Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems.
In speaking thus of Mr. Grimes's book, we can still cordially recommend
it to the perusal of our readers. Its statements are full and sincere.
The writer has abilities which only need to be used with more
thoroughness and a higher aim to guide him to valuable attainments.
In this connection we will relate a passage from personal experience, to
us powerfully expressive of the nature of this higher agent in the
intercourse of minds.
Some years ago I went, unexpectedly, into a house where a blind girl,
thought at that time to have attained an extraordinary degree of
clairvoyance, lay in a trance of somnambulism. I was not invited there,
nor known to the party, but accompanied a gentleman who was.
The somnambulist was in a very happy state. On her lips was the
satisfied smile, and her features expressed the gentle elevation
incident to the state. At that time I had never seen any one in it, and
had formed no image or opinion on the subject. I was agreeably impressed
by the somnambulist, but on listening to the details of her observations
on a distant place, I thought she had really no vision, but was merely
led or impressed by the mind of the person who held her hand.
After a while I was beckoned forward, and my hand given to the blind
girl. The latter instantly dropped it with an expression of pain, and
complained that she should have been brought in contact with a person so
sick, and suffering at that moment under violent nervous headache. This
really was the case, but no one present could have been aware of it.
After a while the somnambulist seemed penitent and troubled. She asked
again for my hand which she had rejected, and, while holding it,
attempted to magnetize the sufferer. She seemed touched by profound
pity, spoke most intelligently of the disorder of health and its causes,
and gave advice, which, if followed at that time, I have every reason to
believe would have remedied the ill.
Not only the persons present, but the person advised also, had no
adequate idea then of the extent to which health was affected, nor saw
fully, till some time after, the justice of what was said by the
somnambulist. There is every reason to believe that neither she, nor the
persons who had the care of her, knew even the name of the person whom
she so affectionately wished to help.
Several years after, in visiting an asylum for the blind, I saw this
same girl seated there. She was no longer a somnambulist, though, from a
nervous disease, very susceptible to magnetic influences. I went to her
among a crowd of strangers, and shook hands with her as several others
had done. I then asked, "Do you not not know me?" She answered, "No."
"Do you not remember ever to have met me?" She tried to recollect, but
still said, "No." I then addressed a few remarks to her about her
situation there, but she seemed preoccupied, and, while I turned to
speak with some one else, wrote with a pencil these words, which she
gave me at parting:--
"The ills that Heaven decrees
The brave with courage bear."
Others may explain this as they will; to me it was a token that the same
affinity that had acted before, gave the same knowledge; for the writer
was at the time ill in the same way as before. It also seemed to
indicate that the somnambulic trance was only a form of the higher
development, the sensibility to more subtle influences--in the terms of
Mr. Grimes, a susceptibility to etherium. The blind girl perhaps never
knew who I was, but saw my true state more clearly than any other person
did, and I have kept those pencilled lines, written in the stiff, round
character proper to the blind, as a talisman of "Credenciveness," as the
book before me styles it. Credulity as the world at large does, and, to
my own mind, as one of the clews granted, during this earthly life, to
the mysteries of future states of being, and more rapid and complete
modes of intercourse between mind and mind.
DEUTSCHE SCHNELLPOST.[22]
The publishers of this interesting and spirited journal have, this year,
begun to issue a weekly paper in addition to their former arrangement.
We regret not to have been able earlier to take some notice of their
prospectus, but an outline of it will be new to most of our readers.
Their journal has hitherto been intended for German readers in this
country, and has been devoted to topics of European interest, but by the
addition of the Weekly, it hopes to discuss with some fulness those of
American interest also; thus becoming "an organ of communication between
Germans of the old and new home, as to their wants, interests, and
thoughts." These judicious remarks follow:--
"The editors do not coincide with those who believe it the vocation of
the immigrant German, by systematic separation from the people who offer
him a new home, by voluntary withdrawal from the unaccustomed, and,
perhaps, for him too vehement stream of their life, in a word, by
obstinate adhesion to the old, to keep inviolate the stamp of his
nationality.
"Rather is it their faith that it should be the most earnest desire of
the immigrant, not merely to appropriate in form, but to _deserve_ the
rights of a citizen here--rights which we confide in the healthy mind of
the nation to sustain him in, all fanatical opposition to the contrary
notwithstanding. And he must deserve them by becoming an American, not
merely in name, but in deed, not merely by assuming claims, but by
appreciating duties.
"But while we renounce this narrow and one-sided isolation, desiring to
integrate ourselves, fairly and truly, with the great family that
receives us to its hospitality, we will hold so much the more firmly to
the higher traits of our own race. We hold to the noble jewel of our
native tongue; the memories of our nation's ancient glory; the sympathy
with its future, as yet only glimmering in the dusk; our old, true,
domestic manners; dear inherited customs, that give to the
tranquillities of home their sanctity--to the intercourse between men a
fresh, glad life.
"So much for our position in general."
They promise, as to American affairs, "to be just as far as in them
lies, and independent, certainly."
We think the tone of these remarks truly honorable and right-minded. It
is such a tone that each division of our adopted citizens needs to hear
from those of their compatriots able to guide and enlighten them. We do
want that each nation should preserve what is valuable in its parent
stock. We want all the elements for the new people of the new world. We
want the prudence, the honor, the practical skill of the English; the
fun, the affectionateness, the generosity of the Irish; the vivacity,
the grace, the quick intelligence of the French; the thorough honesty,
the capacity for philosophic view, and deep enthusiasm of the German
Biedermann; the shrewdness and romance of the Scotch,--but we want none
of their prejudices. We want the healthy seed to develop itself into a
different plant in the new climate. We have reason to hope a new and
generous race, where the Italian meets the German, the Swede, the Jew.
Let nothing be obliterated, but all be regenerated; let each leader say
in like manner to his band. Apply the old loyalty to a study of new
duties. Examine yourself whether you are worthy of the new rights so
freely bestowed upon you, and recognize that only intelligent action,
and not mere bodily presence, can make you really a citizen on any soil.
It is a glorious boon offered you to be a founder of the new dynasty in
the new world; but it would have been better for you to have died a
thousand deaths beneath the factory wheels of England, or in the prisons
of Russia, than to sell this great privilege for selfish or servile
ends. Here each man has before him the choice of Esau--each may defraud
a long succession of souls of their princely inheritance.
Do those whose bodies were born upon this soil reject you, and claim for
themselves the name of natives? You may be natives, in another sort, for
the soul may be re-born here. Cast for yourselves a new nativity, and
invoke the starry influences that do not fail to shine into the life of
a good man, whose heart is kept open daily to truth in every new form,
whose heart is strengthened by a desire to do his duty valiantly to
every brother of the human family. Offer upon the soil a libation of
worthy feelings in gratitude for the bread it so willingly yields you,
and it is true that the "healthy mind of the nation" cannot long fail to
greet you with joy, and hail your endowment with civic rights.
We must think there is a deep root, in fact, for the late bitter
expressions of prejudice, however unworthy the mode of exhibiting them,
against the foreign element in our population. We want all this new
blood, but we want it purified, assimilated, or it will take all form of
comeliness from the growing nation. Our country is a willing foster
mother, but her children need wise tutors to prevent them from playing,
willingly or unwillingly, the viper's part.
There is a little poem in the Schnellpost, by Moritz Hartmann, called
the "Three,"--which would be a forcible appeal, if any were needed, in
behalf of all who are exiled from their native soil. We translate it
into prose, and this will not spoil it, as its poetry lies in the
situation.
"In a tavern of Hungary are sitting together Three who have taken
refuge there from storm and darkness--in Hungary, where the wind of
chance drives together the children of many a land.
"Their eyes glow with fires of various light; their locks are unlike in
their flow; but their hearts--their wounded hearts--are urns filled with
the tears of a common grief.
"One cries, 'Silent companions! Shall we have no toast to cheer our
meeting? I offer you one which you cannot fail to pledge--Freedom and
greatness to the Fatherland!
"'To the fatherland! But I am one that knows not where is his; I am a
Gypsy; my fatherland lies in the realm of tradition--in the mournful
tone of the violin swelled by grief and storm.
"'I pass musing over heath and moor, and think of my painful losses. Yet
long since was I weaned from desire of a home, and think of Egypt but as
the cymbal sounds.'
"The second says, 'This toast of fatherland I will not drink; mine own
shame should I pledge. For the seed of Jacob flies like the dried leaf,
and takes no root in the dust of slavery.'
"The lips of the third seem frozen at the edge of his goblet. He asks
himself in silence, 'Shall _I_ drink to the fatherland? Lives Poland
yet, or is all life departed, and am I, like these, a motherless son?'"
To those and others who, if they still had homes, could not live there,
without starving body and soul, may our land be a fatherland; and may
they seek and learn to act as children in a father's house!
A foreign correspondent of the Schnellpost, having, it seems, been
reproved by some friends on the safe side of the water for the violence
of his attack on crowned heads, and other dilettanti, defends himself
with great spirit, and argues his case well from his own point of view.
We do not agree with him as to the use of methods, but cannot fail to
sympathize in his feeling.
Anecdotes of Russian proceedings towards delinquents are well associated
with one anecdote quoted of Peter, who yet was truly the Great. In a
foreign city, seeing the gallows, he asked the use of that
three-cornered thing. Being told, to hang people on, he requested that
one might be hung for him, directly. Being told this, unfortunately,
could not be done, as there was no criminal under sentence, he desired
that one of his own retinue might be made use of. Probably he did this
with no further thought than the Empress Catharine bestowed, on having a