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286

WAS THERE A PERSONAL ENTITY?

At first I scrupled about assuming that there was any external personality concerned. But a little reflection convinced me that if I dismissed that idea, I was shifting, not solving, the difficulty. For the question then recurred in another shape: What agency determined the special character of an answer thus indirect and far-fetched, yet strictly relevant and accurate?

And then (I went on to reflect) without assuming a personal entity, how are we to explain results that are never presented to us except as the mental operations of a sentient being; such as selection of appropriate facts from among many stored away in the memory, perception of the connection of these facts with a question which did not apparently refer to them, pertinent application of the selected facts to frame a truthful reply; nay, even an apparent intention, by giving to that reply an out-of-the-way and unlooked-for turn, to prove to us the pres ence of a reasoning and intelligent agent?

I was unable to answer these questions then; and, except on the spiritual hypothesis, I am unable, after fifteen years' experience, to offer any rational explanation to-day.

Probably most of those who assisted at the experiment I have recorded went away moved to simple wonder only; perplexed for the time, but ere a month had passed, forgetting, in the passing excitement of some fresh novelty, both wonder and perplexity; or at most, perhaps, relating now and then, to incredulous listeners of a winter evening, that very odd coincidence about three gold pins and a maid and a cook.

To me its lessons are still as fresh as on the day I received them. They preceded, and induced, a course of study that eventually changed the whole feelings and tenor of my life.

Within the last twenty-five years multitudes, in this and in all other civilized countries, have been overtaken, as unexpectedly as I was, with evidence of the reality of spiritual phenomena. And, to hundreds of thousands among these, conviction has come in the quiet of the domestic circle; has not been

SPIRITUAL SENSITIVES.

287

avowed to the world, and has not disturbed their relations with the churches they had been wont to frequent.

In illustration I here supply, out of many examples that have come to my knowledge, one which is the more noteworthy because it exhibits various phases of spiritual intervention. I entitle it

A DOMESTIC INVASION.

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In the year 1853 there lived, in the town of R setts, a family of the utmost respectability and in easy circumstances, whose name, though known to me, I am not at liberty here to give. Let us call them Mr. and Mrs. L

Mrs. L appears to have been one of a class of which I have already spoken as resembling Reichenbach's "sensitives," if not identical with them: a class which has furnished what are called "mediums," and what might appropriately be called "spiritual sensitives." She shared many of the peculiarities of that class; peculiarities which, in her case as in many others, seem to have been hereditary.*

Her grandmother, one morning, preparing to go out walking and turning round to leave her bed-chamber, suddenly perceived, standing before her, the exact counterpart of herself. At first she imagined it to be an impression from some mirror; but, having ascertained that it was not so and seeing the appearance gradually vanish, she became very much alarmed; the popular idea occurring to her that to see one's double, or wraith as the Scotch term it, portended dcath. She immediately sent for the preacher whose church she frequented, the Rev. Mr. Eaton, and consulted him on the subject. He inquired whe

* Out of 161 sensitives whose names are registered by Reichenbach, as among his odic subjects, 143 are from families marked by a similar peculiarity. Of these he found the faculty to have been inherited, in 28 cases from the father, in 50 from the mother, in 11 from both parents: and in 54 other cases it was shared by a brother or sister.-Der Sensitive Mensch, vol. ii. § 2662 to § 2666 (Stuttgart, 1854).

288

AN OCCURRENCE TO BE

ther it was before or after mid-day that she had seen the apparition; and, learning that it was early in the forenoon, he assured her (whether from sincere conviction or merely to allay the extreme excitement in which he found her) that the augury was of long life, not of approaching dissolution. As it chanced, she lived after that to a good, old age.

Mrs. L's mother, Mrs. F, was accompanied by knockings and other sounds in a house in Pearl street, Boston, at intervals as long as she resided there; namely, through a period of twelve years. Sometimes these sounds were audible to herself only; sometimes also to the other inmates of the house. Finally, they annoyed her husband so much, that he changed their residence.

Mrs. L—— herself, when about ten years of age (in the year 1830), had been witness to one of those phenomena that are never forgotten and produce a great influence on the opinions and feelings of a lifetime.

There was, at that time, residing in her mother's house, in the last stage of hopeless decline, a lady, named Mrs. Marshall, to whom Mrs. F——, from benevolent motives, had offered a temporary home.

Cecilia that is Mrs. L's name-had been sitting up one evening a little later than usual, and, childlike, had lain down on the parlor sofa and dropped to sleep.

Awaking, after a time, she supposed it must be late; for the fire had burned low and the room was vacant. As she attempted to rise, she suddenly became aware that the figure of Mrs. Marshall, robed in white, was bending over her. "Oh, Mrs. Marshall," she exclaimed, "why did you come down for me? You will be sure to take cold.” The figure smiled, made no reply, but, moving toward the door, signed to Cecilia to follow. She did so in considerable trepidation, which was increased when she perceived what she still believed to be the lady herself pass up the stairs backward, with a slow, gliding motion, to the door of her bedroom. The child followed; and, as she reached the landing of the stairs, she

REMEMBERED FOR LIFE.

289

saw the figure, without turning the lock or opening the door, pass, as it were, through the material substance into the room and thus disappear from her sight.

Her screams brought her mother who, coming out of Mrs. Marshall's room, asked her what was the matter. Oh, mam

ma, mamma," exclaimed the terrified child, ghost?"

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The mother chid her at first, for nursing silly fancies; but when Cecilia related to her circumstantially what she had witnessed, Mrs. F——— shuddered. Well she might! Not half an hour before she had assisted at the death-bed of Mrs. Marshall!

It was remembered, too, that a few minutes before she expired, that lady, with whom Cecilia was a great favorite, had spoken in affectionate terms of the child and had expressed an earnest desire to see her. But Mrs. F fearing the effect of such a scene on one so young, had refrained from calling her daughter.

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Did the earnest longing mature into action when the earthclog was cast off? Was the dying wish gratified, notwithstanding the mother's precautions?

Later in her youth Cecilia, to her mother's great alarm, had from time to time walked in her sleep. This somnambulism was strictly spontaneous, no mesmeric experiments of any kind having ever been allowed in the family. It did not result in any accident; but, on several occasions, while unconscious and with her eyes closed, she had aided her mother, as expertly as if awake, in the household duties.

She had another peculiarity. In the early part of the night her sleep was usually profound; but occasionally, toward morning, in a state between sleeping and waking, she had visions of the night which, though they were undoubtedly but a phase of dreaming, she discovered, by repeated experience, to be often of a clairvoyant or prophetic character; sometimes informing her of death or illness. These intimations of the distant or the future so frequently corresponded to the truth that, when they

290

THE MIDNIGHT EXCURSION.

prognosticated misfortune, Mrs. L hesitated, on awaking, to communicate them.

Such a dream, or vision, she had one night in the early part of the month of November, 1853. A sister, Esther, recently married, had gone out, with her husband, to California, some weeks before; and they had been expecting, ere long, news of her arrival. This sister seemed to approach the bedside, and said to her: "Cecilia, come with me to California." Mrs. L, in her dream, objected that she could not leave her husband and children, to undertake a journey so long and tedious.

"We shall soon be there," said Esther, "and you shall return before morning.

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In her dream the proposed excursion did not seem to her an impossibility: so she rose from bed, and, giving her hand to her sister, she thought they ascended together and floated over a vast space; then descended near a dwelling of humble and rude appearance, very different from any which she could have imagined her sister to occupy in the new country to which, in search of fortune, she and her husband had emigrated. The sisters entered, and Cecilia recognized her brother-in-law, sad and in mourning garb. Esther then led her into a room in the centre of which stood an open coffin, and pointed to the body it contained. It was Esther's own body, pale with the hue of death. Mrs. L- gazed in mute astonishment, first at the corpse before her, then at the form, apparently bright with life and intelligence, which had conducted her thither. To her look of inquiry and wonder the living appearance replied, "Yes, sister, that body was mine; but disease assailed it. I was taken with cholera and I have passed to another world. I desired to show you this, that you might be prepared for the news that will soon reach you."

After a time Mrs. L seemed to herself to rise again into the air, again to traverse a great space, and finally to reenter her bed-chamber. By and by she awoke, with this dream

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