The relation of the three unusual incidents following these introductory
words are only simple statements of facts for each reader to solve in
his own way. Concerning them I have no theory whatever, and avow
emphatically an entire disbelief in their sometimes alleged supernatural
origin. That, for the present at least, they are inexplicable must be
admitted, but that they will always remain within the realm of mysteries
beyond the power of solution is very doubtful.
Up to the present time many accepted, or rather seeming, mysteries,
which, with the assistance of ages, have crystallized into form, have
been permitted to pass unchallenged, but the time has arrived when the
old fields, now almost sacred groves, where superstition has taken root
and blossomed, are about to be explored. The almost omnipotent
search-light of science is turning its rays into the dark nooks and
corners of complacent ignorance, greatly to the discomfiture of many old
theories and beliefs, whose foundations are as unsubstantial as dreams.
Until the possibly far-off culmination of the great scientific epoch,
new mysteries known only to the laboratories of Nature will continue to
be born. But those who have watched the progress of scientific
achievement, through the last half of the Nineteenth Century, must
believe that, within the next like period, the visible manifestations of
secrets coming from the bosom of Nature (of which the outer shell now
only is seen) will have been ascertained to belong to a previously
undiscovered series of natural phenomena.
We know as a certain fact of the existence of a natural element of power
called electricity, but what is it, and whence does it come? To the
ignorant it performs miracles in an apparently supernatural way, while
to the intelligent it is regarded as a subtle natural force coming from
the universal laboratory of boundless nature and as unending as time
itself. In electricity, as in many other manifestations of the forces of
nature, we see only results, and know little or nothing of the first
cause. The time, however, let us hope, is not far off when origins will
be as easily demonstrable as is now the seeing of effects we cannot
understand.
Present indications point to the early solution of all superstitions,
many of which for centuries have construed some of the simplest
happenings, which could not upon any known principles be explained, into
demonstrations flowing from supernatural sources. Superstition must
certainly fall before the great and impartial sweep of modern research.
In at least one direction, the battle will be of long duration, but at
the end of the conflict, the vicious old fabric coined out of ages of
falsehood as old as our civilization, sustained by centuries of
superstitious ignorance and countless unspeakable cruelties and crimes,
will totter from its foundation in the limitless sphere of human
credulity, and fall, let us hope, to its final decay.
The destruction of that inveterate enemy of intellectual progress and
the human race, will be the culminating triumph of scientific
achievement and the crowning glory of human effort in the interest of a
more exalted conception of the Deity, better morals, and a higher plane
of civilization.
From my birth to and including a part of the year 1846, I lived with my
grandparents in the town of Pomfret, Vermont. The inhabitants of that
old rural community during my time were, I believe without exception,
descendants from the early English colonists of Massachusetts,
Connecticut, and Rhode Island. They were an orderly, law-abiding,
industrious, and honest people, intensely patriotic, believing in the
fruits of the Revolution, in many of the battles of which they and their
immediate ancestors had taken part.
Up to the period of my early days they were still engaged in the
continuous difficult task of creating homes for their families and in
building a new state, and had but little time to bestow upon books or
mental culture of any sort. Their lives were laborious and beset with
many hardships. Indeed, it may be truly said of them that, from an
academic or bookish standpoint, they were educated and enlightened only
to a limited extent. Each household had its cupboard of books brought
from “below,” and they retained in their memories an interesting stock
of historic traditions and patriotic anecdotes, many of which were
connected with the early history of a majority of the families of this
community. The frequent recital of these served to keep alive the
patriotic spirit, and to impress upon the minds of the rising generation
the importance and value of the heroic services performed by their
ancestors.
As a rule, this little New England town unit, composed of strong, hardy
unlettered men and women, was exceptionally free from natural stupidity
and the usual _répertoire_ of rural superstitions, but they had a few
which were dear to many of the good old New England housewives of my
particular period. Among them was a belief in the misfortunes likely to
attend new undertakings begun on Friday; they had a perfect reliance in
the ill ending of any enterprise connected with the number thirteen; and
it was rank heresy for any one not to believe in the ill-omened,
grief-stricken howls of the family dog. That this latter belief was not
without a certain reasonable shadow of foundation, I am about to show in
the relation of a series of remarkable incidents, which are of a sort
that up to this time have not been explained.