The spirit-rapper; an autobiography

“If your science be true, or really be science,” retorted Mr. Cotton, “it can never be in conflict with theology. I do not attempt to deduce my science from my theology, but I make my theology the mistress of my science. Whatever is inconsistent with it, I know beforehand cannot be genuine science, or true philosophy.” “That may or may not be so,” I replied; “but I am no theologian. I am an humble cultivator of science, and I consider myself free to push my scientific investigations into all subjects independently, without restraint, without leave asked or obtained either from you or my friend Mr. Winslow. All history has its superstitious and marvellous side. Science has heretofore denied the reality of that side of history, and regarded the marvellous facts with which ancient and mediæval history is filled, as never having really taken place, or as the result of fraud, trickery, or imposture, exaggerated by the credulity, the ignorance, the wonder, and the disordered imaginations of the multitude. These mesmeric phenomena may throw a new light on that class of facts; they may even relieve history from the charges which have been brought against it, and rehabilitate the ages that we have condemned, so far at least as the facts themselves are concerned, though not necessarily as to the theories by which they were in past times generally explained. I am myself at present bewildered. I am not willing to admit the facts, but I am unable to deny them. If they must be accepted, I incline to the view of my friend Mr. Winslow, and am disposed to assume that there is in human nature a law not hitherto well understood, a mysterious power, what he here calls the demonic power of human nature, the limits and extent of which science has not as yet explored.” “There is something mysterious in man,” remarked Mr. Sandborn, a Universalist minister present. “I remember, some years ago, that one summer I was very much out of health. I suffered much from a bowel complaint, which brought me very low. But my mind was exceedingly active, and I seemed to myself to have not only more than my ordinary intellectual power, but also at my command a mass of information on a great variety of subjects which I was sure I had never acquired in the course of my ordinary studies. I seemed familiar with several physical sciences which I had never studied, and with facts, real facts too, which I had never learned. While I was in this state, I was visited at my residence, in the village of Ithaca, New York, by a young friend, a brother minister, residing some eighteen or twenty miles distant. He saw my state, and urged me to go out and spend a few weeks with him at his boarding-house. The pure breezes, he said, from the hills would do me good, revive my languishing body, and restore me to health. I accepted my young friend’s invitation, and the next morning we took the stage, and after some three hours’ drive were set down at his lodgings. We were hardly seated in his library, when a servant brought him a letter which had been taken from the post-office during his absence. I saw a slight blush on his face as he took the letter, and instantly comprehended that it was from his ‘ladye love,’ although I was entirely ignorant that he was paying his attentions to any one, or that he had any matrimonial intentions. Asking my permission, he broke the seal, and read his letter in my presence. When he had done, I said to him, “‘You have there a letter from your sweetheart, the young lady to whom you are engaged to be married.’ “‘How do you know that?’ he asked in reply. “‘O that is evident,’ I replied. ‘I see it in your face. Let me see the letter, and I will tell you her character.’ “‘I would rather not,’ he answered. “‘I do not wish to read it,’ said I, ‘I only wish to look at the handwriting.’ “‘But can you tell a person’s character by seeing his handwriting.’ “‘Certainly, nothing is easier,’ I replied, although I had never tried, or even heard of such a thing before. “He then handed me the letter. I fixed my eye on the writing for a moment without reading a word of the letter, and I saw, or seemed to see, standing before me, at some six or eight feet distant, a very good-looking young lady, a little below the medium size, with an agreeable expression of face, apparently about eighteen years of age, as plainly as I see any one of you now in this room. I proceeded quietly and at my ease to describe her to my friend. I told her age, described her size, her height, her complexion, the color and texture of her hair, the colors and quality of her dress, indeed her whole external appearance, even to a hardly perceptible mole on her right cheek. My friend, you may well suppose, listened to me with surprise, astonishment, and wonder, and several times interrupted me with the question ‘Are you really the devil?’ He agreed that my description was accurate, and far more so than he could himself have given. “I then proceeded, to my friend’s equal astonishment, to describe her moral and intellectual qualities, her disposition, her education, her tastes, her habits, &c., all of which he declared were correctly described, as far as he himself knew. I had never previously seen or heard of the young lady, who lived in another State, and was actually at the moment some hundred and fifty miles distant. But this was not all. My friend married the young lady in the course of two or three months, and two years afterwards I called at his house, and was introduced to a lady whom I instantly recognized as the one whose image I had previously seen before me.[1] There is something in all this, and analogous facts related and well attested by others, that I cannot explain.” ----- Footnote 1: A literal fact, in the experience of the author. ----- We all agreed that the case was remarkable, and apparently inexplicable, on any known principles of received science. CHAPTER IV. AN EXPLOSION. Dr. P—— having accomplished his object in visiting this country, and being invited home by his family, took his leave of us in the summer of 1840, and returned to the West Indies. I have not seen him since. But he left behind a large number of disciples, and we had no lack of mesmerizers, and mesmerizers to whom he was a mere child. Some of these made mesmerism a trade, and gave public lectures and experiments as a means of gaining notoriety and filling their pockets. Others made their experiments in private circles, and from curiosity, or in the interests of science, and not unfrequently by way of amusement. Mr. Winslow devoted much time to a series of experiments intended to prove the reality of what he called the demonic element of human nature. He wished to be able to accept and explain the miracles recorded in sacred and profane history on natural principles, without the recognition of the supernatural. Jack Wheatley continued his experiments, apparently more in jest than in earnest, and was remarkably successful. He had no theory on the subject, said nothing of the use to which mesmerism might be applied, and never speculated on the cause of the mesmeric phenomena. He contented himself with producing them, and leaving others to use or explain them as they saw proper. A year had passed without my seeing Jack. In the winter of 1840-41, while on a visit to Boston, I met him one day accidentally in the street, and was startled at his altered appearance. His look was wild and oppressed, his face was pale and sallow, his youth and bloom were gone, and his body was wasted to a skeleton. He made as if he would avoid me, and with reluctance and a certain timidity replied to my greeting. “Why, Jack, what is the matter?” “Don’t you see? I see her night and day,” he replied with a shudder, as if he beheld some strange and horrible vision from which he would avert his looks, but could not. “See what?” said I. “I see nothing.” He trembled all over, and seemed unable to speak. Seeing that he had either lost his wits, or was fast losing them, I took his arm in mine, and with gentle violence led him to my lodgings, at no great distance, conducted him to my room, and induced him to repose himself on the sofa. I closed the door, and seated myself by his side. I took his hand, and caressed his forehead and temples as if he had been a child. He seemed soothed. “Tell me, Jack,” said I, in a voice almost as gentle and affectionate as that of a mother, “tell me what has happened.” “I am lost, I am damned.” “Say not that. As long as life lasts no one is lost, and nothing is irreparable.” “Life no longer lasts. I do not live. I killed her.” “No, no. But of whom do you speak?” “You did not know. I never told you. You seemed to be a cast-iron man, as Miss Martineau says of Mr. Calhoun, and disposed to put every sentiment in your crucible, and subject it to your retorts and blowpipes.” “But Mr. Calhoun has a heart, as I have had ample occasion to prove.” “I was always light and trifling, careless, gay, and joyous, yet I truly and deeply loved.” “And none the less deeply and truly because gay and joyous.” “But you know nothing of love?” “No man is always wise.” “But you will laugh at me.” “My dear Jack, there are few hearts without some little romance, in some hidden or unhidden corner. There are not many persons unwilling to listen to a story of true and genuine love.” “I was young and foolish, but I loved one, and one whom I thought every way worthy, a thousand times worthy, of my love. I felt myself infinitely her inferior, and unworthy even to kiss the ground on which she had trodden.” “That is easily comprehended.” “Now you are laughing at me.” “No, I am not. But you may leave something to my imagination, if not to my experience. I do not doubt that she whom you loved had all imaginable charms, all conceivable graces, and all possible and impossible perfections.” “But my Isabel _was_ the most beautiful, sweet, amiable, and glorious creature that ever gladdened the earth with her presence.” “Unquestionably. He who doubts that his mistress is an angel, is divine, is a goddess, has his liver whole, and I will warrant him sound in wind and limb. The lover never finds his mistress mortal till after the wedding.” “You are incorrigible. You promised not to laugh at me. Indeed, indeed, Doctor, I do not deserve to be laughed at.” “I own it, my dear Jack, and nothing is farther from my heart than to laugh at you. But do tell me what has happened. I am really grieved to see you so afflicted.” “Well, I loved Isabel, and had the happiness of believing that she returned my love. I gained her consent, and that of her parents and my own, and we were only waiting till I was fairly established in my profession to be married. Notwithstanding Shakspeare’s _dictum_, the course of our true love _did_ run smooth. There never was a lover’s quarrel between us, and there were no obstacles interposed by friends, enemies, or fortune. My acquaintance accidentally formed with you brought me into company with Dr. P——, and interested me in Animal Magnetism. In mere sport, as a pastime, I began trying my mesmeric powers on one and another of my young friends. Capital fun we found it. None of us dreamed of there being any harm in it, or that we might not sport with it as we pleased without any unpleasant consequences. I know not how it was, but I proved to be a powerful magnetizer, although I was said not to have the right sort of temperament for a mesmerizer. My experiments rarely failed, and were almost always unusually brilliant. “One evening at a friend’s house, where some ten or a dozen of my companions and acquaintances were assembled, I mesmerized a boy about