The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864

It was evidently an oversight, for the medium's hand erased the offending title.

"When did Sir Joseph die?" I ventured to ask.

"That I cannot tell you," replied his late correspondent. "I have heard nothing from him for several months. When he last wrote, he was suffering under a severe influenza which must have terminated fatally. But why not ask him the question?"

"That is just my purpose.—Sir Joseph Barley, can you give me the date of your death?"

"It is hard for spirits to give numbers," said Mr. Stellato.

"It is sometimes done by tips," quoth Miss Turligood.

I pressed the demand, and, after much cajoling and counting, a certain day of March was fixed upon.

"Can you give me the place?"

I was instructed to call over the names of such foreign cities as I might remember, and assured that Sir Joseph would tip at the right one.

It turned out to be "London."

"And now, Sir Joseph, could you oblige me with the name of the physician who attended your last sickness?"

But no sooner had I propounded this final query than Mr. Stellato declared his consciousness of a skeptical influence in the company which would go far to impede other manifestations. Where people were not harmonial, he explained, the Detached Vitalized Electricity being unable to unite with the Imponderable Magnetic Fluid given off by mediums, satisfactory results could not be obtained.

"But we have at least obtained this satisfaction," said I, addressing Colonel Prowley: "Sir Joseph has committed himself about the day and place of his decease. You must soon hear from some member of his family. If these particulars have been correctly given, there will be, at least, the beginning of evidence upon which to establish his identity."

Mrs. Colfodder was so shocked with the perversity of unbelief which she detected in this harmless remark, that, nudging Miss Branly, she solemnly arose and moved to break up the circle for the night. And as it was already past nine o'clock, no violent objection was made to the proposition.

"The circle will meet in this place to-morrow morning at eight o'clock, for the pursuance of further investigations," proclaimed Miss Turligood, in sonorous accents.

"Fast-Day, Madam," mildly suggested Colonel Prowley.

"The spirits do not recognize Fast-Day. Tomorrow at eight o'clock. In this place. Let every medium be punctual. It is to be hoped that the conditions will then be favorable!"

This latter aspiration, with its feminine redundancy of emphasis, was cast in my direction, as Miss Turligood swept haughtily from the room.

Her final exit, however, was neither curt nor in any way effective. For it was no easy matter to gather up the bags, parcels, shawls, and other devices which the good lady had brought with her and scattered about the entry. One India-rubber shoe in particular eluded our search, till I was ready to admit the supposition that the spirits had carried it off, as entirely reasonable and satisfactory. A good-natured Irishman, servant to Miss Turligood, who had come with a lantern to see her home, at length discovered this missing bit of apparel upon Miss Branly's foot,—that medium, as it appeared, having in a fit of abstraction appropriated three. Finally the lantern glimmered down the gravel-walk, and Mr. Stellato, with a lady upon each arm, was persuaded to follow it. It was waking from a nightmare to get rid of them.

"Over at last!" exclaimed Miss Prowley, when we returned to the drawing-room. She had been sitting in silence in an obscure corner, and I had scarcely realized her presence. "Over at last! and of all fatiguing and unprofitable employments that the folly of man ever devised, this trifling with spirits is certainly the chief."

"Nay, my dear," urged the brother, in his placid way, "these good people who have fastened themselves upon us seem so anxious to continue the investigation that I cannot find it in my heart to refuse them. I did wish, to be sure, that we might have our Fast-Day in quiet; but Miss Turligood, who knows much more about the matter than we do, thinks the spirits would not like it, if we did, and so—although we will absent ourselves from the sitting long enough to go to church—we must really make the best of it, and receive the circle."

"You speak like a believer, Colonel Prowley," I said.

"No, not quite that," replied the old gentleman,—"yet, truly, I sometimes hardly know why I am not. The knockings alone are quite inexplicable; and when it comes to a fiery hand ringing the dinner-bell, which Stellato can show in the dark–Besides, there are the communications from distinguished characters, many of them so very important and interesting. To be sure, my poor cousin Barley did not do himself justice this evening, though some of his ideas were very poetical; but, really, the other night, when he told us how much the Royal Sextons were thought of in the spheres, and repeated that very high compliment which Thomas Herne paid to my family-history, it all seemed so marvellous, and yet so natural, that I could not help subscribing pretty handsomely to the cause."

"And one of the privileges that your subscription has gone to purchase I am yet to enjoy. Dr. Burge wished me to visit, in his company, your former pastor, Mr. Clifton,—and we must look for him, as I see, at the Spiritualists' Festival in the Town Hall."

"Sad! sad!" cried Colonel Prowley, thoughtfully chewing upon my remark. "It is an abiding shame for a minister of the gospel to meddle with these things, except, possibly, in the way of exorcism. Truly, a deep humiliation has fallen upon the town."

And the chagrin of this respected gentleman was wholly sincere. The Puritanical distinction between clergy and laity had scarcely faded in his mind. The pastor of the First Church had belonged to a cherished class,—a class whose moral and intellectual consequence must be maintained by avoidance of all dangerous inquiries, common interests, and secular amusements. A minister attending a Jenny-Lind Charity-Concert in a play-house, or leading armed men in the most sacred cause for which human blood might be shed,—what offences would these have been to this titular Colonel of Foxden, who had won his honors by a six-months' finery and dining as aide-de-camp to some forgotten Governor!

"I fear I shall not be back before you wish to close the house."

"Never mind, you remember the old arrangement: door-key under the scraper,—light burning in the drawing-room."

With hearty thanks I went forth to keep my appointment with Dr. Burge.

II

The narrative here takes us to a portion of the shadowy perturbation which any who have turned these pages as a fictitious rendering of the grotesque in experience will do well to omit. Only a mortifying, though perchance salutary, sense of human infirmity comes from beholding one set over the people as intercessor and counsellor struggling in the meshes of that snare which the Enemy had spread for the undisciplined and wandering multitude. No, not even struggling now. That Clifton had fought through solitary days against the wretched enervation which invited him, I had reason to know. But he had dared to tamper with the normal functions of mind and body, to try fantastic tricks with that mysterious agent through which the healthy will commands the organism. And when the mental disorder, mocked at and preached against in happier years, at length ran through Foxden, the morbid condition of his system was powerless to resist the contagion.

And let us not overlook the fact that in these manifestations there was to be found a palpable reality, a positive marvel, well calculated to lay hold of a skeptic like Clifton. His early associations with the Transcendentalists had undermined his faith in all popular presentations of Christianity. But his peculiarly emotional nature could never dwell in that haziness of opinion upon august subjects in which sounder men among the brethren made out to live cheerfully and to work vigorously. While Clifton madly sought a position of intelligence and satisfaction beyond the reach of humanity, the necessary abstraction enlarged and stimulated his reasoning powers. But the penalty was to be paid. For with terrible recoil from its tension his mind contracted to far less than normal limits. Then came a listless vacuity, a tawdry dreaminess. And this poor minister, who flattered himself that he had outgrown every graceful and touching form with which human affection or human infirmity had clothed the Christian idea, stumbled amid the rubbish of an effete heathenism, with its Sibylline contortions and tripod-responses, which the best minds of Pagan civilization found no difficulty in pronouncing a delusion and a lie.

I knew Dr. Burge for one of those most useful instructors who will patiently examine with the intellect what the instinct teaches them to condemn. He seldom helped the doctrine he assailed by denying it such facts as were true and such attractions as were real. He had cheerfully accepted whatever reproach came to him from frequenting circles in the attempt to see the mystery from the believers' point of view. I was not surprised at finding him upon one of the back benches in the Town Hall.

"Nothing noteworthy," he said, as I joined him. "Only women have spoken,—the excited nervous system careering without restraint,—no spirits yet."

"They pretend inspiration, I suppose."

"Oh, yes; and it is not surprising that semi-educated people, ignorant of analogous phenomena, should take the omne ignotum pro magnifico."

"Yet you are said to be a believer in the possession which the mediums claim?"

"Certainly," replied Dr. Burge, "and to just this extent:—I do not doubt the possibility of intercourse between man and the lower grades of immaterial life, and I am willing to adopt this hypothesis to explain any occurrence where the facts demand it. That, in rare cases, such may be the most simple and natural supposition, I readily admit. The ordinary performances, however, may be accounted for without calling in god or demon to untie the knot."

I remarked that Mr. Clifton was not to be seen upon the platform.

"He is kept out of the way until the last,—in the Selectmen's Room, as I am told, and alone."

"I fear all appeal would now be in vain; yet, Sir, I would not have you spare an effort to awaken him to the peril of his course."

"Let us go to him, then," assented Dr. Burge.

Upon common occasions, the Selectmen's Room failed to suggest any exceptional character in its occupants. It was a narrow, ill-lighted, unventilated apartment, bitter with the after-taste of taxes, prophetically flavorous of taxes yet to be. Stove-accommodation beyond the criticism of the most fastidious salamander, a liberal sprinkling of sand with a view to the ruminant necessities of the town-patricians, two or three stiff armchairs with straws protruding from their well-worn cushions, intolerant benches for unofficial occupancy,—altogether a gloomy aggregate result of the diverse ideals of social well-being to be found among the inhabitants of Foxden. But now I recognized a new element in this familiar chamber; a strange contagion hung about the walls; a something which imparted delicate edge to the nervous system was perceptible in the dry heat of the air. Near an oracular table, which bore evidence of recent manipulation, stood the Reverend Charles Clifton: others had evidently been with him before our entrance; he was now alone. An oil-lamp sputtered feebly in the corner. The stove-devil glared at us through his one glazed eye, and puffed out his mephitic welcome as I shut the door.

"Clifton, my old friend!" exclaimed Dr. Burge.

The person addressed raised his head, half closed his eyes, as one who endeavors to fix objects which are flitting before him. It seemed necessary to withdraw his inward gaze from some delicious dazzlement of dream-land. At last he spoke slowly and with effort.

"Burge, you here?—and one of us?"

"Heaven forbid!" cried my companion. "I but look upon these things for my own warning, and in the way of my duty as teacher to those who might be disposed to tamper with unknown powers, within or without."

"Say, rather, to melt the iron links which gyve soul to body," said Clifton, in constrained articulation, through which a moaning undertone seemed ever trying to be heard. "Say, rather, to produce a finer exaltation than wine, opium, or hashish,—for it is most sweet to subject the animal organism to the control of spirit-wills."

"A grateful doctrine to those who dare to substitute a morbid receptivity for an active endeavor!"

"It is to soothe the sense-powers, so that others may use them to give us intimations far beyond their common capacity."

"'I keep under my body and bring it into subjection,'" quoted Dr. Burge, emphasizing the personal pronoun. "The Apostle declares that his own immortal individuality alone controls his members,—and why? 'lest, when I have preached unto others, I myself should become a castaway.'"

The Doctor delivered the last sentence with rich cathedral-emphasis, and with the full unction of priestly authority.

Clifton, or whatever vague and dusky power controlled him, cowered at the rebuke. The nervous energy with which he had experimented, or which he had left passive for the experiments of others, seemed withdrawn from his frame.

Dr. Burge perceived his advantage, and continued:—

"I speak to you, my fallen brother, as I cannot speak to the foolish people who grope in this miasma of delusion. Silly women, yielding to the natural vanity of their sex, may mistake hysterics for inspiration. Vacillating and vacant men may seek a new sensation by encouraging a revival of the demoniacal epidemics of heathendom. But you, who have been a preacher of the gospel, though, as I must now more than ever believe, after a devitalized and perverted method,—you, to leave the honest work of a dweller upon earth, to chatter of immensity, to weaken the brain that it may no longer separate the true from the false!—believe me, Clifton, you have been bought by the shallowest promises which the King of Evil ever exchanged for a sacred and inviolable soul."

"You have spoken according to your business," replied Mr. Clifton, impatiently. "You, who begin by assuming the impossibility of spirit-intercourse since Bible times, with what candor can you examine the facts we build upon?"

"I make no such assumption," was the rejoinder. "Has it not been foretold that 'in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils'? Have we not aforetime been vexed with them in this very New England? For I almost justify Mather's words, when he stigmatizes the necromancy of his day as 'a terrible Plague of Evil Angels,' or, in still plainer speech, as 'a prodigious descent of devils upon divers places near the centre of this Province.' And how better can we characterize this confused and distracting babblement which gives no good gift to man?"

"It has given him this," exclaimed Clifton, advancing towards Dr. Burge, and seeming for a few moments to resume his old personality,—"it has given him the knowledge of a life to come! You think it, preach it, believe it,—but you do not know it. A susceptibility to impressions from the inmost characters of men has been mine through life. It has been given me to perceive what facts and feelings most deeply adhered in the mental consciousness. And I tell you, Burge, ministers both of your communion and of mine repeat the old words of sublimest assurance, sway congregations with descriptions bright or lurid of future worlds, yet behind all this glowing speech and blatant confidence there has lurked,—oh, will you deny it?—there has lurked a grovelling doubt of man's immortality."

"I will not deny it," said Dr. Burge, with slow solemnity. "Sinners that we are, how can we ask that faith be at no moment confused by the thousand cries of infidelity which our profession requires us to answer? Let my soul be chilled by transient shades of skepticism, rather than dote in a blind and puerile credulity! If I am not at all times equally penetrated by the great fact of man's conscious immortality, it is because of my undesert. A way to know of the doctrine has been revealed: it is by doing the will of the Father: who of us has fulfilled the condition? But I can meet you on lower ground, and declare, that, according to our human observation, it is not well for man to know the destiny of his being in all its details until the trials and victories of life have taught him to turn such knowledge to elevating use. It is the deplorable sinfulness of our nature which seeks to obtain without deserving, to possess the end and despise the appointed means."

Some reply would doubtless have been made to these pertinent considerations, had not the confused tramp of a committee been heard at the door. The professors of the "New Dispensation" had come to conduct the Reverend Charles Clifton to their platform. The distinguished convert shuddered, as if affected by some incorporeal presence, and suffered himself to be led away.

"I can do nothing more," murmured Dr. Burge; "and why should I stay to hear diluted rhetoric, or inflated commonplace, from lips which, however unworthily, once proclaimed the simplicity of the gospel?"

"Because it is not well to prejudge what may offer some possible variety in this credence," I ventured to suggest.

"You are right; we will stay."

A murmur of applause followed the appearance of Clifton upon the platform,—yet it was only a murmur; for the flock, long pastured upon delicate delusions, received as matter of course whatever shepherding chance offered. Did not the face of the medium wear an expression of earthly disappointment at this slender recognition? Could it be that there was needed the hot-house heat of a carnal "success" to favor this exquisite flowering of the spirit? Can we suppose that this whole matter was no other than some Yankee patent to avoid the awful solitude in which each human soul must enter into relations with the unseen?

Slowly and in dreamy heaviness the discourse began. The inspirational claims seemed to lie in the manifest improbability of a man of Clifton's cultivation being so dull and diffuse in a natural condition. Yet, as the message wore on, it cannot be denied that a strange influence was at work. The words followed each other with greater fluency and in richer abundance. The meaning, to be sure, was still vague enough; and whenever some commonplace truth or plausibility protruded from the general washiness, it was seized upon and beaten and stretched to the last degree of tenuity. Phrases upon phrases of gorgeous dreaminess. A soothing delight,—yet such delight as only the bodily senses demanded. A joyful deliverance from the bondage of intellectual life. Hints that our human consciousness of sin was a vain delusion from which the "developed" man was happily delivered. "Come up here," said the preacher, in substance, "and escape from this moral accountability which sits so heavily upon you. Here is a sensuous paradise, sweet and debilitating, offering varied delights to the eclecticism of personal taste. All angular and harsh things may be dissolved in copious floods of words, and washed into a ravishing, enervating Universe."

An hour—two hours—passed. The air was thick and poisonous. Attention had been strained to the utmost. Other things were to be noted by those accustomed to regard mental disorder from a physiological point of view.

And now, by some abnormal mode of cerebral activity, the trance-speaker won strange sympathies from his auditors. Certain faculties in Clifton had reached an expansion not permitted to the healthy man. A plastic power came from him and took the impress of other minds. Old experiences groped out of forgotten corners and haunted the discourse. At one time it seemed as if all that was potential in the culture of the medium or his audience might be stimulated into specious blossom. Phenomena were exhibited which transcended the conscious powers of the human soul,—nay, which testified of its latent ability to work without organic conditions. Our unemployed brain-organs, as Hamilton and others have clearly proved, are always employing themselves. And from this self-employment—or was it demon-employment?—there swept through the consciousness a vague delirium of excitement. In all that assembly a single pulse beat feverish measures. The climax was reached. Without was the soft spring night veiling the scarcely touched range of knowledge and beauty offered to the healthy energies of man; within were dazed wanderers in a region of morbid emotion, seeking to intensify the colors of Nature, willing to waste precious vitality in conjurations of the dead.

The wretched thraldom was over,—and what had it left?

An exquisite sensitiveness of the nerves of sense, imagination exalted, memory goaded, reason and judgment overthrown.

III

In his Fast-Day sermon Dr. Burge delivered himself of much weighty testimony against those thaumaturgical incantations of heathenism which had been revived among us. With his splendor of clerical pause and emphasis he read the denunciations against a sinful nation to which the prophet Isaiah has affixed the awful words,—"Saith the Lord, the Lord of Hosts."

"And they shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbor, city against city, and kingdom against kingdom."

Here the preacher's dark eyes left the sacred volume, and seemed to gaze upon some coming struggle in which the sins of the people would meet a bloody retribution. Then, referring to the page, he pronounced with bitterness of holy indignation the prophetic curse which was that day fulfilled in our cherished New England.

"And they shall seek to the idols, and to the charmers, and to them that have familiar spirits, and to the wizards."

The sermon made no more visible impression upon the sinful portion of the congregation than homilies against novel and pleasant indulgences are wont to do.

"The Apostle was right, after all," said Colonel Prowley, quoting the text upon the meeting-house steps; "we should 'try the spirits.'"

"No objection to that," said the post-master; "but here's Dr. Burge tells us to keep out of their way, and call them all humbugs, without trying them at all."

The gentleman referred to joined our party upon the meeting-house green, and accompanied us home.

As we entered the house, our ears were saluted by a sort of scuffling noise, with an accompaniment of broken English. Miss Turligood, highly charged with the Detached Vitalized Electricity, or some stimulant of equal potency, ran to meet us in the entry, to enjoin silence and a passive state of mind before entering the parlor. The manifestations during service had been most wonderful. Twynintuft had lifted the table to the ceiling, with Mr. Stellato clinging to the legs. Mrs. Colfodder had had her back-hair taken down, and the housemaid was certain that somebody tried to kiss her.

We made for the parlor with all convenient speed. Notwithstanding the solemn adjurations of Dr. Burge, we entertained guilty hopes of seeing some of the marvels which had become such positive drugs in our absence. But to see anything was, for a long time, out of the question; for the spirits had insisted upon having the shutters closed, and shawls pinned up before the cracks in the same, ere they would favor mortals with an exhibition. Finally, dim outlines revealed themselves through the obscurity. We made out a female figure (it was the cook, so Miss Prowley whispered) who was haranguing the assembly at the rate of a word every thirty seconds, or thereabouts.

Cook as Twynintuft:—"I am Mister Twynintuft. I set lots by you all. I left my bright spirit-home to come here to-day. The squashes was musty afore they was brought into the house. No blame to the cook. Them pickled termarterses couldn't keep into spring, and so I tell you now. The spheres is a dry place, and everythin' is most a-beautiful here."

Betty, the housemaid, loquitur.—(She appears in the character of Red-Jacket, a popular personation upon these occasions,—it being very easy to talk Indian by the simple recipe of transposing the nominative and objective cases of the personal pronoun.) "Me don't like what you say, old Twyney! I's name's Red-Jacket. Pale-face give fire-water to I. The squashes was good enough till cook left 'em out in the rain. Me have hunting-ground in fifth sphere. When me puts up tomatoes in the spirit-world, me rosins 'em when they bile. Great influence comes from I to-day; also, much development."