a great danger.
It is a confused statement of Johnny’s having spoken of the sheep
(Mr. Motley’s sheep down in the valley grazing at the time, watched
by a vagrant boy, afterward examined by the authorities, and found
to be no wiser than the flock he watched). She says she does not
remember exactly—speaks of a knife which she tried to get hold of—of
his cutting himself with it—of his throwing it into the wood. (If
he did, he must have gone back for it and rescued it, for no such
knife was found after a vigilant search over the whole locality.) She
exclaims, “He murdered me!”—that he was scratched on the face and
neck, and bears the marks “now,”—at the time of her manifestation at
the spiritual sitting. At this point the paper is filled with wild
and alarming cries to her mother. The idea presents itself again of
a mimic reacting a scene in which the soul is driven to the very
verge of madness by that dread fiend called Terror. The voice seems
to pierce the air in its shrill proclamation of intense and terrible
agony, and anon it subsides into stifled sobs and ejaculations of
how much she suffered while the black deed was done,—how “sick” she
was. After that outburst of mad appeal and piteous mourning she
resumes her narrative, and describes her murderer. He wore blue
clothes, and looked like a soldier; but not a soldier just from the
wars. (A soldier loafing after his laurels had withered in bar-room
atmosphere, I suppose.) She fixes his nationality distinctly,—an
Irishman. It was one o’clock, she says; but the writing here is
blurred and crossed, and very difficult, if not quite impossible, to
make out and determine whether it is one or two o’clock. Her brother,
she says, ran for help, and the man ran after him and killed him and
came back to her. This statement is signed “Isabella Joyce.”
The other portions of the page of foolscap, on which her hand
appears, is covered with a lively display of all sorts of
penmanship,—the idle signatures of a small party of the other world’s
inhabitants, who, it would seem, were in Isabella’s company.
Again she resumes control over the writing medium’s hand, and says,—
“Johnny was dead, and the man went off after I died. He went down
the other way to Boston. He will be found.”
We have nothing more from the spirit of the girl (I speak now
without entering into any question of the authenticity of these
communications, leaving my reader to dispose of that enigma, as may
best suit his temper and convenience), but the father makes his
appearance on the scene and endorses his daughter’s testimony; but
singularly neither witness offers to give the name of the designated
soldier. The spiritualistic theory is that they could not do so,
because he was a stranger to both of them, and consequently while
they could see his face and clothes, they could not tell his name.
The case is similar to our own daily experience in our transient
meeting with people on the street,—a passing and silent interview, in
which nothing is discovered save the recognition of a person and no
more.
The revelation of the father is to the effect that he knows where the
man is, and will follow him to the end.
One part of his statement I suppress, because it comes directly
within the province of the law officers, and might direct suspicion
upon a possibly innocent man.
Three years ago, it is asserted by those who believe in this
extraordinary doctrine of the power of the dead to express themselves
through the living, this man, Stephen Joyce, declared that by the
fifth of the month of July, eighteen hundred and sixty-five, the
murderer would be in the hands of justice; and how many months have
come and gone since that spirit entered the mystic witness-box, and
foretold such sequence to the tragedy, and yet without fulfilment? I
am sorry that he was no true prophet,—no wiser in a ghostly form than
in the fleshly substance. He is not half so good a ghost as Hamlet’s
father was. The Dane went straight to the point, and told the truth
and nothing but the truth, while here we have the spirit of the girl
upon the stand, and she rambles in her talk without the aid of the
great legal screw of cross-questioning, designating nothing that is
tangible, indeed giving false clues to the murderer, and screaming,
“Mother! Mother!” as if she would pour into the listener’s ear some
faint echo of those dread cries that rang amid the gloomy woods when
the soul of her was stabbed out of her.
The ghost of the murdered King of Denmark spoke the truth, as
other ghosts by judicial testimony have done; but they were the
old-fashioned ghosts, standing by themselves without the aid of
human machinery, without the table or the easily assimilated trance,
responsible for their coming and for what they told or what they
desired to be done by their informing. They came and made short work
of it, impressing belief by solemn utterances or majestic gestures.
In this case again, the man, who should have been interested more
than any other man, comes through the arm and fingers of a stranger,
a living being, and is assumed to have written out, at that solemn
investigation, a deposition,—not made upon the Holy Book, holier than
all books, but with lips sanctified by the kiss of death,—and vaguely
points to some unfortunate, and declares with all the potency of
his supernal condition that ere the fifth of the approaching month
the discovery would be made, and the hands of the law laid upon
the person of the murderer of his children; and the fifth of that
long-passed month lies strewn with the leaves of several autumns,
buried far back in the dead annals, and no revelation has confirmed
his prophecy. How is this? Or was it, as I have said before, left to
these pages to revive that miserable event, and glare it to those
eyes that have so often seen the vision of the dead; to awaken in
that drowsing conscience the phantoms that he had half lulled to
sleep, and force him to some act by which the law may be able to
read, without the farther aid of business mediums, the mark of Cain
that God has put upon his brow?
Who knows, and who can tell as yet, the meaning of my ghost that came
to me upon the hill?