Part 23

These are by no means isolated cases. It is said that General Hancock, who had faced the King of Terrors on too many battle-fields to fear him, was pursued by a presentiment of this sort, only too soon to be fully verified. While present as an honored guest at a dinner, surrounded by his old comrades in arms, the general remarked to a friend that he had come there with a premonition that it would be his last visit, and that he had but a short time longer to live. In fact, his lamented death occurred within a short time after.

Instances of fatal presentiments before going into battle are familiar to every veteran of our great Civil War. I have heard many of them feelingly rehearsed by eye-witnesses. The same thing has occurred, under precisely similar conditions, during the late war with Spain. But here is a tale of that earlier conflict, as published broadcast to the world, without question or qualification:--

“In a research for facts bearing upon psychology, Mrs. Bancroft (a daughter-in-law of the historian) has brought to light a strange story relating to either the record of odd ‘spirit communications’ or coincidences. On July 2, 1863, the wives of Major Thomas Y. Brent and Captain Eugene Barnes, two Confederate officers, were together at a wedding in Fayette County, each wearing her bridal dress. While dressing for the occasion Mrs. Brent’s companion discovered a blood spot upon the dress of the major’s wife, which could not be accounted for, and somewhat excitedly exclaimed, ‘It is a bad omen!’ Two days after Mrs. Brent experienced a severe pain in the region of her heart, although at the time in the best of health. This occurred at the birthplace of her husband. Two days later she heard that, while storming a Federal fortification, her husband was killed on July 4, 1863, as far as she could learn, at the identical time that she had experienced the heart pain. The major was shot in the breast by a Minié ball and instantly killed.”

There lies before me, as I write, the authoritative statement of an army officer, a survivor of the terrible charge up San Juan Hill, before Santiago de Cuba, to the effect that just before advancing to the charge a brother officer had confided to him a conviction that the speaker would be killed, entreating his friend to receive his last messages for his relatives. In this case, too, the fatal premonition was fully verified. The doomed man was shot while bravely storming the Spanish stronghold.

Still another story of this war has been widely published, so lately as this chapter was begun. It has reference to the death of the bandmaster of the United States ship Lancaster, then cruising in the South Atlantic. Upon learning that the Lancaster was to touch at Rio de Janeiro the bandmaster requested his discharge, giving as his reason that he had for years been under the presentiment that if he went to that port he would die of yellow fever. A discharge was refused him. The ship entered the harbor of Rio, and the bandmaster immediately took to his bed with all the symptoms of yellow fever. The identity of the malady soon established itself. He was taken to the plague hospital on shore and there died. One of the bandsmen who kissed him as he was being removed from the ship also died. The account goes on to say that “these two are the only cases reported at Rio for months. The fever has not spread, and no man besides the unfortunate bandsman caught the fever, the health of the ship’s crew remaining excellent.”

The number of persons who have testified to having seen the apparitions or death wraiths of dying or deceased friends is already large, as the records of various societies for psychical research bear witness. These phenomena are not in their nature forewarnings of something that is about to happen, but announcements of something that already has happened. They therefore can have no relation to what was formerly known as “second sight.”

In spite of all that our much-boasted civilization has done in the way of freeing poor, fallible man from the thraldom of superstition, there is indubitable evidence that a great many people still put faith in direct revelations from the land of spirits. In the course of a quiet chat one evening, where the subject was under discussion, one of the company who had listened attentively, though silently all the while, to all manner of theories, spiced with ridicule, abruptly asked how we would account for the following incident which he went on to relate, and I have here set down word for word:--

“My grandparents,” he began, “had a son whom they thought all the world of. From all accounts I guess Tom was about one of the likeliest young fellows that could be scared up in a day’s journey. Everybody said Tom was bound to make his mark in the world, and at the time I speak of he seemed in a fair way of doing it, too, for at one and twenty he was first mate of the old Argonaut which had just sailed for Calcutta. This would make her tenth voyage. Well, as I am telling you, the very day after the Argonaut went to sea, a tremendous gale set in from the eastward. It blew great guns. Actually, now, it seemed as if that gale would never stop blowing.

“As day after day went by, and the storm raged on without intermission, you may judge if the hearts of those who had friends at sea in that ship did not sink down and down with the passing hours. Of course, the old folks could think of nothing else.

“Let me see; it was a good bit ago. Ah, yes; it was on the third or fourth night of the gale, I don’t rightly remember which, and it don’t matter much, that grandfather and grandmother were sitting together, as usual, in the old family sitting-room, he poring over the family Bible as he was wont to do in such cases, she knitting and rocking, or pretending to knit, but both full of the one ever present thought, which each was trying so hard to hide from the other.

“Dismally splashed the raindrops against the window-panes, mournfully the wind whined in the chimney-top, while every now and then the fire would spit and sputter angrily on the hearth, or flare up fitfully when some big gust came roaring down the chimney to fan the embers into a fiercer flame. Then there would be a lull, during which, like an echo of the tempest, the dull and distant booming of the sea was borne to the affrighted listener’s ears. But nothing I could say would begin to give you an idea of the great gale of 1817.

“Well, the old folks sat there as stiff as two statues, listening to every sound. When a big gust tore over the house and shook it till it rocked again, gran’ther would steal a look at grandmother over his specs, but say never a word. The old lady would give a start, let her hands fall idly upon her lap, sit for a moment as if dazed, and then go on with her knitting again as if her very life depended on it.

“Unable at length to control her feelings, grandmother got up out of her chair, with her work in her hand, went to the window, put aside the curtain, and looked out. I say looked out, for of course all was so pitch-dark outside that nothing could be seen, yet there she stood with her white face pressed close to the wet panes, peering out into the night, as if questioning the storm itself of the absent one.

“All at once she drew back from the window with a low cry, saying in a broken voice: ‘My God, father, it’s Tom in his coffin! They’re bringing him up here, to the house.’ Then she covered her face with her hands, to shut out the horrid sight.

“‘Set down ’Mandy!’ sternly commanded the startled old man. ‘Don’t be making a fool of yourself. Don’t ye know tain’t no sech a thing what you’re sayin’? Set down, I say, this minnit!’

“But no one could ever convince grandmother that she had not actually seen, with her own eyes, her dear boy Tom, the idol of her heart, lying cold in death. To her indeed it was a revelation from the tomb, for the ship in which Tom had sailed was never heard from.”

XII

THE DIVINING-ROD

“One point must still be greatly dark, The reason why they do it.”

It is a matter of common knowledge that certain expert “finders,” as they are called, use a divining-rod for detecting underground springs in New England; in Pennsylvania for the locating of oil springs; and in the mineral regions of the Rockies for the discovery of hidden veins of valuable ores. The Cornish miners, also, have long made use of the divining-rod, or “dowsing-rod,” as they call it, for a like purpose. A further research, probably, might reveal a similar practice in other countries; but for our purpose it is enough to present two of the most intelligent in the world as giving it their sanction and support.

Various implements are employed by the expert operator in his quest for what lies hidden from mortal eyes; but the preferred agent is usually a bough of witch-hazel, branching at one end like the tines of a pitchfork. Taking firm hold of each prong, with the palms of the hands turned upward, the operator slowly walks around the locality where it is desired to find water; and when he reaches the right spot, presto! the free end of the bough is bent downward toward the ground as if by some invisible force, sometimes so strongly that the operator is unable to overcome it by putting forth his whole strength. “Dig here,” he says, with positive assurance that water will be found not far below the surface of the ground.

On the face of it, this performance comes rather nearer to our idea of a miracle than anything we can now call to mind. Certainly, Moses did no more when he smote the rock of Scripture. Very possibly, former generations of men may have associated the act with the operation of sorcery or magic. An enlightened age, however, accepts neither of these theories. We do not believe in miracles other than those recorded in Scripture; and we have renounced magic and sorcery as too antiquated for intelligent people to consider. Yet things are done every day which would have passed for miracles with our forefathers, without our knowing more than the bare fact that, by means of certain crude agents, obtained from the earth itself, messages are sent from New York to London under the Atlantic Ocean in a few minutes; that the most remote parts of the habitable globe have been brought into practically instantaneous communication, the one with the other; and that public and private conveyances are moving about our thoroughfares without the use of horses or steam. All these things looked to us like miracles, at first, yet custom has brought us to regard them with no more wonder than did the lighting of the first gas lamp the pedestrian of forty odd years ago. Much as we know, there is probably yet much more that we do not know.

The methods employed in finding oil springs or “leads” of ore are very similar to those made use of in discovering water. It is a fact that some of the most productive wells in the oil regions were located in this manner. It is a further fact, that from time to time, search for buried treasure has been carried on in precisely the same way. Now some astute critics have said that the divining-rod was a humbug, because when they have tried it the mystic bough would not bend for them. It is, however, doubtful if any humbug could have stood the test of so many years without exposure, or what so many witnesses stand ready to affirm the truth of be cavalierly thrust aside as a palpable imposture.

Although I have never seen the operator at work, myself, I have often talked with those who have, whose testimony was both direct and explicit. Moreover, I do know of persons who continue to ply this trade (for no more than this is claimed for it) in some parts of New England to-day. Whether it should be classed among superstitions may be an open question after all.

XIII

WONDERS OF THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE

“The hag is astride This night for a ride-- The devil and she together.”--Herrick.

All abnormal exhibitions of nature, or in fact any departure from the regular order of things, such as great and unusual storms, earthquakes, eclipses of the sun or moon, the appearance of a comet in the heavens, or of a plague of flies, caterpillars, or locusts were once held to be so many infallible signs of impending calamity. All of our early historians give full and entire credit to the evil import of these startling phenomena, which were invariably referred to the wrath of an offended deity, only to be appeased by a special season of fasting and prayer. Of course ample warrant exists for such belief in the Bible, which was something no man dared question or gainsay in those primitive days. For example, in his history of Philip’s War, Increase Mather lays down this, to our age, startling proposition. “It is,” says the learned divine, “a common observation, verified by the experience of many ages, that great and publick calamityes seldome come upon any place without prodigious warnings to forerun and signify what is to be expected.” He had just noted the appearance “in the aire,” at Plymouth, of something shaped in the perfect form of an Indian bow, which some of the terror-stricken people looked upon as a “prodigious apparition.” The learned divine cleverly interpreted it as a favorable omen, however, portending that the Lord would presently “break the bow and spear asunder,” thus calming their fears.