CHAPTER X.

MR. COTTON IS PUZZLED.

I proceeded to magnetize my table. It responded as usual. I put my former questions, but could get no answer to them, except that the time for the revelation I solicited was not yet come. I asked, if there was not a more direct mode of communication possible, and was told there was. By speech? Not yet. By writing? Yes. I took a slate and pencil, and placed my hand in the attitude to write. Immediately my hand was moved by an invisible force, and a communication was made in the handwriting and signed with the name of my father, who had been dead some eight or nine years. The purport of it was not much. I did not know but I unconsciously moved the pencil myself. I wished a better test. I placed the slate on the table, laid the pencil on it, and called up the power, whoever or what it might be, to write without my assistance. Very soon the pencil rose fully up, then fell back, then rose again, and after vacillating awhile, it became firm in its position and was moved regularly backwards and forwards, as if directed by the hand of a scribe. At length it flew up to the ceiling, whirled round there for a few seconds, and then placed itself quietly on the slate. I examined the slate, found a communication on it in the handwriting and signed with the name of Benjamin Franklin. The communication consisted of one or two proverbs from Poor Richard, and a commonplace remark about electricity. All this was marvellous enough, but very little to my purpose. It was not worth while taking so much trouble to get what was of no use when got.

I sat down in my great arm-chair a few feet from my table, and fell into a brown study. How long I remained so I do not know, when I was aroused by a great racket in my room. My table was cutting up capers, rising now to the ceiling and now frisking round the room, anon balancing itself on one leg, and then going off into a whirl, that would have broken the heart of the best waltzer, all to a tune which some invisible hand was playing upon my guitar,—tune I say, but it was rather a capriccio, and a medley of a dozen different melodies, thrown together in the wildest disorder. Very soon this stopped, and then came thundering raps all about my room, making every thing in it jar. I bid them be quiet, and not all speak at once, like a lot of old women at a tea-party. They partially obeyed me. One rapper however continued, but in a more gentle and polite manner. I was willing to have some conversation with him. I asked him who he was? He would not answer. What did he want? To communicate. Very well, I would listen; and he told me that I was not a good medium myself, for I held the spirits in awe. Ah, spirits, are you? said I. “Yes.” Very well; I shall be very happy to make your acquaintance. “But you must find us other mediums; we cannot speak freely with you.”

Close by me lived the Fox family. There were three sisters; one was married, and the other two were simple, honest-minded young girls, one fifteen, the other thirteen. As I passed by their house, I saw them in the yard. I greeted them, and offered them some flowers which I held in my hand. The youngest took them, thanked me with a smile, and I pursued my walk. These were the since world-renowned Misses Fox. In a short time afterwards they began to be startled by strange, mysterious knockings, which they could not account for, and which greatly annoyed them. It is not by any means my intention to follow these girls, in their course since, with whom I have had very little direct communication; but I owe it to them and to the public to say, that they were simple-minded, honest girls, utterly incapable of inventing any thing like these knockings, or of playing any trick upon the public. The knockings were and are as much a mystery for them as for others, and they honestly believe that through them actual communication is held with the spirits of the departed. They are in good faith, as they some time since evinced by their wish to become members of the Catholic Church, which certainly they would not have wished, in this country at least, if they looked upon themselves as impostors, and had only worldly and selfish ends in view. They are no doubt deceived, not as to the facts, as to the phenomena of spirit-rappings, but as to the explanation they give or attempt to give of them. They have not always been treated, I fear, with due tenderness, and sufficient pains has not been taken to enlighten them as to the real nature of these phenomena.

But who need be surprised at this? Received science rejects every thing of the sort, for it recognizes no invisible world, believes in neither angel nor spirit, and explains every thing on natural principles. Even theologians have to a great extent forgotten the terrible influence, in times past, of demonic agencies, and, if they do not absolutely reject the instances recorded in the Bible, they are disposed to treat all other cases as humbuggery, knavery, deception, or to class them with epilepsy, insanity, hallucination, and other diseases to which we are subject, and to dismiss them, when they cannot be denied, with the physicians, under the heads of mania, monomania, nymphomania, demonopathy, &c. I have before me the _Dictionaire Infernal_ of M. Collin de Plancy, approved by the late Archbishop of Paris,—him who fell so gloriously on the barricades, June, 1848, whither he had gone as a minister of charity and peace,—in which, from beginning to end, there is a studied effort to represent all these dark and mysterious phenomena as explicable without any resort to superhuman or diabolical agency. The excellent author seems to write on the supposition that all the world, the physicians, the clergy, the magistrates, the civil and ecclesiastical courts during all past times were merely old grannies, and had no sound doctrine, and no capacity for investigating the truth of facts obvious to their senses. With his mode of reasoning, and with far less violence, I can explain away all the miraculous or mysterious relations in Biblical history. But so strong is the current against Satanic agency in the production of these phenomena, and such the prevailing and shortsighted incredulity of our times, that even those who suspect the true explanation are, for the most part, deterred from the ridicule which would be showered upon them from avowing it.

It is no wonder that no kind, considerate friend was found to take these poor Fox girls by the hand, and attempt to rescue them from their dangerous state. The great mass of those who could have done so, either paid no attention at all to the mysterious phenomena asserted, or looked upon the whole matter as mere humbug. It was easier to crack a joke at the expense of spirit-rappers, than it was to investigate the facts alleged, or to offer the true and proper explanation. I had foreseen that it would be so, or at least, had foreseen that they, whose duty it is to watch over the interests of religion and morals, were unprepared to meet the phenomena with success; that they would at first deny and laugh, and then vituperate and denounce, but would hardly understand and explain till too late, or till immense mischief had been done. Even now the first stage is hardly passed, and the movement I commenced by a present of flowers to these simple girls has extended over the whole Union, invaded Great Britain, penetrated France in all directions, carried captive all Scandinavia and a large part of Germany, and is finding its way into the Italian Peninsula. There are some three hundred circles or clubs in the city of Philadelphia alone, and the Spiritualists, as they call themselves, count nearly a million of believers in our own country. Table-turning, necromancy, divination becomes a religion with some, and an amusement with others. The infection seizes all classes, ministers of religion, lawyers, physicians, judges, comedians, rich and poor, learned and unlearned. The movement has its quarterly, monthly, and weekly journals, some of them conducted with great ability, and the spirits, through the writing mediums, have already furnished it a very considerable library,—yet hardly a serious effort has as yet been made in this country to comprehend or arrest it. It is making sad havoc with religion, breaking up churches, taking its victims from all denominations, with stern impartiality; and yet the great body of those not under its influence merely deny, laugh, or cry out, “humbug!” “delusion!” Delusion it is. I know it now, but not in their sense.

The public never suspected me of having had any hand in producing the Rappo-Mania; and the Fox girls, even to this day, suspect no connection between the flowers I gave them and the mysterious knockings which they heard; and nobody has supposed Andrew Jackson Davis, the most distinguished of the American _mediums_, of having any relations with me. He does not suspect it himself, yet he has been more than once magnetized by me, and it has been in obedience to my will that he has made his revelations. The public have never connected my name with the movement, and even Priscilla has never known my full share in it. I have had my instruments, blind instruments, in all civilized countries, with whom I have worked, and yet but few of them have known me, or seen me.

My readers may indeed be incredulous as to the influence conveyed by flowers; but I shall satisfy them on that score before completing my Confessions. While the Fox girls were annoyed by these mysterious knockings, and were beginning to draw on them the attention of the curious and the credulous, and while Andrew Jackson Davis, as yet only a somnambulist, was dictating his wonderful revelations, and learned doctors were disputing whether he received them from a white or a black spirit, whether he really saw what he professed to see in his clairvoyant state, or only reported to the scribe the lesson which some cunning scamps had previously taught him, and made him commit to memory; my old friend Mr. Cotton was made to suffer a severe penalty for the slighting manner in which he had spoken of Priscilla. Contrary to her usual custom, Priscilla went one Sunday evening to his evening service. On leaving the meeting-house, she mingled in the crowd, and so contrived it as to rub against a granddaughter of Mr. Cotton, an interesting child of some twelve or thirteen years of age, and without anybody observing it. She then turned a little aside, got into her carriage, which was waiting, and drove home. The next day, the young girl, Clara Starkweather, was singularly affected. Every thing she touched seemed to stick fast to her fingers. All the dresses, cloaks, shawls, in the house seemed to have an irresistible propensity to fly to her, and arrange themselves on her back. She went into the kitchen; the poker, shovel, and tongs, pots, kettles, pails, basins, all set to dancing towards and around her, and the frying-pan fastened itself on her head as a cap. Her mother scolded her, and she, poor thing, began to cry, and declared that she did not do it, but that it was done by a strange woman, very beautiful, but very wicked, whom she did not know. The family were all in consternation. Mr. Cotton was called upon to interpose. He concluded that it was a case of witchcraft, or of diabolical obsession. He summoned all the inmates of his family to his study. He was a brave man, and nothing at all loath to come to hand-grip with the devil, for whom, with his orthodoxy, he fancied himself more than a match. “We must,” he said, “resist the evil one; we must wrestle in prayer.” With that he seated himself before his table, on which lay a splendid edition of the Bible. He opened the book, intending to read a chapter, before making his prayer. But he had hardly opened it before it was violently closed, and rising, seemingly of itself, hit him a heavy blow in his face, which knocked him from his chair, and nearly stunned him, and then rested itself on the top of Clara’s head. Mr. Cotton soon recovered from the blow, and stood up, after the manner of his sect, to pray. He had hardly opened his mouth, before there was heard such a knocking behind the walls, against the doors, and under the floor, that every word he attempted to utter was completely drowned. It was impossible to proceed amid such a thundering din and racket, which threatened to pull the house down about their ears. Forthwith out marched from the library shelves a complete edition of Scott’s Family Bible. The several volumes drew themselves up on the floor, and proceeded, with great skill and even science, to knock one another down, while various sounds, as of mockery and laughter, were heard from various quarters. The brave old man was fain to resume his chair, when lo! he found himself seated on the heated gridiron. He started up very quick, as may be imagined, but happily received no serious injury.

For attraction now succeeded repulsion. All the objects near Clara, instead of being drawn towards her, were repelled, and moved away from her. Soon one article of her dress after another flew off, and it was with the utmost difficulty that they could keep enough on her to hide her nakedness. This lasted an hour it may be, when all was quiet, and every thing was found restored to its place, and Mr. Cotton himself began to think that all was some optical illusion, and to think that he might have been too hasty in concluding that the devil was engaged in it.

However the annoyances were only suspended, they were not removed. During the following night all in the house were awakened by tremendous knockings heard on the walls and under the floor of the apartment where Clara slept. All rose, and in their night-clothes rushed to her room, and found her lying on her bed sobbing, and apparently in the greatest agony. The bedclothes and her own dresses were scattered all about the room, cut into narrow strips and entirely ruined. The rappings then were heard in the library. Mr. Cotton took a light, and went into the room, and was not a little surprised to find it occupied with some half a dozen figures of men and women fantastically dressed, all seated, and listening with grave faces to an inaudible discourse from another figure in Genevan gown and band, standing before the table on which Mr. Cotton’s great Bible lay open. Mr. Cotton was a little startled at first, but he summoned up his courage and advanced. He went straight up to the figure in gown and band, who seemed to have usurped his functions, and boldly laid his hand upon his shoulder. Immediately his candle was extinguished, and he received a blow which felled him to the floor. In a moment he recovered, passed into another room, obtained another light, and returned. The phantoms were still there, but he now saw what they were. The seeming minister was a huge folio of theology, moulded into a human shape by pieces of carpet, a coat and trousers of his own, and dressed in his own gown and band. The other figures were volumes from his library, elongated and stuffed out in a similar way, and dressed in clothes belonging to different members of the family. They were stripped, replaced on the book-shelves, and the dresses returned to the several wardrobes where they belonged. There was no more disturbance that night.

The next day, when the family were all at dinner, the table, with every thing on it, suddenly rose to the ceiling, and then suddenly dropped upon the floor with a noise that shook the whole house, but without any other injury, or any thing on it being displaced. In the evening, while they were all seated around the table, listening to a chapter which Mr. Cotton was reading from the Bible, terrible knockings were again heard all through the room, and Clara was seen to be raised as it were by some invisible hand towards the ceiling, and to be borne with great force through the room, and set down standing on her head. Then, after a moment, she rose again and hung suspended to the ceiling by her feet and her head downwards. After an hour the annoyances ceased, and the family were left quiet. The annoyances continued, varying in their character from day to day, for three weeks.

Priscilla sent me an account of them, and I thought my old friend had been sufficiently punished. Moreover, I did not wish too much eclat to be given at that time to the fantastic tricks I was playing. Mr. Cotton was sure that it was the work of the devil, that it was witchcraft, and he did not hesitate to accuse Priscilla. He had tried to get the authorities to arrest her as a witch, but in this he had failed; for, although the laws of Pennsylvania, at that time, if not now, recognized witchcraft as a punishable offence, no magistrate in the city could be found who did not look upon witchcraft as imaginary, and suspect the good minister of being in need of physic and good regimen for entertaining a belief in its reality. I however did not wish Priscilla’s name to become associated in the gossip of the day with reported phenomena of the sort, and I sent her an order to discontinue the annoyances, and to restore every thing which had been injured to its previous condition. The night she received my order, the noises ceased, Clara rested quietly, and the family were undisturbed. On rising and going through the house in the morning, no trace of the previous disorder was discovered, every thing was in its place, and the clothing and bedding which had been cut into ribbons, were all restored, and not a mark of injury was to be found on them. Clara was well, and retained no recollection of any thing that had happened to her or to the family during the period she had been so grievously afflicted. Even the family, Mr. Cotton among the rest, began to doubt, if they had not been the sport of some strange hallucination, and almost to persuade themselves that the annoyances had had no objective character.

All this may strike many as wholly incredible, but a thousand instances, as well attested as any facts can be, of a similar character, can be adduced. Let me be permitted to relate an instance still more marvellous, which occurred in 1849, at the presbytery or parsonage of Cideville, France, in the Department of the Lower Seine, and which became indirectly the subject of a judicial investigation. The curé of Cideville encountered at the house of one of his sick parishioners, an individual, a Mr. G——, who had the reputation of curing diseases in a mysterious manner. He reproved him severely, and sent him away. Shortly after, Mr. G—— was arrested and condemned for his malpractices in other cases, to two years’ imprisonment. The wretched man, recollecting the reproof he had received from the curé, believed that it was owing to him that he had been arrested and sent to prison, and, it is said, he threw out threats of vengeance. One Thorel, a shepherd, a friend and disciple of the Mr. G——, was also heard to say, that the curé would be made to repent of what he had done, and that he (Thorel) would himself see that his master was avenged, and his orders executed.

Two boys, one twelve, the other fourteen, were boarded and educated in the parsonage by the curé. They were sons of honest, pious, and much esteemed schoolmasters of the district, and appeared to have inherited the good qualities of their parents. They were both intended for the priesthood, and were a great comfort to the good curé, who loved, cherished, and instructed them, and perhaps obtained something for their board and tuition to eke out his scanty means of living.

One day there was a public auction, where a great crowd were collected, and these boys were present among the rest. The shepherd, Thorel, was there, and seen to approach the younger of the two, but nothing more was observed. Immediately on the return to the parsonage, a violent hurricane struck it, followed by blows as from a hammer in every part of the house, under the floors, above the ceiling, and behind the wainscoting. Sometimes these blows were weak, short, abrupt, sometimes so violent as to shake the house, and to threaten to demolish it, as Thorel, in a moment of rashness had foretold. The blows were heard at the distance of two kilometres, and a large portion of the inhabitants of Cideville, a hundred and fifty at a time, it is said, surrounded the parsonage for hours, examining it in all directions, and seeking in vain to discover whence the blows proceeded.

This was not all. Whilst these mysterious knockings continued, and made themselves heard on every point indicated, they reproduced the exact rhythm of whatever air was demanded of them; the glass in the windows were broken, and rattled in every direction; the tables were overturned, or were seen walking about; the chairs were grouped together and suspended in the air; the dogs were thrown crosswise over one another or were hung by their tails to the ceiling; knives, brushes, breviaries, flew out by one window and back through another on the opposite side; the shovel and tongs quit of themselves the fire-place and walked alone into the room; the andirons, followed by the fire, recoiled from the chimney even to the middle of the floor; hammers flew in the air, and dropped as slowly and as softly as a feather on the floor; the utensils of the toilet suddenly quitted the chambranle on which they were placed, and as suddenly returned of their own accord; enormous desks rushed one against another and were broken, and one loaded with books approached rapidly and horizontally close to the forehead of Mr. R. de Saint V——, and, without touching him, dropped perpendicularly upon its feet.

Madame de Saint V——, whose chateau was near to the parsonage, whose testimony cannot be questioned, and who had witnessed a score of similar experiments, felt herself drawn one day by the corner of her mantle, without perceiving the invisible hand that drew it. The Mayor of Cideville received a violent blow on his thigh, and at the cry forced from him by this violence, he received a gentle caress, which instantly relieved him from the pain.

A proprietor, residing fourteen leagues distant, and from whom I hold this relation, came unexpectedly to Cideville, wholly ignorant of the mysterious events which were taking place. After a night spent in the chamber of the boys, he questioned the mysterious knocking, made it strike in different corners of the room, and established with it the conditions of a dialogue. One blow, for example, would say yes, two blows, no; then the number of blows would indicate the number of the letter in the alphabet, &c. This settled, the witness caused to be rapped out his surname and Christian name, and those of his children, his age and theirs, to the year, month, and day,—the name of his commune, &c. All this was done with such rapidity that he was obliged to conjure the rapper to proceed more slowly, that he might have more leisure to verify the answers, all of which he found perfectly exact. What is more striking is, that this gentleman knew nothing at the time of spirit-rapping, then beginning to excite attention in the United States, and it was not till several weeks after that he heard of it.

All this, the sceptics will allege, may be attributed to jugglery, to the cunning and craft of the juggler, divining the thoughts of the interrogator before he had detected them himself. But there was something more still; something which the sceptics will hardly be able to explain. A priest, a vicar of St. Roch, the Abbé L——, came accidentally, and wholly unlooked for, to Cideville. To similar questions he received apparently through his brother, like himself wholly unknown in the place, answers equally prompt and exact, but with this singular difference: In one instance the questioner himself was ignorant, and unable to verify the details of the answer obtained. He was, indeed, told the age and Christian name of his mother and his brother, but he had either never known them or had forgotten them. He however took a note of the answers, and, on his return to Paris, consulted the registers, and found them literally exact. What now becomes of the objection against the previous witness, or the explanation insisted on, that the answer is given by the brain of the interrogator?

Two landholders from the town of Eu came all express to Cideville. They were told their names, Christian names, the number of their dogs, their horses, &c. But still more astonishing were the phenomena that accompanied the boy believed to have been touched by the shepherd Thorel. He perceived continually near him the _shade_, or appearance of a man, in a blouse, whom he did not know, but whom he identified with Thorel, the first time he was confronted with that person. Even one of the ecclesiastics present, when the boy said he saw the phantom, perceived distinctly behind the lad a sort of grayish column or fluidic vapor, a phenomenon often observed on similar occasions. One day the boy fell into convulsions, then into a sort of ecstatic syncope, from which for several hours nothing could rouse him, and which caused a fear that he was dead. Another time he said that he saw a black hand descending the chimney, and he cried out that it struck him. Nobody could see the hand, but those present heard the blow, and saw its mark on the face of the child, who in his simplicity ran out doors, thinking to see this hand come out the top of the chimney.

At length several ecclesiastics united at the parsonage, and consulted how they might be disembarrassed of the annoyance. One proposed one thing, another proposed another, and a third remarked that he had heard it said that those mysterious _shades_ feared the point of a sword. At the risk of a little superstition, they armed themselves with swords, and stabbed with them wherever the noises were heard. But it is difficult to hit an agent in constant and rapid motion, and they were about to desist, when one of them, having more skilfully pursued one of the noises than the others, all at once a flame flashed forth, followed by a smoke so dense that they were obliged to open all the windows to escape immediate suffocation. The smoke dissipated, and calm succeeding to so terrible an emotion, they resumed their stabbing, and soon they heard a groan; they continued, the groaning redoubled, and at length they distinctly heard pronounced the word “pardon.” “Pardon! yes, certainly, we will forgive you; and more than that, we will pass all the night in praying for you; but on condition that you come to-morrow, in person, and beg pardon of this boy.” “Will you forgive us all?” “How many are you?” “We are five, including the shepherd.” “We will forgive you all.” All then became quiet in the parsonage; and the rest of that terrible night was spent calmly in prayer.

The next day, in the afternoon, Thorel presented himself at the parsonage. His attitude was humble, his language embarrassed, and he attempted to conceal with his hat certain bloody excoriations on his face. The boy, as soon as he perceived him, exclaimed, “That is the man, that is the man who has followed me this fortnight.” He pretended, when questioned, that he came to get a small organ for his master. “Not so, Thorel; you know it is not for that that you have come,” he was answered. “But whence those wounds on your face? who has given them?”

“That is no business of yours; I will not tell.”

“Tell us, then, what you want. Be frank. Have you not come to beg this boy’s pardon? Do it, then. Down on your knees.”

“Well, be it so; pardon then,” said Thorel, falling upon his knees, and even while begging the lad’s pardon, drew himself along, and tried to seize him by his blouse. He succeeded; and from that moment the sufferings of the boy, and the mysterious noises in the parsonage, redoubled. The curé, however, persuaded him to go to the mayor’s office. He went, and as soon as he entered it, he fell three times on his knees, without being required, and before all the witnesses, begged pardon; but, at the same time, he drew himself along on his knees, and endeavored to touch the curé, as he had touched the boy. The curé, after retreating to a corner of the room, had, in self-defence, to beat him off with his cane. He avowed that all was to be referred to M. G——, whom the curé had prevented from earning his bread, and that he could easily disembarrass the parsonage of the annoyances that were passing there, if made worth his while.

The curé, in consequence of what had occurred, said, or was reported to have said, that Thorel was a sorcerer, and had practised sorcery on the boy at the parsonage. Thorel brought, in consequence, an action against him for slander. The cause came to trial; the curé pleaded the truth in justification, and was acquitted. On the trial, the facts I have stated, as well as many others of no less importance, were testified to under oath, by a large number of highly intelligent and respectable witnesses, and not one of them can be denied, if human testimony is in any case to be taken as conclusive.

Persons of sceptical and critical disposition may imagine that Thorel was concealed behind the wainscot, but the persons who used their swords had sense enough to ascertain whether that was so or not; besides, to suppose it, were wholly inconsistent with other well-established facts in the case. An hypothesis, to be acceptable, must meet and explain all the facts, not merely a portion of them. It will not do to adopt a theory, and then, after the manner of learned academicians and _philosophical_ historians, reject as inadmissible all the details of the case not compatible with that theory. But I have introduced this narrative to prove the credibility of some of my own doings, not to prove that there is such a thing as is commonly called sorcery—to prove the validity of an alleged class of phenomena, not their proper explanation. To this latter point I shall have occasion, before I close, to speak at full length.

The annoyances, I may add, continued at the parsonage for some time, in fine till the bishop removed the boys, and the malice of the persecutors had completed the ruin of the curé. They then ceased, when the original reason for producing them had been answered.[3]

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Footnote 3:

Pneumatologie des Esprits, par le Marquis Eudes de M——.

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