The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 35, September, 1860

"Do you accompany us, Sir, on this blessed crusade against crime and unbelief?" he asked.

"My friend, Dr. Potter, has granted me that inestimable privilege," responded I.

"I hope—in fact, I firmly believe—that Providence will aid us," he continued.

"I hope so, too," said I. "But wouldn't it be advisable to have a policeman, too?"

"By no means! Certainly not!" he returned, with considerable excitement. "All we want is a band of saints, of justified souls, of men fitted for the martyr's crown."

"Oh, that's all, is it, Sir? Well, shall we get into the cars? There they are."

The train was full, and our party had to scatter, but Mr. Riley and I got seats together.

"I have not seen you at our meetings, Sir," he continued. "Allow me to ask, are you a believer in Dispensationism?"

"Not so strong as I might be. However, I have been absent from Troubleton for three months, and only returned yesterday."

"Ah! you have lost precious opportunities. You must lose no more. Life is short."

"And uncertain," I added. "Especially in railroad travelling."

"My dear Sir, I hope this road is prudently conducted," he said, with a look of some little anxiety.

"Not many accidents," I answered. "And then, you know, we are always in the hands of Providence. No fear of slipping through the fingers unnoticed."

"No, Sir, certainly not," he remarked, wrapping his moral oilcloth about him again. "Have you felt any extraordinary spiritual impressions since you returned?"

"Nothing lasting, I think. Nothing that a night's sleep wouldn't take off the edge of."

"No desire to lay hands on some sin-stricken wretch and cure him of the evil that is in him?"

Now I did feel a strong desire to lay hands on this very Riley and pull out his snub nose for him; but I forbore to say so, and simply shook my head despondently.

"I know, that, if you would come to our Dispensaries and join in our exercises, you would be sensible of a softening," he observed.

"Yes, in the brain," thought I; but I still remained silent.

"You should meditate upon the value of manifestations, unknown tongues, the laying on of hands, visions, ecstasies, and such like matters," he continued.

"So I have," said I.

"And with no result?"

"Nothing that particularly astonishes me. I think that I hate humbug more than I did."

"That's a good sign," he replied, after a brief, sharp glance of inquiry at me. "This vain world is a humbug, as you phrase it. Dead Orthodoxy is a humbug. Human reason is a humbug. We are all humbugs, unless we are made true by Dispensation. This age will be a humbug, unless it can be wrought into an age of miracles. If you could be brought to hate earnestly all these things, it would be a hopeful sign."

I was on the point of disputing the hypothesis, but prudently checked myself. Suddenly he removed my hat and put his broad, hard palm upon my organs with an impudent dexterity which made me doubt whether he had not been a pickpocket or a phrenological lecturer.

"I lay my hand upon your head and desire you to note the effect," said he. "Can no life come into these dry bones? Shall they not live? Yea, they shall live! Do you feel no irrepressible emotion, Sir,—no shaking?"

"Not a shake," replied I,—"unless it be from the bad grading."

"Evil is mighty, but the good must eventually prevail," he observed, impertinently cocking his snub nose toward heaven.

"I believe you are quite right in both propositions," I admitted.

"Cardinal points of mine. But excuse me, Sir, if you could spare my hat, I should like to put it on my head."

I had lost patience with the man, partly because it irks me to have strangers take liberties with my person, and also because I had reached the conclusion that he was simply a shallow dissembler and rascal. In a minute more I had cause to reconsider my charge of hypocrisy, and to question whether he might not lay claim to the nobler distinction of lunacy. The conductor came down the car, picking out Troubletonians with his undeceivable eye, and leaned toward us with outstretched fingers. Mr. Riley rose to his whole gaunt height at a jerk, and laid his hand on the official's arm with a fierce, bony gripe, which seemed to startle him as if it were the clutch of a skeleton.

"There is my ticket," said he. "Where is yours? Have you one for the Holy City? None? Then you are lost, lost, lost!"

The last words rose to a high, clear shriek, which pierced the heavy rumble of the train and rang throughout the car. The conductor, in spite of the coolness which becomes second nature to men of his profession, turned slightly pale and shrank back before this wild apostrophe, with a thrill of spiritual horror at the solemn meaning of the words, (I thought,) and not because he considered the man a maniac. The fanaticism of Troubleton had already flown far and cast a vague shadow of dread over a large community.

Turning abruptly from the conductor, my companion flung out his long arms toward the staring passengers, and continued in his strident, startling tenor:—"I have warned him. I call you all to witness that I have warned this man of his fearful peril. His blood be on his own head! The blood of your souls will be upon your heads, unless you turn to Dispensationism. I have said it. Amen!"

Before he had sat down again I was in the alley on my way to another car, not anxious to become known as the intimate of this extraordinary apostle. I found an empty seat by the Doctor, dropped into it, and told my story.

"My dear friend, give the fellow up," I concluded. "He's as mad as he can possibly be."

"So Festus thought of Paul," returned my poor comrade, with hopeless fatuity.

"Festus be d–d!" said I, losing my temper, and swearing for the first time since I graduated.

"I fear he was so," remarked the Doctor, severely. "Let me urge you to take warning from his fate."

"I beg your pardon, and that of Festus," I apologized. "But when I see you losing your reason, I can't keep my patience, and don't wish to."

"You will wonder at these feelings before many hours," he responded gently. "To-morrow you will be a believer."

"That makes no difference with me now," said I. "I am just as skeptical as if I hadn't a chance of conversion. Why, Doctor,—well, come now,—I'll argue the case with you. In the first place, all Church history is against you. There isn't a respectable author who upholds the doctrine of modern miracles."

"Mistake!" he exclaimed. "I wish I had you in my library. I could face you with writer on writer, fact on fact, all supporting my views. I can prove that miracles have not ceased for eighteen centuries; that they appeared abundantly in the days of the venerable Catholic fathers; that a stream of prophecies and healings and tongues ran clear through the Dark Ages down to the Reformation; that the superhuman influence flamed in the dreams of Huss, the ecstasies of Xavier, and the marvels of Fox and Usher. Look at the French Prophets, or Tremblers of the Cevennes, who had prophesyings and healings and discoverings of spirits and tongues and interpretations. Look at the ecstatic Jansenists, or Convulsionists of St. Médard, who were blessed with the same holy gifts. Look at the Quakers, from Fox downward, who have held it as a constant principle to expect powers, revelations, discernings of spirits, and instantaneous healings of diseases. Why, here we are in our own days; here we are with our chain of miracles still unbroken; here we are in the midst of this geological and unbelieving nineteenth century."

"Yes, here we are," said I; "and we must make the best of it. It's a bad affair, of course, to live in scientific times; and it's a great pity that we were not born in the Dark Ages; but it is too late to try to help it."

"Ah! you answer with a sneer; you are materialistic and infidel."

"Stop, Doctor! Let me make a bargain with you. If you won't call me names, I won't call you names. You are not in the pulpit now, and you have no right to domineer over me."

"But what do you say to all these signs and wonders which I have mentioned?"

"What do you say to the Rochester knockings and the Stratford mysteries and the Mormon miracles?"

"All deceptions, or works of the Devil," affirmed the Doctor, without a moment's hesitation.

"Excuse me for smiling," I replied "It is pleasant to observe what a quick spirit you have for discerning the true wonders from the false."

"You will see, you will see," he answered, and relapsed into a grave silence.

We reached New Haven and took rooms at the New Haven Hotel. I had anticipated a little nap before going out on our expedition; but I had not made allowance for the proselyting zeal of Dispensationists. My poor bewildered friend Potter uttered something which he sincerely meant to be a prayer, but which sounded to me painfully like blasphemy. Next they sang a queer hymn of theirs in discordant chorus. After that, Mr. Riley rolled up his sleeves and his eyes, flung his arms about, wept and shrieked unknown tongues for twenty minutes. Then the butcher, the baker, and candlestick-maker had a combined convulsion on the floor, rolling over each other and upsetting furniture. By this time the hotel was roused and the landlord made us a call.

"What the Old Harry are you about?" he demanded, angrily. "Don't you know it's after midnight?"

"We are holding a Dispensary," said Mr. Riley, solemnly.

"Well, I'll dispense with your company, if you don't stop it," returned mine host. "There's a nervous lady in the next room, and you've worried her into fits."

"Let me see her," cried the Doctor, eagerly. "It may be that the power of our faith is upon her. Which is her door?"

"You're drunk, Sir," returned the landlord, severely. "Keep quiet now, or I'll have you put to bed by the porters."

So saying, he shut the door and went muttering down-stairs. This untoward incident put an end to our exercises. A whispered palaver on Dispensationism followed, during which I tilted my chair back against the wall and stole a pleasant little nap.

It was about half past one when the Doctor shook me up and said, "It is time." We slipped down-stairs in our stockinged feet, got the front-door open without awakening the porter, shut it carefully after us, and put on our boots outside. Mr. Riley immediately started up College Street, which, as all the world is aware, runs northerly to the Canal Railroad, where it changes to Prospect Street and goes off in a half-wild state up country. At the end of College Street we left the city behind us, struck the rail-track, forsook that presently for a desert sort of road known as Canal Street, and kept on in a northwesterly direction for half a mile farther. It was a dark, cool, and blustering night, such as the New Englanders are very apt to have on the second of April. The wind blew violently down the open country, shaking the scattered trees as if it meant to wake them instantly out of their winter's slumber, and screeching in the murky distances like a tomcat of the housetops, or rather like a continent of tomcats. The Doctor lost his hat, chased it a few rods, and then gave it up, lest he should miss his burglars. Once I halted and watched, thinking that I saw two or three dark shapes dogging us not far behind, but concluded that I had been deceived by the black-art of magical Night, and hastened on after my crazy comrades. Presently Riley stopped, pointed to a dark mass on our right which seemed about large enough to be a story-and-a-half cottage, and whispered, "Here we are, brethren."

"No doubt about that," said I. "But what the mischief is to come of it?"

"Oh! let's go back and call the police," urged the baker, in a tremulous gurgle.

"Too late!" returned Riley. "It is given to me to see the burglars. They are inside. They are taking the silver out of the closet. There will be murder in five minutes."

"If there must be murder, why, of course we ought to have a hand in it,"

I suggested. "Our motives at least will be good."

"Right!" said Riley. "Come on, brethren! We must prove our faith by our works."

But the baker hung back in a most dough-faced fashion, while the butcher and the candlestick-maker encouraged him in his cowardice. At last it was agreed that this unheroic trio should wait in the yard as a reserve, while Riley, the Doctor, and I went in to worry the burglars. Leaving the weaker brethren in a clump of evergreen shrubbery, we, the forlorn-hope, stole around the house to get at a back-door which Prophet Riley had plainly seen in his dream, and which he foretold us we should find unlocked. I was not much amazed to discover a back-door, inasmuch as most houses have one, but I really was surprised to learn that it was unfastened. My astonishment at this circumstance, however, was over- balanced by my alarm at finding that the Doctor still persisted in his intention of entering; for I had hoped that at the last moment his faith would give way, and let him slide down from the elevation of his ridiculous and reckless purpose.

"But you are not really going in?" I whispered, jerking at his coat-tails.

"Certainly," he replied. "The robbers are surely there. The door was unlocked."

"Mere carelessness of the servants. Stop! Come back! Nonsense! Madness! You'll get into a scrape. Respectable family. Good gracious, what a pack of fools!"

While I was rapidly muttering these observations, he was pulling away from me and stealing into the house after his prophet. Finding that there was no stopping him, I followed, in obedience, perhaps, to that great and no doubt beneficent, but as yet unexplained, instinct which causes sheep to leap after their bellwether. We were in a basement, or semi-subterranean story. I felt the walls of a narrow passage on either side of me, and can swear to a kitchen near by, for I smelt its cooking-range. I walked on the foremost end of my toes, and would have paid five dollars for a pair of list slippers. Rather than take another such little promenade as I had in that passage, I would submit to be placed on the middle sleeper of a railroad-bridge, with an express-train coming at me without a cowcatcher. Presently I overtook the Doctor's coat-tails again, and found that they were ascending a staircase. At the top of the stairs was a door, and on the other side of the door was a room, the uses of which I won't undertake to swear to, for I never saw it, although I was in it longer than I wanted to be. All I know is that it seemed to be as full of chairs, and tables, and sofas, and sideboards, and stoves, and crickets, as if it had been a shop for second-hand furniture. I was just rubbing my shins after an encounter with a remarkably solid object, nature uncertain, when somebody near me fell over something with a crash and a groan. Immediately somebody else seized me by the cravat and began to throttle me. Whoever it was, I floored him with a right-hander, and sent him across the other person, as I judged by the combined grunt, and the desperate, though dumb struggle which followed. Now there were two of them down, and how many standing I could not guess. An instant afterward, a muffled voice, like that of a man only half awake, shouted from a room behind me, "Who's there? Get out! I'm a-coming!" This seemed to encourage the individuals who were having a rough-and-tumble on the carpet, for they commenced roaring simultaneously, "Help! murder! thieves! fire!" without, however, relaxing hostilities for a moment.

The next pleasant incident was a pistol-shot, the ball of which whizzed so near my head that it made me dodge, although I have not the least notion who fired it or whom it was aimed at. Female screams and masculine shouts now sounded from various directions. Thinking that I had done all the good in my power, I concluded to get out of this confusion; but either the doorway by which we entered had suddenly walled itself up, or else I had lost my reckoning; for, stumble where I would, feel about as I would, I could not find it. I did, indeed, come to an opening in the wall, but there was no staircase the other side of it, and it simply introduced me to another invisible apartment. I had no chance to reflect upon the matter and decide of my own free will whether I would go in or not. A sudden rush of fighting, howling persons swept me along, jammed me against a pillar, pushed me over a table, and forced me to engage in a furious struggle, exceedingly awkward by reason of the darkness and the extraordinary amount of furniture. A tremendous punch in the side of the head upset me and made me lose my temper. Rising in a rage, I grappled some man, tripped up his heels, got on his chest, and never left off belaboring him until I felt pretty sure that he would keep quiet during the rest of the soiree. I hope sincerely that this suffering individual was Mr. John M. Riley; but, from the rotundity of stomach which I bestrode, I very much fear that it was the Doctor.

All this while the house resounded with outcries of, "Who's there?" "What's the matter?" "Father!" "Henry!" "Jenny!" "Maria!" "Thieves!" "Murder!" "Police!" and so forth. Of course I did not feel disposed to tell who was there; and in actual fact I could not have explained what was the matter. Accordingly I left all these inquisitive people unsatisfied, and busied myself solely with my fallen antagonist. Quitting him at last in a state of quiescence, I knocked over a person who had been attacking me in the rear, and then blundered into a passage, which I suppose to have been the front-hall, just as a light glimmered up in the rooms behind me. It gives one a very odd sensation to tread on a prostrate body, not knowing whether it is dead or alive, whether it is a man or a woman. I had that sensation in ascending a stairway which seemed to be the only egress from the aforesaid passage. The individual made no movement, and I did not stop to count his or her pulses. Without feeling at all disposed to take my oath on the matter, I rather suspect that a negro servant-girl had fainted away there in the act of trying to run off in her nightgown. Upstairs I tumbled, resolved to get upon the roof and slide down the lightning-rod, or else jump from a window. Pushing open a door, which I fell against, I found myself in a pretty little bedroom lighted by a single candle, articles of female costume banging across chairs and scattered over dressing-tables, while on the floor, just as she had swooned in her terror, lay a blonde girl of nineteen or twenty, pale as marble, but beautiful. Right through my alarm jarred a throb of mingled self-reproach and pity and admiration. I tossed a pile of bedclothes over her, kissed the long light-brown hair which rippled on the straw matting, daguerreotyped the face on my memory with a glance, blew out the light, opened a window, and slipped out of it. It is unpleasant to drop through darkness, not knowing how far you will fall, nor whether you will not alight on iron pickets. Fortunately, I came down in a fresh flower-bed, with no unpleasant result, except a sensation of having nearly bitten my tongue off. I had scarcely steadied myself on my feet, when a tall figure made a rush from some near ambuscade and seized me by the collar. Supposing him to be one of our reserve force, I quietly suffered him to lead me forward, and was on the point of whispering my name, when my eye caught a glimmer of metal, and I knew that I was in the hands of a policeman.

"Come in and help," said I. "The house is full of rascals."

Thinking me one of the family, he loosed his hold on my broadcloth and hurried away to the back-door. Whoever reads this story has already taken it for granted that I did not follow him, but that I did, on the contrary, make for the city and never cease travelling until I had reached the hotel. Let no man reproach me with forsaking my friend, the Doctor, in his extremity. I was brought up to reverence the law and to entertain a virtuous terror of policemen; and, besides, what could I have effected in that horrible labyrinth of dark rooms and multitudinous furniture? I rang up the porter, went to bed, and lay awake alt the rest of the night, listening for the return of my companions. No one came: no Doctor, no Riley, no butcher, no baker, no candlestick-maker. I was apparently the sole survivor of our little army. In the morning I walked over to the police-station, peeped cautiously through the grated door of a long room where the night's gatherings are lodged, and discovered my five friends, tattered and bruised, but holding a lively Dispensary in one corner. From that moment I despaired of the Doctor and resolved to let him manage his own monomania. I was still peeping when two of the police and a sly-looking man in citizen's dress came up and stared boldly at the prisoners.

"Well, Old Cock, do you see your game?" asked one of the "force."

"Thaht's him," returned the Old Cock, speaking with the soft drawl of the New York cockney. "Tall fellah thah with thah black eye, thaht's a-goin' it now. Thundah, what a roarah!"

"Well, what is he?" inquired the second of the New-Haveners.

"Joseph Hull, 'ligious lunatic," said the Old Cock. "Was in thah Bloomingdale Asylum. Cut off one night about foah months ago and stole a suit o' clothes that belonged to John M. Riley, with a lot o' money and papahs and lettahs in thah pockets. How'd you get hold of him?"

"Broke into a house eout here last night," related the first New-Havener. "He and them other fellers, and one more that we ha'n't found. I was on my beat 'bout one o'clock, and see 'em puttin' up College Street full chisel. I thought they looked kinder dangerous. So I called Doolittle here, and Jarvis, and Jacobs, and we after 'em. Chased 'em 'bout a mild and treed 'em at Square Russoll's, way up Canal, eout in the country. Three was in the yard and gin right up without doublin' a fist, though they had their pockets chuck full o' little pistols. We locked 'em into the cellar, and then, went upstairs, where there was a devil of a yellin' and fightin'. Hanged if I know what they come there for. They'd been pitchin' into one another and knockin' one another's heads off, besides smashin' furnichy and chimbly crockery, but hadn't stole a thing. The fat one and the long one—them two with white chokers—was lyin' on the floor pootty much used up. There was another that got up-stairs and jumped out a winder. Jarvis was outside and collared him, but thought he was Russell's son-in-law,—ho, ho, ho!—and let him off,—ho, ho, ho! Tell ye, Jarvis feels thunderin' small 'bout it. Ha'n't been reound this mornin'."

"Well, I'll leave my warrant with your big-wigs, and come after my man when they've got through with him," said the New York detective, turning away.

Fearing the return of the enlightened Jarvis, I now left, and, taking the first train to Troubleton, informed some of the leading Dispensationists concerning their pastor's calamity. By dint of heavy bail and strong representations they saved him, together with the butcher and baker and candlestick-maker, from the disgrace of prison and the lunatic asylum. But the adventure was the ruin of Dispensationism. Mr. Joseph Hull had to give up Mr. John M. Riley's valuables, and return to his seclusion at Bloomingdale. Deprived of the apostle who had set them on fire, and overwhelmed by public ridicule, the Dispensationists lost their faith, got ashamed of their minister, and turned him adrift. He disappeared in the great whirl of men and other circumstances which fills this wonderful country. From time to time, during five years, I had made inquiries concerning him of mineralogists, botanists, and other vagrant characters, without getting the smallest hint as to his whereabouts. At last he had turned up as the private prophet of three middle-aged widows.

"Jenny," said I to my wife, "do you remember the night I frightened you so and kissed you as you lay in a fainting-fit?"

"You always say you kissed me, but I don't believe it," returned that dear woman whom I love, honor, and cherish. "Yes, I remember the night well enough."

"Well, that poor Doctor Potter, who was my Mahomet on that occasion, and led me to victory in your parlor, and was the indirect means of my getting my houri,—I have heard from him. He is our next neighbor."

"Mercy on us, Frederic! I hope not! What mischief won't he do to people who are so handy?"

"Don't be worried, my dear," said I. "I sha'n't go over to his religion again,—unless, indeed, you should insist upon it. But here he is, and still a supernaturalist. I am anxious to know just how mad he is. I shall call on him in a day or two."