Curiosities of Human Nature

"Nothing! nothing!" said he, half starting, and passing on. "Nay, nay," said the fair one, "you must tell me." "Well, if I must," was the reply, "I must. You may think it foolish, yet such is the truth, – that little pool, gathered in the shelter of the rock and briar, reminds me of early days – of my childhood, and the forest. Past memories come over my bosom, like summer upon the snow; I think how I have often stooped at such a stream as this, and quenched my thirst, with a relish nothing can now bestow. I feel an emotion I can hardly resist; it seems to call me from these scenes, this voluptuous, yet idle life. I have a sense of wrong, of duty neglected, of happiness missed, which makes me sad even in such a place as this, and with society like yours."

By this time Hunter had framed a design, either real or pretended, of doing some great thing for the Indians. He insisted that the attempt to civilize them at once, was idle and fallacious; he proposed, therefore, to select some spot along the banks of the Wabash, and which he represented as a wild kind of paradise, and here he would gather the Indians, and, adopting a system which might blend the life of the hunter with that of the cultivator, wile them gradually, and without shocking their prejudices, into civilization. This scheme he set forth as the great object of his wishes. He spoke of it frequently, and in Edinburgh, especially, delighted his hearers with his enthusiastic eloquence in dilating upon the subject. No one suspected his sincerity, and the greatest men in Scotland avowed and felt the deepest interest in his project.

The summer came, and Hunter went back to London. He now announced his intention to return to America: still, he lingered for several months. His friends noticed that he was dejected, yet he assigned no cause for this. Presents were made to him, and hints of assistance, to further his scheme of Indian civilization, were suggested. He availed himself of none of these advantages, save that he accepted a watch, richly jewelled, from the Duke of Sussex, and a splendid set of mathematical instruments, from Mr. Coke, of Norfolk. He also borrowed a hundred pounds of a friend. He took his farewell of London, and bearing with him the best wishes of all who had known him on that side of the Atlantic, he embarked at Liverpool for America.

Immediately after his arrival, he hastened to the south, spent a few days at New Orleans, and pushed into the wilds bordering upon Texas. In some way, he excited the jealousy of the Indians, who resolved to take his life. On a journey through the wilderness, he was attended by an Indian guide. Having occasion to pass a river, he stopped a moment in the middle of it, to let his horse drink. The guide was behind: obedient to his orders, he lifted his carbine, and shot Hunter through the back. He fell, a lifeless corpse, into the stream, and was borne away, as little heeded as a forest leaf.

Such are the facts, as we have been able to gather them, in respect to this remarkable man. The writer of this article saw him in London, and the incidents related of him while he was in England and Scotland, are stated upon personal knowledge. The events subsequent to his departure are derived from current rumor. The question has often been asked, What was the real character of John Dunn Hunter? That he was, to some extent, an impostor, can hardly be doubted. Mr. Duponceau, of Philadelphia, examined into some Indian words which Hunter had given him, and found them to be fabrications. Mr. John Dunn, of Missouri, mentioned by Hunter as his friend and benefactor, was written to, and he declared that he had known no such person. These facts, with others, were laid before the public in the North American Review, and were regarded as fatal to the character of Hunter. The common judgment has been, that he was wholly an impostor; we incline, however, to a different opinion.

We believe that the story of his early life, was, in the main, correct;2 that he did not originally intend any deception; that he came to New York with honest intentions, but that the flatteries he received led him by degrees to expand his views, and finally drew him into a deliberate career of fraud. So long as he was in the tide of prosperity abroad, he did not seem to reflect, and glided down contented with the stream: when the time came that he must return, his real situation presented itself, and weighed upon his spirits. It is to be remarked, however, that, even in this condition, he availed himself of no opportunities to amass money, which he might have done to the amount of thousands. These facts, at war with the supposition that he was a mere impostor, seem to show that he had still some principle of honor left, and some hope as to his future career. At all events, he was a man of extraordinary address, and his story shows how high a course of duplicity may elevate a man, yet only to hurl him down the farther and the more fatally, upon the sharp rocks of retribution.

CASPER HAUSER

In the year 1828, a great sensation was created throughout the civilized world, by the story of Casper Hauser. This, as it appears, was in substance as follows: —

On the 20th May, in the year above named, as a citizen of Nuremburg, in Bavaria, was proceeding along one of the streets, he happened to see a young man in the dress of a peasant, who was standing like one intoxicated, attempting to move forward, yet appearing hardly to have command of his legs. On the approach of the citizen, this stranger held out to him a letter directed to a well-known and respectable military officer, living in Nuremburg.

As the house of this person lay in the direction of the citizen's walk, he took the youth thither with him. When the servant opened the door, the stranger put the letter into his hand, uttering some unintelligible words. The various questions which were asked, as to his name, whence he came, &c., he seemed not to comprehend. He appeared excessively fatigued, staggered as if exhausted, and pointed to his feet, shedding tears, apparently from pain. As he seemed to be suffering from hunger, a piece of meat was given to him, but scarcely had he tasted it, when he spat it out, and shuddered as if with abhorrence. He manifested the same aversion to beer. He ate some bread and drank water, with signs of satisfaction.

Meantime, all attempts to gain any information from him were fruitless. To every question he answered with the same unintelligible jargon. He seemed to hear without understanding, and to see without perceiving. He shed many tears, and his whole language seemed to consist of moans and unintelligible sounds.

The letter to the officer, above mentioned, contained no satisfactory information. It stated that the writer was a poor day-laborer, with a family of ten children; that the bearer had been left with him in October, 1812, and he had never since been suffered to leave his house: that he had received a Christian education, been baptized, &c. He was sent to the officer with the request that he might be taken care of till seventeen years old, and then be made a trooper, and placed in the sixth regiment, as his father had been of that corps. This letter was supposed, of course, to be designed to mislead, and no reliance was placed upon it.

The officer, suspecting some imposition, sent the stranger to the police. To all inquiries the latter replied as before, displaying a kind of childish simplicity, and awkward dulness. He was continually whimpering, and pointing to his feet. While he had the size of a young man, his face had the expression of a child. When writing materials were placed before him, he took the pen with alacrity, and wrote Kaspar Hauser. This so contrasted with his previous signs of ignorance and dulness, as to excite suspicions of imposture, and he was therefore committed to a tower used for the confinement of rogues and vagabonds. In going to this place, he sank down, groaning at every step.

The body of Caspar seemed perfectly formed, but his face bore a decided aspect of vulgarity. When in a state of tranquillity, it was either destitute of expression, or had a look of brutish indifference. The formation of his face, however, changed in a few months, and rapidly gained in expression and animation. His feet bore no marks of having been confined by shoes, and were finely formed; the soles were soft as the palms of his hands. His gait was a waddling, tottering progress, groping with his hands as he went, and often falling at the slightest impediment. He could not, for a long time, go up and down stairs without assistance. He used his hands with the greatest awkwardness. In all these respects, however, he rapidly improved.

Caspar Hauser soon ceased to be considered either an idiot or an impostor. The mildness, good nature, and obedience he displayed, precluded the idea that he had grown up with the beasts of the forest. Yet he was destitute of words, and seemed to be disgusted with most of the customs and habits of civilized life. All the circumstances combined to create a belief that he had been brought up in a state of complete imprisonment and seclusion, during the previous part of his existence.

He now became an object of general interest, and hundreds of persons came to see him. He could be persuaded to taste no other food than bread and water. Even the smell of most articles of food was sufficient to make him shudder. When he first saw a lighted candle, he appeared greatly delighted, and unsuspectingly put his fingers into the blaze. When a mirror was shown him, he looked behind to find the image it reflected. Like a child, he greedily reached for every glittering object, and cried when any desired thing was denied him. His whole vocabulary seemed hardly to exceed a dozen words, and that of ross (horse) answered for all quadrupeds, such as horses, dogs, and cats. When, at length, a wooden horse was given as a plaything, it seemed to effect a great change in him; his spirits revived, and his lethargy and indifference were dissipated. He would never eat or drink without first offering a portion to his horse.

His powers seemed now to be rapidly developed; he soon quitted his toy, and learned to ride the living horse with astonishing rapidity. He, however, was greatly oppressed, as he acquired knowledge, at discovering how much inferior he was in knowledge to those around him, and this led him to express the wish that he could go back to the hole in which he had always been confined. From his repeated statements, now that he had learned to speak, it appeared that he had been, from his earliest recollections, confined in a narrow space, his legs extended forward upon the floor, and his body upright; and here, without light, and without the power of locomotion, he had remained for years. The date or period of his confinement he knew not, for in his dungeon there was no sunrise or sunset, to mark the lapse of time. When he awoke from sleep, he found some bread and water at his side; but who ministered to his wants, he knew not; he never saw the face of his attendant, who never spoke to him, except in some unintelligible jargon. In his hole he had two wooden horses and some ribands as toys – and these afforded him his only amusement. One day had passed as another; he had no dreams; time run on, and life ebbed and flowed, with a dull and almost unconscious movement. After a time his keeper gave him a pencil, of which he learned the use; he was then partially taught to walk, and shortly after, was carried from his prison, a letter put into his hand, and he was left, as the beginning of our story finds him, in the streets of Nuremburg.

The journals were now filled with accounts of this mysterious young man. A suspicion was at last started that he was of high birth, and that important motives had led to the singular treatment he had received. He was himself haunted with the fear of assassination, from the idea that the circumstances which led to his incarceration, now that his story was known, might tempt his enemies to put a period to his life – thus seeking at once the removal of a hated object, and security against detection. His fears were at last partially realized; while he was under the care and protection of Professor Daumer, he was attacked and seriously wounded by a blow upon the forehead.

After this event, Earl Stanhope, who happened to be in that part of Germany, caused him to be removed to Anspach, where he was placed under the care of an able schoolmaster. Here his fears subsided; but in December, 1833, a stranger, wrapped in a large cloak, accosted him, under the pretence of having an important communication to make, and proposed a meeting. Caspar agreed, and they met in the palace garden, alone. The stranger drew some papers from beneath his cloak, and while Hauser was examining them, the russian stabbed him in the region of the heart. The wound did not prove immediately fatal. He was able to return home, and relate what had happened. Messengers were sent in pursuit of the assassin, but in vain. Hauser lingered three or four days – that is, till the 17th December, 1833, when he died. On dissection, it appeared that the knife had pierced to the heart, making an incision in its outer covering, and slightly cutting both the liver and stomach. A reward of five thousand florins was offered by Lord Stanhope, for the discovery of the assassin, but without effect – nor was the mystery which involved Caspar's story ever fully unravelled.

Such was the tale of this extraordinary individual, as it appeared a few years ago. Since that period, the facts in the case have been carefully sifted, and the result is a settled conviction, that Hauser was an impostor; that the story of his confinement was a fabrication; that his pretended ignorance, his stupidity, his childishness, were but skilful acting to enforce his story; and, strange as it may appear, there is no good reason to doubt that the wounds he received, in both instances, were inflicted by himself. Such were the deliberate convictions of Earl Stanhope, and others who investigated the facts on the spot, and with the best advantages for the discovery of the truth. Caspar's motive for wounding himself doubtless was, to revive the flagging interest of the public in his behalf – a source of excitement he had so long enjoyed, as to feel unhappy without it. In the latter instance, he doubtless inflicted a severer wound than he intended, and thus put an undesigned period to his existence.

His story presents one of the most successful instances of imposture, on record. It appears probable that he was aided in his imposition by the narrative of Fuerbach, one of the judges of Bavaria, who adopted some theory on the subject, which he supported with gross, though perhaps undesigned misrepresentation. He published an interesting account of Hauser, in which he rather colored and exaggerated the facts, thus making the narrative far more wonderful than the reality would warrant. It was, doubtless, owing to these statements of Fuerbach, that an extraordinary interest in the case was everywhere excited; and it is highly probable that Hauser himself was encouraged to deeper and more extended duplicity, by the aid which the mistaken credulity of the judge afforded him, than, at first, he had meditated. He probably looked with surprise and wonder at the success of his trick, and marvelled at seeing himself suddenly converted from a poor German mechanic, as he doubtless was, into a prodigy and a hero – exciting a sensation throughout the four quarters of the globe. The whole story affords a good illustration of the folly of permitting the imagination to lead us in the investigation of facts, and the extended impositions that may flow from the want of exact and scrupulous veracity in a magistrate.

PSALMANAZAR

George Psalmanazar was born about the year 1679. All that we know of his early history is from his own memoirs, which were published after his death; but they do not tell us his true name, nor that of his native country, though it is generally believed that he was born in the south of France. His education was excellent, probably obtained in some of the colleges of the Jesuits.

At an early period, he became a wandering adventurer, sometimes passing himself off as a pilgrim, then as a Japanese, and then as a native of Formosa – a large island lying to the east of China, and subject to that country. His extensive learning and various knowledge enabled him to sustain these and other disguises. Thus he travelled over several parts of Europe, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. He was by turns a soldier, a beggar, a menial, a monk; a preceptor, a Christian, a heathen, a man of all trades. At last, he came to Liege in Belgium, pretending to be a Formosan, converted to Christianity. Here he became acquainted with the chaplain of an English regiment, and was solemnly baptized.

He now went to London, and was kindly received by Bishop Compton, who gave him entertainment in his own house, and treated him with the utmost confidence. His great abilities and extraordinary story, seconded by the patronage of the bishop of London, gave him immediate currency with literary men, and he soon became the wonder of the day.

Psalmanazar played his part to admiration. He shunned, rather than sought, the notice of the public, and, avoiding meat, lived chiefly on fruits, and a simple vegetable diet. At the same time, he appeared to display the Christian characteristics, and devoted himself to study. He began to prepare a grammar of the Formosan language, which he finally completed. This was, of course, a fiction, yet he proceeded to translate the Church Catechism into this fabricated tongue. He finally wrote an extensive history of Formosa, which was also a fable; yet such was the reputation of the author, that it was received with general confidence, and speedily passed through several editions.

During this period, he had been sent to study at Oxford, where a controversy was carried on between his patrons, and Dr. Halley, Dr. Mead, and some others, in respect to his pretensions. Certain discrepancies were at last detected in his history of Formosa, and, in the result, Psalmanazar was completely exposed, and finally confessed his imposture. Soon after this, a moral change took place in him: he grew ashamed of his dishonorable courses, and determined to reform. He applied himself intensely to study, and, after a time, became engaged in literary pursuits, by which he earned an honest subsistence, and considerable reputation during the rest of his life. He died in London, in 1753.

He wrote for the large work, styled the Universal History, most of the parts concerning ancient history, except that of Rome, and his writings met with great success. He wrote a volume of essays on several scriptural subjects, a version of the Psalms, beside his own memoirs, already mentioned. He also wrote for the "Complete System of Geography," an article on the Island of Formosa, founded upon authentic information, as a reparation for the stories which he had palmed upon the public in his former account.

Psalmanazar is the name that he had assumed when he began his wandering life, and which he retained till his death. Of the sincerity of his piety, there can be no doubt. Dr. Johnson said that he never witnessed a more beautiful example of humility, and tranquil resignation, combined with an active discharge of duty, than was displayed by him during the latter portion of his life!

VALENTINE GREATRAKES

This person, renowned in the annals of quackery, was born at Affane, in Ireland, in 1628. He received a good education at the classical free school of that town, and was preparing to enter Trinity College, Dublin, when the rebellion broke out, and his mother, with a family of several children, was obliged to fly to England for refuge.

Some years after, Valentine returned, but was so affected by the wretched state of his country, and the scenes of misery that were witnessed on every hand, that he shut himself up for a whole year, spending his time in moody contemplations. He afterwards became a lieutenant in the army, but in 1656, he retired to his estate in Affane, where he was appointed justice of the peace for the county of Cork.

Greatrakes was now married, and appears to have held a respectable station in society. About the year 1662, he began to conceive himself possessed of an extraordinary power of removing scrofula, or king's evil, by means of touching or stroking the parts affected, with his hands. This imagination he concealed for some time, but, at last, revealed it to his wife, who ridiculed the idea.

Having resolved, however, to make the trial, he began with one William Maher, who was brought to the house by his father, for the purpose of receiving some assistance from Mrs. Greatrakes, a lady who was always ready to relieve the sick and indigent, as far as lay in her power. This boy was sorely afflicted with the king's evil, but was to all appearance cured by Mr. Greatrakes' laying his hand on the parts affected. Several other persons having applied to him, to be cured, in the same manner, of different disorders, his efforts seemed to be attended with success, and he acquired considerable fame in his neighborhood.

His reputation now increased, and he was induced to go to England, where he gained great celebrity by his supposed cures. Several pamphlets were issued upon the subject; it being maintained by some that Greatrakes possessed a sanative quality inherent in his constitution; by others, that his cures were miraculous; and by others still, that they were produced merely by the force of imagination. The reality of the cures seemed to be admitted, and the reputation of the operator rose to a prodigious height; but, after a brief period, it rapidly declined, and the public became convinced that the whole excitement was the result of illusion. Greatrakes, himself, possessed a high character for humility, virtue and piety, and was doubtless the dupe of his own bewildered fancy. He died in 1680, having afforded the world a striking caution not to mistake recovery for cure, and not to yield to imagination and popular delusion, especially in respect to the pretended cure of diseases.

MATTHEW HOPKINS

About 250 years ago, the reality of witchcraft was very generally admitted throughout Europe. The belief in the active agency of the Spirit of Evil in human affairs, had existed among Christians from the earliest period, and the legends of saints, their trials and temptations, in which the devil plays so important a part, served to extend and confirm these popular notions. At last, the direct agency of diabolical powers, and its open manifestation, was assumed, and, at the period of which we speak, was held to be a point of Christian faith. The pious Baxter considered the disbelief of witchcraft as equivalent to infidelity; the just and sagacious Sir Matthew Hale admitted its reality, and pronounced sentence against those who were convicted of it; and, alas! the pedantic king, James I. of England, wrote a book entitled, "Dæmonologia, or a Discourse on Witchcraft."

The purpose of this work was to prove the reality of witchcraft, its prevalence among mankind, its great enormity, and the means of its detection and punishment. Its effect was to extend the belief in witchcraft, and, of course, to multiply the apparent instances of its existence. The insane fancies of diseased minds, unusual phenomena of nature, and the artful machinery of designing malignity, ambition, or hypocrisy, were all laid at Satan's door. Of the horrors that followed, history furnishes a melancholy account. It is supposed that 30,000 persons were executed in England, from the year 1500 to 1722. The same dreadful delusion prevailed in other parts of Europe, and extended in due time to this country, and about the year 1692, twenty persons were executed in Salem, Massachusetts, for the crime of witchcraft.

During the period in which this fearful mania was prevalent in England, Matthew Hopkins, denominated Witch-Finder General, acted a conspicuous part. He pretended to be a great critic in special marks or signs of witchcraft. Moles, warts, scorbutic spots, were in his eyes teats to suckle imps, and were sufficient evidences to bring a victim to the halter. He was assisted by one John Stern, a kindred genius, and in the year 1644, 5 and 6, they brought a great number of poor wretches to the fatal tree. Matthew, himself, hung in one year no less than sixty reputed witches of his own county of Essex. He received twenty shillings a head from the public authorities for every witch he discovered. The old, the ignorant, and the indigent, – such as could neither plead their own cause nor hire an advocate, were the miserable victims of his credulity, avarice, and spleen.