Monday, April 30, 2018

The Black Chamber - A German Ghost Story


The Black Chamber - A German Ghost Story (from The Dublin University Magazine 1858)

We were three friends—Ferdinand W---, a celebrated lawyer; Auerbach, the court physician, and myself.

Having no particular calling, I spent most of my time in reading the various publications that issued from the German press. I became of opinion that there was hardly one that made an effort to raise the public taste. With the intention of fulfilling, in a more effectual manner, the duties required of a journal, my friends and I established a periodical. Whether we ever realized our fond hopes, is not for me to say. Ferdinand was to contribute the learned leaves, Auerbach the elegant, and I, who could not boast of either learning or elegance, to attend to the minor departments.

We had our meetings as our more advanced contemporaries. As soon as my companions had finished their professional avocations—one in distracting the minds of his clients, while the other performed the same charitable function to their bodies— they usually met at my house; and with our tobacco pipes, and over our glass of good Rhenish wine, we made our criticisms.

One evening, when Ferdinand was more than usually late, and had wearied our patience waiting, we resolved to commence proceedings without him. The two newest publications lay on the table—"Freidenker," a favourite German periodical, and "Wochentlich Zeitung," then in its zenith. With the uncut leaves of these before us we had no time to lose. I seized "die Wochentlich Zeitung." The first few pages contained an unfavourable review of a story in the "Freidenker," called the "Gray Room." I read it with pleasure, as this very subject had been the cause of more than one dispute between me and my friend Auerbach; and I now hoped, with this ally, to shake his firm-rooted belief in the appearance of spirits. I commenced with the remark, "that of all the periodicals, I had the greatest respect for the 'Freidenker,' and could not imagine how they had given their pages to such incredible stories as the 'Gray Room.' I was curious to see how they answered the objections, to my mind, most reasonably urged against them by the 'Wochentlich Zeitung.'"

"How will they answer them?" cried Auerbach. "With contemptuous silence, as they deserve."

I can see him now, with his head resting on the back of his chair, his pipe in his hand, his hair thrown back, and his deep-loving eyes looking fixedly before him, as if he was then holding communion with the invisible. "But," said I, "who can believe the nonsense that is put forward in that paper about the appearance of Gertrude?"

"Only account, then, for all that is related," said my friend, eagerly. "Either the facts have taken place, or the author is guilty of falsehood; and I think even you would be slow to acknowledge that Gualfredo would state a thing for a fact that had not occurred. Believe me, you cannot know, and have not the opportunity of knowing what we medical men learn, coming in contact as we do with the caprices of nature. What she can or cannot do, is not for us to say."

"I never met with any one," said I, "who had himself seen a spirit; and though, as you say, I have every confidence in Gualfredo, still he does not say that Gertrude ever appeared to him. It seems, from the whole tenor of the story, to have been related to him; neither does he pledge himself for its veracity, except in the negative way of repeating the story. Now, be honest," I continued: "have you ever spoken, face to face, with any one who saw a spirit?"

He remained silent for a time; and at last, having taken a turn up and down the room, and drawn a whiff from his pipe, and a sip from his glass, he turned full upon me, and said—"I have seen a spirit. Mind, I don't pass for a Geisterseher; but I have indeed seen a spirit once—a time never to be forgotten, for it made a change in me that I have never recovered. And, strange enough, the room with which it was connected was called the 'black chamber.'"

Much as I had vaunted my disbelief of ghost stories, I must confess that as we were then sitting in the dim twilight in that still summer evening, with the shadows lengthening through the deep recesses of the window, my companion's enthusiastic nature quite carried me with him; and with rapt attention, and an undefined feeling of pleasure mingled with fear, I prepared to hear the horrors of the "black chamber," which I now relate in his own words.

I had concluded my university education, and to finish my studies in medicine, became, for some years, the indoor pupil of the famous Dr. W---, who, at that time, enjoyed

the most extensive practice in Blenheim. My progress in my profession was so great, that in a few years my old master made over a number of his remote country patients to my care, his advanced age rendering it impossible for him to take long journeys. One evening I was hastily summoned to the country residence of the Count Albrecht Von Silberstein, who had lately returned from Italy, with his second wife, a beautiful young heiress, whom he had just married; his first, it was said, had died at Milan, only a few months before this second marriage. It was, however, to attend the Count's sister that I was summoned; she was dying of nervous fever. I could render but little assistance, as I saw she was beyond earthly help; but I ordered some sedatives, and left written directions, to be followed till my return next day. I was preparing to take leave, when the Count rushed in, and begged of me, as I valued his friendship, not to leave the house that night. He was devotedly attached to his sister; and, as I had no particular engagement, I consented to remain. The Lady Von Silberstein gave orders to have a room prepared for me, and begged me to take rest while my patient slept, as she knew the Count would require my attendance the moment the Lady Theresa awoke. Saying this, she wished me good night, and left the room.

When left alone, I could not help reflecting on the aspect of that gloomy castle, with its dark heavy towers, frowning, as if in anger with its inmates. It had not even a cheerful prospect, situated, as it was, in a barren flat country, more like the stronghold of a tribe of banditti than what one would expect to see as the dwelling of a nobleman. The interior was not one whit more inviting or cheerful. The room I was in was fearfully sombre;—it was a long narrow chamber, only half lighted by the small loophole windows; the furniture and drapery old and faded.

What could have induced the Countess to marry that man, thought I,—she so young and lovely, he so dark and gloomy. I also noticed, during the short time I saw them together, a shudder pass over her, whenever her husband addressed her, indicative more of fear or dislike than love. In the midst of my reflections I was interrupted by the servant, announcing that my apartment was ready. Conducted to it, I found it even more dismal than that which I had just left. It was spacious: the old-fashioned heavy doors were of massive oak; the tables were covered with dark cloth; the hangings and curtains were black as ebony, as also all the wood-work in the room. I lighted two pair of candles to chase the gloom; but it was like the mere illumination of a vault, the narrow circles of radiance only making the darkness more visible.

I sat down at a small table near the fire and placed my candles upon it, to impart some air of comfort to my black palace—but even that failed. I had determined at once to write down the particulars of the case I was attending, and get to bed. I must mention, that one particularity of Dr. W---'s was, that each of his pupils should give him in writing, a most circumstantial account of every case they attended; to accomplish this now, and resign myself to sleep, was all my desire.

I had just finished my medical technicalities, when I was called to attend Lady Theresa; she had awakened much worse, and the Count sent to beg that I would go to her without delay. I dressed, and hastened after my attendant. We arrived, through various winding passages, at the chamber of the young lady. Never shall I forget the scene that there presented itself.

No one could doubt the Count's affection for his sister; yet now he seemed to be perfectly unconscious of her bodily sufferings, and only stood near her bed to listen with eagerness to the words she occasionally uttered. She herself, wretched creature, was sitting upright, staring as if her eyes would start from their sockets. I approached her: she turned from me, sheltering herself beside her brother, and pointing wildly at me, she whispered,

"Did he see it?"—"Did he hear it cry?"—"Did he see the ring?"

I sought to calm her, having often seen people affected by visions in similar circumstances, but there was no quieting her. She sprang from her bed, and clung to her brother, still uttering incoherent sentences, till at length she cried out—

"I feel its little arms; there—there —it is clinging to me to save it. I cannot bear the glare of its eye. I cannot—I dare not touch it. That fatal ring."

Then, exhausted, she fell senseless on the floor. I called the Count to assist me in placing her in bed; but when I looked round he was leaning against the wall, pale and motionless.

I rang the bell violently. As footsteps approached, he started. "For Heaven's sake," cried he, "let not mortal enter here."

"I must have assistance," I said.

"I can do any thing you require," replied he, making an effort that I saw cost him a great deal. But his will seemed, nevertheless, so strong, that, when he walked to the door and gave some orders, to account for the bell having been rung, I looked in astonishment. Turning to me he said, "Doctor, it is so strange and fearful to hear the ravings of delirium. How invariably they lead the poor sufferer to imagine scenes they never witnessed. A medical man of great eminence told me that this was always the case."

After a short interval, Lady Theresa revived; but no longer in her former state of excitement. She lay quiet, with her eyes closed. I tried to smooth her pillow, and bathed her hands. On a sudden she looked up, with a bright smile, and said softly, two or three times, "Rudolph." Then wandering among scenes afar off, gently fell asleep, and from that passed into the sleep from which there is no awaking.

I turned to the Count and said— "Lady Theresa is dead."

"Dead!" he cried; "Dead: she cannot, she must not die, and leave me. I had but her in the world; she would not leave me alone."

"It is no use," said I, drawing him from the body.

Sobbing like a child, he caught her beautiful golden tresses, in a vain attempt to sever a lock; but his trembling fingers refused their office, and again sinking beside her lifeless body, her fair hair covering him as a veil, he lay motionless. Much as I disliked the Count, this outburst of genuine feeling completely overcame me, and with tears I looked at the heart-broken man, all his hardness and repulsiveness quite forgotten. He seemed as if clinging to the fair angel whose bright spirit had fled.

After some little time he recovered himself, and rose to leave the room. I was only too glad to follow. I felt sick at heart. The wretched deathbed I had witnessed, and the feeling of dislike I had felt to the Count, combined to make me long for a quiet hour in my own room.

We descended to the saloon; the Count, making some apology that he had letters to write, left me. I hastened back to my own chamber, but not to sleep. I piled wood on the fire, and sat down in a large chair opposite to it, recalling minutely every word that Lady Theresa had uttered. I could think of nothing else—what could have befallen that young girl. That she was implicated in some dark deed there could be no doubt; the awful visions that haunted her were not the raving fancies of delirium. Her brother—he too shared her secret. I had a dim recollection of a tale that I had heard when a child, of some heavy curse which hung over the Count's house. One of his ancestors had treated his wife with cruelty, and she on her death-bed left their wedding ring, with a bitter curse attached to it, and that it should cling to the family till a dead bride claimed a husband with it; but what could that poor girl have to do with a child and a ring? It was all mystery, and the incoherent story furnished little solution to the problem. I thought again and again of all that I had ever heard about Lady Theresa, but that was not much. She was very young, had latterly not appeared abroad in the world. Some said her engagement to an officer had been suddenly broken off; others that she had become ascetic. Be this as it may, she certainly shunned all society, even her sister's; her only companion was her brother.

I tried to turn my thoughts into other channels, but to no purpose. I felt a great wish to see her again, and yielding to the temptation, crept back to her room and gazed once more on those features which had made so deep an impression upon me. All was hushed: everything had been arranged. Morning had just dawned, and the grey light streamed through the open casement I turned to look on the beautiful creature before me. There she lay in the stillness of death; a smile seemed to rest on her features. It may be that the recollection of some happy hour of childhood had visited her wearied spirit before it went forth on its solitary journey. I felt I was polluting a sanctuary by harbouring for a moment the thought that she could be implicated in any crime, and pressing a kiss on her cold cheek, I took away one of her bright curls.

The next day Lady Theresa was buried. The Count asked me to stay that night, which I gladly did, as I was worn out with my vigil of the night before Just as I was about to consign myself to rest, I was interrupted by the jager, who knocked at my door to inquire if I had any commands. He was a lively, pleasant fellow, and inclined to be communicative. We sat talking for awhile, When he rose to leave the room, he looked round with a shudder, and asked "if I felt lonely, or would wish him to remain all night."

I smiled at the idea, for he seemed really afraid; and although I did not think the place cheerful, yet I had no fear. I was as sceptical then as you are now. My talkative companion related many stories connected with the chamber, to which I eagerly listened, in hopes I might find a clue to Lady Theresa's ravings, but all were connected with events that had occurred years before. However inclined I might have been to have kept this young man with me, I now determined to place no obstacle to my spending a night in a haunted chamber. The very idea gave me a thrill of pleasure. I left no portion of my apartment unsearched, so that I could not by possibility be played upon. I secured the door and the windows, and having made all my arrangements with the view of practically overthrowing the theory of apparitions, I went to bed, and much sooner than I expected fell asleep.

After some time I was roused by hearing a sound like the dropping of a heavy weight, as it fell step by step. I could not account for the noise, for it seemed to proceed from the other side of the wall, which I knew was an outside wall, and there was neither room nor stairs beyond I looked around, but all was dark. Thinking I must have been mistaken, I settled to sleep again, when the sound was repeated even more distinctly than before. I began now, indeed, to feel nervous, and sat up. A slight wind, like a breath, passed over me, but still I saw nothing. I strained my eyes as though I could penetrate the darkness. The sound had greatly decreased, yet I was conscious there was something, be it mortal or spirit, in the room with me. After watching with a beating heart, I argued myself into the idea that the noise must have been at the other side of the inside wall, and that it was occasioned by some of the servants who had perhaps been up late, and so, turning on my side, tried again to compose myself. I had not been settled many minutes, however, when I perceived a faint light, coming from the same direction in which I had heard the sound. I looked up, when, to my horror, I saw a tall female figure advancing steadily towards me. She had long bright hair, falling over her shoulders, and her drapery was pure as snow. She stood still in the centre of the room, gazing about her. I was paralyzed with terror; I held my breath, dreading to make the least movement, lest I should attract her attention, but I could not for one moment withdraw my eyes from the figure. At last it perceived me, for it hastily advanced towards me, and extending its long icy arm, seized my hand.

I fell back insensible. How long I remained in this state I don't know: but I awoke before it was light. I sprang from my bed, lighted a candle, and looked everywhere to see had my supernatural visitor left any trace behind, but I could find no clue to the mystery. I thought I must have had a frightful dream, till my eye fell on a ring upon my finger that I had never seen before. What could this mean? Who could that mysterious being have been? I tried to recall the features. They seemed familiar to me. I had seen them previously, but when or where? Yes—yes—I remembered they were none other than those of the Lady Theresa. Now it was, too, that I recollected distinctly the same beautiful hair. The eyes, though wild, still had the same loving, melancholy expression. That look that none but she could have! Could her troubled spirit have come to reveal to me the secret of her dying agony I Perhaps it was to ask me to bear a message. Oh, that I had been able to question her! how I cursed my trembling timidity, that had prevented me from speaking to her.

In this excited state of mind I sat down, listening intensely in fear of hearing her footstep. I took off the ring to look at the gift of the dead, when, oh, horror more terrible than words can express—too terrible even for imagination—I saw engraved upon it the heraldic bearings of Count Von Silberstein's family.

The Legend of the Fatal Ring burst, as it were, upon my mind; the whole thing seemed only too clear. It had been the Lady Theresa, but not come for sympathy—no. She had removed the fatal curse hanging over her brother's house—that brother she loved so dearly—and I was selected out of the whole world to carry the dreadful weight with me to the grave. I clasped my hand over my eyes, for it seemed to be written in blazing characters all round the walls that I was wedded to a dead bride. I felt as if voices of thunder were shrieking the fearful secret into my ears. I flung myself on the floor, howling in the madness of despair, and calling down fearful imprecations on the head of the being whom a moment before I almost revered as an angel of light. At length nature exhausted itself, and I fell into a deep sleep, from which I did not awake till the bright beams of the sun showed me that the morning was far advanced. I looked round in surprise at finding myself stretched on the ground, though an indescribable weight pressed me down. I could not at first recollect what had occurred. By degrees the truth flashed across me. I sprang on my feet, examined the door to learn whether any one had entered the room and seen my delirious frenzy. All was as I had left it, doors and windows barred fast. My secret was my own. No mortal knew what had happened, and no one should ever know.

I dressed myself with scrupulous care, arranged the furniture, so that no trace was left of my impotent fury; and the ring—the hateful ring—should I fling it out of the window, or bury it deep in the earth 1 No, I dare not part with it; throw it where I would, send it to the most distant part of the world, it would still come back to me, and perhaps in a way that would expose me to the whole world. I knew its power; it fixed itself on its possessor. Had I not but now seen the truth of this; for years, it may be for centuries, it had clung to Count Von Silberstein's name; and now by her means, I dare not mention her name, fulfilling the prediction, it would cling, fasten, eat into my very life; and for how long? There was no second removal, no hope, no dawning of morning in that black for ever.

I seized the ring and hid it in my bosom. Why should I indulge the feeling, it was a childish fancy; I would never think of it again. I ought to marry; I had no worldly cares, and my mind was liable to be infected with strange delusions. In this way I argued to myself, knowing, ay, feeling from the bottom of my heart, bound body and soul to a spirit. I hastened to the saloon—none of the family had made their appearance. Again I was alone; the solitude I had fled from above pursued me here. I examined the pictures, which I had seen many times before; wondered who they represented; had they a secret to hide; were they pursued by a spectre, to whom they belonged without hope of release. Again, at that terrible thought, I turned from them, and reckoned the panes of glass in each window. Did she, the Countess, who left that fearful legacy, ever stand here where I was standing. Perhaps it was in this spot that thought first presented itself to her mind.

I looked at the breakfast-table, it was laid for four, the Count, his wife, and myself: who could the fourth be? the Countess' sister? ah, here was a chance, I would marry her! I walked to the mirrors, thought I was good enough looking. I was in good practice, and very highly educated; many a girl would be only too glad to have me; but I had not money enough. In the midst of these reflections a pretty young woman with a child passed the window, just opposite to me; they stopped, and she gathered flowers and played with the little boy; I watched her for some time; oh, that I knew who she was, that I could get acquainted with her. She seemed an upper servant; what matter, I would marry her; yes, she should be my wife. I would love and protect her; she was poor, I would make her rich, I would make her a lady. She would never refuse me; and once married, I should be safe, and could defy the spirit. Without a moment's hesitation I hurried along the corridor and down the terrace; a turn in the path suddenly brought me before the girl. I knelt at her feet, caught her dress, told her I adored her, would live but for her, would guard her as a tender flower, if she would but unite her fate to mine. The poor creature thought I was mad; she screamed, caught the child in her arms and ran into the castle. I saw what I had done, she would give the alarm, they would all consider me insane, I should be shunned by every one, and left alone with my dreadful secret. Fearful of meeting any one, I left the terrace and hurried down the steps into the thicket. I saw servants out looking for me, and the young woman I had been speaking to pointing out to them the direction I must have taken. I lay hid under a bush, not moving a limb lest they should see me, and when they had returned, I left my retreat and ran, almost flew home. Those I met on the way looked at me with a vague glance that might have been sympathy. My first thought was to secrete the ring; this accomplished, I lay down and longed, oh, how earnestly, for death. From that hour I was ill three months of the very same disease that lady Theresa had died of. When I left my sick bed I was another creature; I no longer strove to shut out the hateful truth from myself, but humbly submitted to my fate.

"Now, what do you say to this; for I can testify on oath all I have stated?

"I cannot but allow it is most strange," said I; "and had you not assured me you had examined every part of your room so carefully, I should have had some doubts."

"As I stated," replied Auerbach, "deception here was impossible. I was as wide awake as you are now. And, besides, the fatal ring; what else could that mean?" And be relapsed into a state of abstraction.

"Well," said I, more with the idea of rousing him, than for any real obstacle it presented to my mind; "the ring is the stumbling-block to me. If the appearance was not a deception it must have been a spirit; but I cannot understand a spirit having any thing to do with the fading things of this world. It leaves all that behind."

He interrupted me—

"You first deny the existence of spirits; then you must define the exact way they ought to appear; such inconsistency! But perhaps you will not be so sceptical if I show you the ring. I have never worn it since that fatal night, now years gone by; but something urges me to look at it to-night. Who knows but it may be a warning that I am soon to join my spirit bride."

Saying this, he took from his breast a curious looking box, and handed it to me to open.

I can hardly describe the sensation with which I raised the lid, and took out a very old-fashioned ring, with strange characters engraved on it; and, true enough, the heraldic bearings of the Count Albrecht Von Silberstein's family. I felt a nervous, creeping sensation; the perspiration hung in drops on my forehead. As to Auerbach, he seemed ready to fall.

Just then I heard a footstep; trembling I let the ring fall on the floor, and ran to assist Auerbach, who had fainted, crying out,

"I come—I come."

Immediately I heard a voice, exclaiming—

"Where in the world are you? What is the matter?"

To my infinite relief, I recognised Ferdinand's voice, and calling him to my aid, we got poor Auerbach to bed, where, after administering some remedies, we succeeded in restoring consciousness.

When I related to Ferdinand what had passed, he started convulsively.

"I have been," he broke forth, "kept at court all day, on account of that identical Black Chamber."

I urged him to relate his story, and he began:

"You both know Fritag," said he. "Count Von Silberstein lately invited him to a large ball at the Castle of Silberstein. The night proved a tempestuous one; thunder and lightning, and torrents of rain; so they pressed Fritag to remain. He said he would willingly, save that he had an appointment early the next morning in town. The Count said that he also had an early engagement, and that they could go together. Under these circumstances, Fritag was very glad to remain beneath so good a shelter. The next morning, it seems, the jager knocked at his door to tell him the Count was waiting; but receiving no answer, concluded he had left the castle. So the Count departed without him. When the party assembled at breakfast, one of the domestics announced to the Countess that Herr Fritag had not gone with the Count. She immediately sent to let him know they were waiting breakfast; but there was no answer. After a delay of a couple of hours, they broke open the door, when they found poor Fritag insensible, lying across the bed. They thought at first he was dead; but perceiving he still breathed, they used the usual remedies, and he soon showed signs of returning consciousness. They then entreated him to say what had happened, when he stated that the night before he noticed the gloomy appearance of the room to his attendant, who said it had hardly been used since the late Countess' death. It was the room that she and the Count had occupied; and since her demise it had the reputation of being haunted.

"Fritag was not afraid of spirits, and settled himself for the night without any apprehension. He had been in bed about a couple of hours, when he was awakened by a noise proceeding from the further extremity of the room; he sat up, and was terrified by seeing a tall female clad in white, with glaring eyes, and bright golden hair hanging over her shoulders. Stalking up to the bed, she silently beckoned to him, and he mechanically rose and followed her through a long narrow passage, when she turned aside into a room, quite brightened by the moonlight streaming through the window, but so covered with dust that it seemed as if no mortal had been in it for years. She raised the lid of a chest, and with a wild scream, held towards him the skeleton of a child. At this moment he descried all changing and becoming black as pitch. The next thing he was conscious of, was the buzz of voices round his bed.

"All the listeners to this mysterious story were struck with amazement. The old housekeeper said the room was frequented by a spirit, and so said all the credulous. The sceptical portions of the household tried to persuade Fritag that he must have had a bad dream.

"The Countess, a woman of strong mind, insisted on sending for the magistrate, and having a thorough inspection of the room. Accordingly a carriage was despatched for that functionary without delay. It was sometime before he arrived, as the distance from the castle to his residence, is about ten miles. The Countess resolved not to leave the room for one moment till he came.

"Herr Saltag was only too glad to undertake the commission of investigation. He had often pressed the Count to allow him to inspect the apartment, and so put a stop to the reports circulated about its being 'haunted;' but somehow the Count always contrived to put it off. His absence now prevented any further obstacle, and without delay Herr Saltag, accompanied by the Countess and Fritag searched every part of the room, but without any result. It was all in vain that they shifted the bed, took down the curtains, changed the position of the furniture—there was no trace. Fritag showed the exact place of the spirit's entrance and exit. The wall was next sounded—it was solid masonry. There was not a panel that could slide up or down. The Countess declared there was no passage connecting that room with any other in the tower. Still Fritag persisted in his story; and the magistrate said he would not leave the place till he could account satisfactorily for it.

"Accordingly he ordered a ladder, and mounting it, passed his hand carefully over the wall, if by chance he might discover a hidden spring. After about an hour spent in this way, he exclaimed suddenly, 'I have it, I have it!' and by pressing hard with his finger, he moved a heavy door sliding into the wall, so as not to be perceptible outside. This led to a flight of steps also made in the wall; then another spring door opened into a set of rooms in the tower that belonged to a superannuated nurse of the family who lived in these apartments. The room into which Fritag had been led the night before was to the left of this narrow passage, before coming to the steps. Into this the magistrate went. It was as Fritag described, covered thick with dust; but they perceived the trace of a naked foot. Following this foot-print they came to the window-sill, but no chest was visible. After examining all round, the Countess suggested that the window-sill itself might be raised; but there neither seemed hinge or lock. However, the planks were lifted, and awful to relate, the skeleton was found there.

"Herr Saltag would not allow the Countess to proceed any further; and giving the body of the child to one of his attendants, he proceeded with Fritag. They descended the steps, and going to the door which was easily opened, there they saw the identical white figure crouched in a corner, her beautiful golden hair hanging dishevelled over her; and the witch-like nurse, with her arm raised about to strike her wretched victim. Fritag caught the woman's arm before it fell, when, to his utter consternation, he beheld in the ghastly misery of madness, the Count's first wife!!

This fearful tragedy is soon elucidated. Count Von Silberstein and his wife, a beautiful, but portionless girl, whom he had married, were travelling abroad, when they met with Mademoiselle Clara Dugue, the daughter and only child of a wealthy merchant.

The Countess was near her confinement, and the Count saw, if he could only get her out of the way, he might easily obtain the hand and fortune of Mademoiselle Clara. The fiendish thought no sooner presented itself to his mind than he hastened to put it in execution. He travelled back in disguise to his Castle of Silberstein, near Blenheim, carrying his wife with him; but causing it to be reported in Rome, that they had gone to Milan. Shortly after the birth of his child, he himself strangled the new-born babe in the mother's presence: the sight of her murdered infant deprived the poor Countess of reason. He then placed her under the care of the old hag with whom she was found, thinking, perhaps, she was as safe there as in her grave; and by this means tried to quiet his conscience by not having deprived her of life. The only being to whom he confided his secret was his sister, but she was in no way partaker of the deed, not having heard of it till after his second marriage. The weight of this dreadful secret broke her heart.

Count Von Silberstein hastened back after this foul deed to Rome, and there caused it to be circulated that his wife and child were dead. A few months after he sought from Monsieur Dugue- the hand of his fair daughter; the ambitious old merchant was dazzled by a glittering coronet, and forced his reluctant child to marry the Count. The poor maniac had always occupied "the Black Chamber." The first night I have introduced her as making her appearance there, her nurse had gone to a feast in the lower stories, and thinking she had left her charge asleep, ventured down the private passage I have described, the existence of which was only known to herself. The wretched creature missing her guardian, and seeing the door open, hastened down the steps; pushing the other door back, she instantly recognised her own room; and, thinking she saw her husband in bed, in the frenzy of the moment, put the fated ring on his finger, and then returned, before she was detected, into her own apartment. The next time she was not so fortunate. The second visit was when her nurse was engaged in a similar manner as before, and she gave, as she thought, to her husband his murdered child. It was just then the woman discovered her, and bore her away.

My poor friend Auerbach's health improved only for a short time; the solution of the mystery came too late. The shock his constitution had received from that strange visitant, and the indissoluble contract by which he had supposed himself to be bound to a supernatural being, were too much for his strength, which gradually gave way, and in less than a year he died.

Sunday, April 29, 2018

The Witches Sabbath, Witch Trials and the Templars by G.L. Ditson 1871


THE WITCHES SABBATH BY G.L. DITSON 1871


For a list of all of my disks and ebooks (PDF and Amazon) click here

In an article of mine on "Our Cat," which sometime since appeared in this monthly, I mentioned the Witches Sabbath. I wish now to write something more about it, for it is a subject not only full of the marvellous, but environed with a weird grace and a wild entanglement of fiction and truth, which makes one fancy that seriousness had donned bells and cap, that judges had laid aside their grave wigs and graver countenances, and that nature had parted with its divinity and descended into the, arena of the tricky quadrumania.

Please indulge me here in a few observations about the meaning and uses of the word witch.

Webster, in his large dictionary, has given it one definition, to which all learned men, and most of the intelligent people of this nineteenth century, will not only take exception, bat wonder that a scholar of so much distinction should have allowed his religious education to lead him into such a glaring absurdity. Our Bible has the word in a number of places. Both in Exodus and Deuteronomy the Hebrew is rendered Witch; but in the Jew's version one is witch and the other is conjurer. William Smith, in his valuable Dictionary of the Bible, gives it as enchanter. The one most familiar to us is that used in reference to the woman of Endor. Here the word is employed, and this means a diviner. But whatever signification we may now give it, it doubtless meant a person who consulted the spirits of the departed; as the diviner employed by Saul when desirous of talking with the dead Samuel. It had no reference, however, I fancy, to a sort of hag (as I was led to suppose when a boy), but most likely to some very sensitive and delicately organized creature; to an innocent and lovable person, perhaps, endowed with peculiar gifts or faculties, not comprehended by the multitude.

Our witches sabbath, nevertheless, may lead my young readers to suppose that my youthful impressions regarding witches were not wholly unfounded; still it should be borne in mind that words are often misapplied; and while great evil was wrought and great mischief done in France (as there was in Salem, Mass.) by overheated and distorted imaginations, a vast deal more evil and mischief was caused by wicked men and women, who—under the garb of religion and justice, or through a mistaken zeal for the public weal—sought to destroy their enemies, or, in some cases, the supposed enemies of Christianity.

In the most remote ages there existed a profound reverence for nature. The day's great luminary, the starred canopy at night, the queenly moon, the singing stream and foaming waterfall, the majestic trees, the fruit, the flowers, in a word, the teeming earth and the visible splendors engirding it were objects of adoration. Behind all these, behind the curtain of the seen, there was, by-and-by, an invisible power apprehended, which came welling up in beauty and potency, and claimed the attention of the more thoughtful of mankind. "What majestic, what divine force there must be to work all these wonders!" was doubtless the exclamation on the lips of many of the primitive inhabitants. Thence would naturally come the thought of transferring their worship to a creative power, rather than bestow it upon its manifestations. Emblems of this, we may almost say for a certainty, were then sought out; the mysteries of reproduction soon had appropriate representatives; and though these now seem to us the very embodiment of vulgarity, they then had the force of immaculate purity.

The stately monuments of Egypt and India at this day are, and many churches of modern times (comparatively), were decorated with these unseemly figures and illustrations of their energies. The worship of these unavoidably led in time to licentiousness. Babylon seems to have reached the acme in its devotion, and hence, reciprocally the height of immorality. Greece and Italy followed boldly in the career of their oriental teachers; and when the acts of their people became too glaringly corrupt to be any longer tolerated, and were, in fact, denounced by the legal authorities, secret societies were formed, which not only practised all the excesses that had crept into this nature-worship, but exceeded them in every possible enormity. The more vicious, the more hideous, the more disgusting became their ceremonies, their rites of initiation, and by the enforcement of their rules, the more necessity there was that they should be kept secret, be held in secret places—rendezvous remote, if possible, from the haunts of man, so that their bacchanalian orgies might not betray them to the public ear.

When Catholicism came with its Virgin and saints, its cross, its mitred priests and its holy Sabbath, these people saw in it all only a rehash of ancient myths and observances, with which they were well acquainted, and set about ridiculing them to the death. They did not see, nor did they care for the beauties of that pure life which Christianity taught; their societies under different names (two of which are given below), practised only evil; and if they kept Easter, it was only to restore the worship of the goddess Ostara, the Teutonic Venus; or, if they celebrated the festival of the resurrection, it was of the newborn year.

The "witches sabbath" was simply the last form which the Priapeia and Liberalia assumed in Western Europe. It seems somewhat remarkable that the Teutonic race was but little, comparatively, imbued with this wild spirit of fanaticism and license; but wherever the Roman element was dominant, there was surely to be found the vulgar remains of that which, as has been said, originated in the most sacred of human impulses.


The author to whom I have just referred (The Worship of Priapus by Payne Knight), and to whom I am indebted for any facts that may follow, states that the incidents of the Sabbath, our witches sabbath, are distinctly traced in Italy as early as the beginning of the fifteenth century; whence they soon reached the south of France. About the middle of that century, a man known as the hermit of Burgundy, having stated (so it was charged against him on his trial at Laugres) that there were many witches in the province of Artois, and that he attended their nocturnal assemblies, was arrested and burned. Previous to the execution of the decree which consigned him to the flames, and which was carried into effect through the instrumentality, principally, of a Jacobin friar, "Inquisitor of the Faith," in the city of Arras, the hermit gave the names of a man and a woman whom he had met at these unhallowed gatherings. One of the party specified was of very questionable reputation, named Demiselle; the other was known as the "abbot of little sense."

From these two confessions were extorted, which compromised others, and here was at once opened, even though using such weak and untrustworthy instruments, a floodgate of mad folly and senseless persecution, which deluged the whole country with blood. Arrests succeeded arrests, and victim after victim perished in the flames. As in Salem —strangely enough in our own free and enlightened (?) land—no one knew whose turn would come next; and the very anxiety of those most solicitous to avoid suspicion, led to acts which often proved fatal to themselves, and involved, perhaps both enemies and friends.

You will, of course, be anxious to know something of the nature of the charges specified, which involved the character and lives of so many innocent persons. By some means or other—perhaps by intimidation, probably by torture—several persons were "induced to unite in a statement," to the following effect:

Meetings were held near a fountain in a wood, about a league distant from Arras. The people went there riding through the air on a stick which had been furnished them by the evil one. Multitudes of both sexes, and of all estates and ranks, even nobles, ordinary ecclesiastics, bishops and cardinals, thronged the place. The presiding officer was usually the evil one himself in the form of a goat. The "abbot of little sense" (as you would imagine) was master of ceremonies.

After saluting reverently the supreme officer, it was the duty of each one present to trample on the cross, and even spit upon it in despite of Jesus and the Holy Trinity; then supper followed, after which there was dancing and such manifestations of vice as an innocent mind could hardly contemplate without blanching to the cheeks of its possessor. Finally the evil one preached a sermon to them—enjoining them not to attend church, or hear mass, or touch holy water.

Would you suppose such scenes and practices could obtain even one historian? When these enumerated evils had widely spread (and this was the case, and rapidly), a Swiss friar, an inquisitor, wrote a book about them. In 1489 another treatise was published by Ulric Molitor; and in the same year another appeared called the Malleus Maleficarum, or Hammer of Witches, the work of three inquisitors of Germany. From that time to the beginning of the seventeenth century, through all parts of Western Europe, the number of books upon sorcery which issued from the press was immense.

About 1609 a very elaborate work appeared on this subject, from the pen of a judge in the parliament of Bordeaux, de Lancre. His testimony in part I will endeavor, to give in a very brief manner. When reading it over, and afterwards examining a drawing of the mad scenes at the witches sabbath, I could not but think that ridicule of the Christian (so called) ceremonials was the paramount object; though, as has been stated, commendable sentiments, the simple aspirations of the human heart, lay at the fountain-head of the institution.

The priests, discovering the facts of the case, seeing that they were losing their prestige and were actually held up to ridicule, sought to exterminate the heretics by fire, -making them unite in declaring as true whatever of monstrous falsehood they could with seeming propriety add to what was really known as to those gatherings on the Sabbath.

De Lancre, referring to the dissoluteness of the women of the Basque provinces, says of Labourd, that the principal produce of this country consisted of apples, and hence the women partook more largely of the character of Eve; that their assemblies were held usually in some lonely and wild locality, as in the middle of a heath — selected for being away from the usual resort of man, as heretofore mentioned. They called the place Aquelare, or the heath of the goat. High mountains, old deserted chapels, and the ruins of castles were sometimes used.

When on trial, a girl thirteen years of age, named Marie d'Aguerre, said that at these meetings there appeared a great pitcher or jug in the middle of the sabbath, and that out of it the evil one issued in the form of a goat, and that at the close of their ceremonies he returned into it. Another witness said that his satanic majesty was represented by a great trunk of a tree. When he appeared as a goat with three horns, the middle one gave out a flame which lighted up the congregation. Marie d'Aspilecute, aged nineteen years, deposed that the presiding genius had a great tail; that she kissed him three times on his face behind, which had the muzzle of a goat. A lad twelve years of ago declared that this chief or chairman had a human form, with four horns on his head, and that he was seated in a pulpit with some women, his favorites—in ridicule, perhaps, of convent life.

When new converts came and had renounced, all faith in the Virgin Mary and the like, they were rebaptized with mock ceremony. Little children whom the women had allured to the Aquelare, were taken to the banks of a stream near by, white wands were put into their hands, and they were entrusted with the care of the toads which were kept there, and which were of importance in some of the diabolical machinations of the old crones of the society. Janette d' Abadie testified that after having kissed the demon in an indecent way or place, and been baptized, he put a private mark upon her, on a covered portion of the body. This statement was also substantiated by other female witnesses.

De Lancre says, from the testimony adduced, "These meetings resembled a fair of merchants mingled together, furious and in transports, arriving from all parts—a meeting and a mingling of a hundred thousand subjects, sudden and transitory, novel, it is true, but of a frightful novelty which offends the eye and sickens you. Among these same subjects some are real, and others deceitful and illusory. Some are pleasing, others full of deformity and horror."

It is further stated that in some parts were great caldrons, full of toads, and vipers, and hearts of unbaptized children. Such things were indeed seen that "the eyes became troubled, the ears confounded, and the understanding bewitched." Their religious ceremonies "were a contemptuous parody on the Catholic mass. An altar was raised, and a priest consecrated to administer the host, but he had to stand with his head downwards and his legs in the air, and with his back turned to the altar."

But however hideous some persons represented the scenes to be which marked these gatherings, others testified to the contrary.

"Jeanne Dibasson, a woman twenty-nine years of age, said that the witches sabbath was a true paradise. Marie de la Ralde, a very handsome woman twenty-eight years of age, affirmed that she had a singular pleasure in attending these assemblies, and went as though it were to a wedding-feast."

Mr. Payne Knight remarks that, "In reviewing these extraordinary scenes, we notice the striking points of identity between the proceedings of the sabbath and the secret assemblies with which the Templars were charged." They were doubtless, as he thinks, and as already noted, the remains of the nature-worship of the East, with such caricatures added as the times suggested.

"The state of mind produced by these excitements," my authority further says "would permit those who partook in them to believe easily in the actual presence of the beings they worshipped, who, according to the church doctrines, were only so many devils. Hence arose the diabolical agency in the scene. Thus easily we obtain all the materials and incidents of the witches sabbath."

That many of the scenes described were the fictitious vagaries of vicious and ignorant persons who were "induced" (perhaps by thumb-screws) to report all that took place (and more) at the Aquelare, cannot be doubted. Would any one for a moment suppose that the hearts of unbaptized children were to be seen there in boiling caldrons? Can we not plainly discern that in those words, "unbaptized children," the church had an object in view? as also in the assertion of the "inquisitors," that "the host, the Virgin, and the holy sacrament" were held up to ridicule? The latter may have had something of the semblance of truth in it; for it is well known that the clergy had become very corrupt, and so merited this not ill-timed defiant mockery.

If what we have been contemplating really had a basis in verity, there comes to us a warning as from the heavens, to give full scope to our free educational institutions, that the rising generation may know on what it stands mentally, morally and physically.

The Power of a Book By Thomas De Witt Talmage 1922


The Power of a Book By Thomas De Witt Talmage 1922

—A good book—who can estimate its power? Benjamin Franklin said that his reading of Cotton Mather's "Essays to Do Good" in childhood gave him holy aspirations for all the rest of his life. Oh, the power of a good book! But, alas! for the influence of a bad book.

We see so many books, we do not understand what a book is. Stand it on end. Measure it, the height of it, the depth of it, the length of it, the breadth of it. You cannot do it. Examine the paper and estimate the progress made from the time of the impressions on clay and then on to the bark of trees, and from the bark of trees to papyrus, and from papyrus to the hide of wild beasts, and from the hide of wild beasts on down until the miracles of our modern paper manufactories, and then see the paper white, pure as an infant's soul, waiting for God's inscription. A book! Examine the type of it. Examine the printing of it and see the progress from the time when Solon's laws were written on oak plans, and Hesiod's poems were written on tables of lead, and the Sinaitic were written on tables of stone, on down to Hoe's perfecting printing-press. It took all the universities of the past, all the martyr fires, all the civilizations, all the battles, all the victories, all the defeats, all the glooms, all the brightness, all the centuries to make it possible. A book! It is the chorus of the ages—it is the drawing room in which kings and queens and orators and poets, and historians and philosophers come out to greet you. If I worshiped anything on earth I would worship that. If I burned any incense to any idol I would build an altar to that. Thank God for good books, healthful books, inspiring books, Christian books, books for men, books for women, Book of God. It is with these good books that we are to overcome corrupt literature.

Friday, April 27, 2018

Greeks and Romans in Pre-Columbian America by Martin I. Townsend 1895


The Romans and Greeks in Ancient America by Martin Ingham Townsend 1895

Join my Facebook Group

See also Who Really Discovered America? - 90 Books on DVDrom

THE ANCIENT GREEK AND ROMAN SCHOLARS KNEW OF THE EXISTENCE OF THE WESTERN CONTINENT by MARTIN INGHAM TOWNSEND 1895

In the earlier existence of the Greek and Roman peoples, knowledge was extremely limited. These peoples were without any mode of perpetuating or transmitting knowledge until the days, a little more than a thousand years before the Christian Era, when Cadmus brought from Phœnecia the letters which had been invented and adopted there for the representation and expression of articulate sounds; and by the combination of these letters to transmit and perpetuate human ideas. There is scarce a race of savages in our day where the mass of the body politic are as profoundly ignorant as were the great body of the Greek people a thousand years before Christ.

Even those men who made such acquisitions of knowledge as were possible in that day, could only learn from the lips of their imperfectly trained teacher, and by travel to those countries which the barbarous condition of the world allowed them to visit; and even after the learned men of the Greek Islands came to know the power of letters, how small must have been the amount of knowledge existing in the world, and how slow must have been its spread amongst the untaught commonalty of the then Greek world? In the day when the Phœnician ship Argo made a voyage to Colchis, at the east end of the Black Sea, it so fired the imagination of the Greek poets that they dreamed of the voyage and composed poems about it for centuries.

Indeed it was not until the Romans, just before the Christian Era, had subdued all the borders of the historic Mediterranean Sea, that free intercourse amongst the inhabitants prevailed. Up to that period every people, as a rule, carefully guarded all knowledge of their own wealth, and of their own acts and possessions from the rest of mankind, instead of making public expositions to attract the attention of the outside world to their useful achievements, and they sometimes passed laws for inflicting the severest punishments upon citizens who should reveal to the outside world the locations, nature, or extent, or value of their possessions.

Still, we glean from the ancient writers the following announcements.

1. That ancient book entitled “The Book of Wonders,” ascribed to Aristotle, contains the following: “When the Carthagenians, who were masters of the western ocean, observed that many traders and other men, attracted by the fertility of the soil and the pleasant climate, had fixed there their homes, they feared that the knowledge of this land should reach other nations, a great concourse to it of men from the various lands of the earth would follow, that the conditions of life, then so happy on that island, would not only be unfavorably affected, but the Carthagenian Empire itself suffer injury, and the dominion of the sea be wrested from their hands; and so they issued a decree that no one, under penalty of death, should thereafter sail thither.” This passage is quoted, not merely with a claim that it refers to the Continent of America, but for the purpose of showing how carefully the PhÅ“nician people, whether Asiatic, Carthagenian, or Spanish, guarded from the great world the foreign discoveries which they had made, and where their kindred were enjoying prosperity; and to enable us to see how little likely their discoveries would be to come to the knowledge of the great mass of mankind.

2. Let us look for a moment at some of the things which the ancient Greek and Latin authors have said indicating their knowledge of the existence of a western continent. Crates, a commentator on Homer, is quoted by authority of Strabo, a very learned author of the century before Christ, as saying that Homer means in his account of the western Ethiopians the inhabitants of the Atlantis or the Hesperides, as the unknown world of the west was then variously called.

3. Pliny also 6: 31-36, locates the western Ethiopians somewhere in the Atlantic. This shows that Crates and Pliny believed that the great poet Homer believed in the existence of a great continent on the western shore of the Atlantic ocean.

4. Plato says in his Timaeus, Chapter VI.: “The sea” (the Atlantic ocean), “was indeed navigable and had an island fronting the mouth which you in your tongue call the Pillars of Hercules, and this island is larger than Libya and Asia put together, and there is a passage hence for travelers of that day to the rest of the islands, as well as from those islands to the whole opposite continent that surrounds the real sea.

5. Humboldt quotes that Anaxagoras, who was born five hundred years B. C., and was a most eminent Greek philosopher, speaks of the grand division of the world beyond the ocean.

6. Aelian in his Variæ Historiæ, Book 3, Chapter 18, cites Theopompus, an eminent Greek historian, born about three hundred years B. C., as stating that the Meropians inhabit a large continent beyond the ocean, in comparison with which the known world was but an island.

7. Aristotle says in Chapters 84 and 85: “Beyond the Pillars of Hercules, they say that an inhabited island was discovered by the Carthagenians, which abounded in forests and navigable rivers and fruits of all kinds, distant from the continent many days’ sail. And while the Carthagenians were engaged in making voyages to this land, and some had even settled there on account of the fertility of the soil, the Senate decreed that no one thereafter, under penalty of death, should voyage thither.” Aristotle was born three hundred and eighty-four years before Christ.

8. Diodorus of Sicily, who lived in the century preceding the Christian Era, says in his Book 5,—19 and 20, that it was the “PhÅ“nicians instead of the Carthagenians who were cast upon a most fertile island opposite Africa, where the climate was that of perpetual spring, and that the land was the proper habitation for gods rather than men.”

He speaks of the continent, however, at length and with great detail, enumerating its fertile valleys and navigable rivers, its rich and abundant fruits and supply of game, its valuable forests and its genial climate.

9. Pliny quotes Statius Sebosus, in his volume 2, page 106, Bohn, as saying that the two Hesperides are forty-two days’ sail from the coast of Africa.

For a list of all of my disks and ebooks (PDF and Amazon) click here

Thursday, April 26, 2018

The Superstitious Abraham Lincoln, by William Eleazar Barton 1920


Was Abraham Lincoln Superstitious? by William Eleazar Barton 1920

Join my Facebook Group

See also Killing Abraham Lincoln - 40 Books on CDrom (Plus Garfield & McKinley) and The Dark Side of Abraham Lincoln - Over 50 Books on CDROM and 220 Books on the American Civil War on DVDrom 1861-1865

Both President and Mrs. Lincoln were superstitious.

They believed in dreams and signs, he more in dreams and she more in signs. When Mrs. Lincoln was away from him for a little time, visiting in Philadelphia in 1863, and Tad with her, Lincoln thought it sufficiently important to telegraph, lest the mail should be too slow, and sent her this message:

"Executive Mansion,
"Washington, June 9, 1863.
"Mrs. Lincoln,
   "Philadelphia, Pa.
"Think you better put Tad's pistol away. I had an ugly dream about him. "A. Lincoln"
—Quoted in facsimile in Harper's Magazine for February, 1897; Lincoln's Home Life in the White House, by Leslie J. Perry.

In Lamon's book of Recollections, published in 1895, a very different book from his Life of Lincoln, he devotes an entire chapter to Lincoln's dreams and presentiments. He relates the story of the dream which Lincoln had not long before his assassination wherein he saw the East Room of the White House containing a catafalque with the body of an assassinated man lying upon it. Lincoln tried to remove himself from the shadow of this dream by recalling a story of life in Indiana, but could not shake off the gloom of it. Lamon says:

"He was no dabbler in divination, astrology, horoscopy, prophecy, ghostly lore, or witcheries of any sort. . . . The moving power of dreams and visions of an extraordinary character he ascribed, as did the Patriarchs of old, to the Almighty Intelligence that governs the universe, their processes conforming strictly to natural laws."—Recollections, p. 120.

In his Life of Lincoln, Lamon tells the story of the dream which Lincoln had late in the year 1860, when resting upon a lounge in his chamber he saw his figure reflected in a mirror opposite with two images, one of them a little paler than the other. It worried Lincoln, and he told his wife about it. She thought it was "a sign that Lincoln was to be elected for a second term and that the paleness of one of the faces indicated that he would not see life through the last term" (p. 477).

As this optical illusion has been so often printed, and has seemed so weirdly prophetic of the event which followed, it may be well to quote an explanation of the incident from an address by Dr. Erastus Eugene Holt, of Portland, Maine:

"As he lay there upon the couch, every muscle became relaxed as never before. ... In this relaxed condition, in a pensive mood and in an effort to recuperate the energies of a wearied mind, his eyes fell upon the mirror in which he could see himself at full length, reclining upon the couch. All the muscles that direct, control, and keep the two eyes together were relaxed; the eyes were allowed to separate, and each eye saw a separate and distinct image by itself. The relaxation was so complete, for the time being, that the two eyes were not brought together, as is usual by the action of converging muscles, hence the counterfeit presentiment of himself. He would have seen two images of anything else had he looked for them, but he was so startled by the ghostly appearance that he felt 'a little pang as though something uncomfortable had happened,' and obtained but little rest. What a solace to his wearied mind it would have been if someone could have explained this illusion upon rational grounds!" —Address at Portland, Maine, February 12, 1901, reprinted by William Abbatt, Tarrytown, N. Y., 1916.

Other incidents which relate to Mr. Lincoln's faith in dreams, including one that is said to have occurred on the night preceding his assassination, are well known, and need not be repeated here in detail.

It is not worth while to seek to evade or minimize the element of superstition in Lincoln's life, nor to ask to explain away any part of it. Dr. Johnson admits it in general terms, but makes little of concrete instances:

"The claim that there was more or less of superstition in his nature, and that he was greatly affected by his dreams, is not to be disputed. Many devout Christians today are equally superstitious, and, also, are greatly affected by their dreams. Lincoln grew in an atmosphere saturated with all kinds of superstitious beliefs. It is not strange that some of it should cling to him all his life, just as it was with Garfield, Blaine, and others.

"In 1831, then a young man of twenty-two, Lincoln made his second trip to New Orleans. It was then that he visited a Voodoo fortune teller, that is so important in the eyes of certain people. This, doubtless, was out of mere curiosity, for it was his second visit to a city. This no more indicates a belief in 'spiritualism' than does the fact that a few days before he started on this trip he attended an exhibition given by a traveling juggler, and allowed the magician to cook eggs in his low-crowned, broad-rimmed hat."—Lincoln the Christian, p. 29.

I do not agree with this. Superstition was inherent in the life of the backwoods, and Lincoln had his full share of it. Superstition is very tenacious, and people who think that they have outgrown it nearly all possess it. "I was always superstitious," wrote Lincoln to Joshua F. Speed on July 4, 1842. He never ceased to be superstitious.

While superstition had its part in the life and thought of Lincoln, it was not the most outstanding fact in his thinking or his character. For the most part his thinking was rational and well ordered, but it had in it many elements and some strange survivals—strange until we recognize the many moods of the man and the various conditions of his life and thought in which from time to time he lived.

For a list of all of my disks and ebooks (PDF and Amazon) click here

Visit A Tribute to my Beloved Dog Teddy

The Dog at his Master's Grave (1910 Article)


The Dog at his Master's Grave (1910 Article)

In 1858 a funeral procession entered the old Gray Friar's grave-yard in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland. It was the funeral of a poor man, and the chief mourner who followed the hearse was the poor man's dog.

After the funeral all the human friends of this poor man went to their homes, but the dog would not leave his master's grave. Day after day people tried to get the dog away, but he would keep coming back to his master’s grave. Finally, it became known through the city, and the neighbors fed the dog and gave him shelter in cold weather, and the Lord Provost, or Presidente of the City, gave him a collar; and for about fourteen years, up to his death in 1872, he did not leave the neighborhood of his master's grave.

A few years ago that excellent English lady, the Baroness Burdett Coutts, caused a monument to be built for him near the entrance to the Gray Friar’s Churchyard, and it will probably stand hundreds of years to tell the people of Edinburgh about this faithful dog.

And now let us see what dogs do for us. In the cold Northern countries where there are no horses or oxen, dogs are used to draw the sleds over the ice and snow. In other countries they are used to hunt wolves and other wild animals, and sometimes to follow bad men who have committed crimes. In countries where large numbers of sheep are raised, they guard the sheep, keeping off all wild animals. In some countries it would not be possible to keep sheep if there were no dogs to guard them. In some places it would not be possible, without dogs, to protect chickens and poultry from foxes and other wild animals.

Thousands of human lives have been saved by them, ——lives of persons who have fallen into the water and would have drowned if dogs had not jumped in and pulled them out. In one case, while I was in London, about eleven years ago, a man fell into the water and sank to the bottom, and a good dog dove to the bottom and brought him up, and brought him safe to the shore. Some of us gave money to buy a beautiful collar for this dog, and on it we had written: “A MEMBER or THE ROYAL HUMANE SOCIETY.” Sometimes dogs save shipwrecked sailors by swimming with ropes from the wreck to the shore.

They have saved the lives of many persons who have been almost frozen or buried under the snow. In one case I knew of, three little children at Gloucester, Mass., going home from school in a great snow-storm, lost their way and were covered with snow, and would have died if a good dog had not found them.

And then dogs guard our houses in the night when we are all asleep, and drive off robbers and other bad people, or if bad people try to get in, they bark and awaken us. Only a short time since, I knew of a case in which a whole family would have been burned to death in their house, in the night, if the dog had not barked and waked them.

There are many books filled with stories about the good things dogs have done, and many other books might be filled with other stories just as good. They have always been the friends and companions of human beings, and are generally, when kindly treated, very kind to children. A great writer of books, named CUVIER, who has studied this whole subject, thinks that men could spare any other animal better than they could spare dogs.

Some dogs that have been badly treated become cross and dangerous. Some men and boys treat them cruelly, but when they have been treated kindly, I think they are almost always kind. Some of the greatest and best men that have ever lived have been very fond of dogs, such men as Sir Walter Scott and Sir Edwin Landseer. And poor men often find them their best friends. A poor, sick colored man, sometime since, travelled on foot many miles to the hospital at Louisville, Kentucky, to see if he could get cured, having with him his dog. But when they told him he must abandon his dog and turn him into the street, because they would not have any dog in the hospital, the poor man took the dog in his arms, and with tears running down his face, said he would rather die with his dog than turn him into the street and go to the hospital. I am glad to say that when they found how much he loved the dog, they let the dog enter with him.

Many more things-I should be glad to tell you about dogs, but it would make this lesson too long.

Wednesday, April 25, 2018

A 1916 Pamphlet on the Failure of the Minimum Wage


See also The History & Mystery of Money & Economics-250 Books on DVDrom

For a list of all of my disks, with links click here

THE HISTORIC KALEIDOSCOPE OF MINIMUM WAGE LEGISLATION by Merchants and Manufacturers of Massachusetts 1916  

THERE has been an astonishing lack of available information in the United States concerning the statutory Minimum Wage, its origin, its history and its practical results. The two great classes of Americans who are closest to the scene of action (the employer and the employee) know the least about it. It is a common picture at hearings in almost any of the states where Minimum Wage Laws are proposed to be enacted to find the proponents and advocates of the bill made up either wholly or preponderantly of men and women whose livelihood is largely derived from service in this or that "social welfare" organization, theorists on sociology, an occasional college professor, and, finally, a large proportion of well-to-do women whose sympathetic tendencies far outweigh their analytical grasp of the laws underlying the business and economic relations of mankind. It is rare, indeed, to find any of these advocates numbered among those classes of society whose social and economic welfare is really bound up in the weekly pay roll of factory and shop, whether as owner or as worker. Except theoretically, an increase in wage standards, or, on the other hand, the impairment of a great industry through hampering laws, means relatively nothing to most of these advocates. Therefore, to them, the picture of a concourse of happy, prosperous workers, emancipated from worry and care through a simple decree of the legislature, is naturally an alluring and pleasing one. We, too, wish that the economic problems of humanity were as easily solved, and with as little sacrifice.

The result is, that ninety-nine per cent of employers first learn of this new burden when the Minimum Wage inspector appears in the factory office and demands certain information contained only in the private books of the concern. The employer suddenly realizes that from this demand to examine his pay roll and other records, to a ruthless overhauling of his dividends, and profit and loss account, is but a single step.

Similarly, the employee—she, in the majority of cases, has never heard of the law until it is in full swing. In known instances, when fully informed of the probable effect of the law upon her future prospects and her co-workers, if given an opportunity, she has voted against its acceptance by her employer. The reasons for this are set forth in detail later on in the story. Read them carefully. In other words, the women workers affected by the Minimum Wage Law were not its original advocates, nor are they to-day as a class for it in anything but an indifferent sense. All the higher paid, more efficient workers dread its levelling effect; while the inefficient fears discharge, and she has good cause to fear this in Massachusetts.

It is well known that from the beginning of industrial development, dating far back into the Roman era, wages and the determination of wages have almost without exception been a matter of private contract. The intangible but none the less certain economic law of supply and demand fixed the general terms of wage schedules. Employer and employee have alike bowed to this law because every infringement of it has brought terrible rebukes to industry, no matter how rosy colored or subtle the theories advanced by various agitators for its evasion. There have been several unsuccessful attempts to fix not only a Minimum Wage but also a Maximum Wage during the last two thousand years, especially by the Romans in the first five Christian centuries. As near as can be learned these attempts, which at first were to fix Maximum Wages, all succumbed to the silent working of the economic law. In the Middle Ages, in the countries of western and southwestern Europe, the same attempt was made, and in England in 1349 A.D., under the statute of Edward III, maximum wages were decreed, owing to the scarcity of labor caused by pestilence, and the consequent exorbitant demands of the workers. This again worked badly, caused much injustice to the skilled workers themselves, and was overturned. In all these attempts the skilled workers and the inefficient suffered most. In the reign of Elizabeth a Minimum Wage Law was enacted, and for a long period state regulation was the popular means of meeting economic inequalities. Until these regulations were repealed chaos reigned in British economic circles. After their repeal the status of labor began to improve. On this point note the statement of Mr. George Howell, an advocate of Trades-Unionism and a member of the British Parliament. He speaks of the two hundred and fifty year period beginning with Elizabeth, and his statement is deserving of much weight. It is as follows:

"The state having once more entered upon the wild-goose chase of attempting to regulate labor, thereby restraining the development of the individual in the pursuit of his own welfare, it found no halting place. As new industries arose, the law had to be extended. Each fresh discovery and invention was more or less handicapped in its application to industry. Capital was fettered, employers were harassed and hampered, and manufacturers were impeded by such laws, and worse than all, they afforded but scant protection to the workmen. It so happened, however, that the latter sought to perpetuate them, because they feared that by repeal they would fare worse than under the law. The capitalists and employers, on the contrary, sought their repeal, and for about two centuries the contest raged fiercer and fiercer on the one side for the retention of the laws, and on the other for their repeal. . . . But there was no halting place. Finis was nowhere written at the end of any chapter. . . . Industry groaned under the weight of regulation, restriction and control. There was a revolt against it, first by one party and then by the other, as it suited them, or as the nature of the industry demanded. It almost looked at one period as if the whole trade of the country would be crushed beneath the load of legislation; and it would have been, had not other countries been simply stupid as regards the same kind of legislation, or at least such legislation as compassed nearly the same ends."

Regarding the present agitation to return to this policy, Mr. Howell says:

"If a cure for this frenzy be possible, probably the best cure will be a careful perusal of the legislation prior to the commencement of the present century, and a careful study of its effect. It nearly killed our early trade, and nearly starved our people. It needs no prophet to foretell that the same result would follow if such laws were re-enacted."

Careful study of this part of English economic history will convince any fair-minded man that state intervention in the mysterious region of wages and wage-fixing has never brought other than temporary relief, and that the eventual distress resulting from such entanglements has been terrible in the extreme.

Join my Facebook Group
................................................................................

A Tribute to my Beloved Dog Teddy

The Light in the Orphanage (Ghost Story)


The Light in the Orphanage (Ghost Story)

The bond between mother and child is strong, and may even extend beyond the veil that separates life from death, as is told in this recollection from 1875:

In 1875, a man died leaving a widow and six orphan children. The three eldest were admitted into the Orphanage. Three years afterwards the widow died, and friends succeeded in getting funds to send the rest here, the youngest being about four years of age. At this time the Orphanage contained nearly 30 inmates, for the smaller ones of whom the Warden did everything that was required. There was not a spare room in the house, and visitors to the (Orphanage had to be lodged in the parsonage. About six months after the arrival of the younger children referred to above, two visitors unexpectedly arrived late in the evening—too late to get a bed aired at the parsonage; it was therefore arranged that they should have the Warden's room, he agreeing to take a bed in the little ones' dormitory, which contained 10 beds, nine occupied. No other change except this was made in the usual order of things.

In the morning, at breakfast, the Warden made the following statement:—As near as I can tell I fell asleep about 11 o'clock, and slept very soundly for some time. I suddenly woke without any apparent reason, and felt an impulse to turn round, my face being towards the wall, from the children. Before turning, I looked up and saw a soft light in the room. The gas was burning low in the hall, and the dormitory door being open, I thought it probable that the light came from that source. It was soon evident, however, that such was not the case. I turned round, and then a wonderful vision met my gaze. Over the second bed from mine, and on the same side of the room, there was floating a small cloud of light, forming a halo of the brightness of the moon on an ordinary moonlight night.

I sat upright in bed, looked at this strange appearance, took up my watch and found the hands pointing to five minutes to 1. Everything was quiet, and all the children sleeping soundly. In the bed, over which the light seemed to float, slept the youngest of the six children mentioned above.

I asked myself, "Am I dreaming?" No! I was wide awake. I was seized with a strong impulse to rise and touch the substance, or whatever it might be (for it was about five feet high), and was getting up when something seemed to hold me back. I am certain I hoard nothing, yet I felt and perfectly understood the words—" No, lie down, it won't hurt you." I at once did what I felt I was told to do. I fell asleep shortly afterwards and rose at half-past 5, that being my usual time.

At 6 o'clock I began dressing the children, beginning at the bed furthest from the one in which 1 slept. Presently I came to the bed over which I had seen the light hovering. I took the little boy out, placed him on my knee, and put on some of his clothes. The child had been talking with the others, suddenly he was silent. And then, looking me hard in the face with an extraordinary expression, he said, "Oh, Mr. Jupp, my mother came to me last night. Did you see her?" For a moment I could not answer the child. I then thought it better to pass it off, and said, "Come, we must make haste, or we shall be late for breakfast."

The child never afterwards referred to the matter, we are told, nor has it since ever been mentioned to him. The Warden says it is a mystery to him; he simply states the fact and there leaves the matter, being perfectly satisfied that he was mistaken in no one particular.

-Reverend C. Jupp

[It is possible that the child's experience here was a dream; if so, the case might be taken as a link between the two classes of phenomena—collective hallucinations and simultaneous dreams. ~from Phantasms of the Living]