Huntsville gazette., 1886-07-31
OUT, WITH THE TIDE
/
The Ebp Which Sets in and takes
a Soul"

The Ebp Which SETS IN ana Iakes
a Soul"
One of the most striking and dramatic
death bed scenes ever sketched by the
nastershsnd of Charles Dickens is that
Of the old Bludderstone carrier, Barkis.
in David Copperfeld, which, if not
the most powerful of Dickens crea-
tions, and occasionally little garru-
lous, undoubtedly possesses REM
s. brandt perspective and felicity Of
imaginative touch exceeded by no
other. From a boy Of ten my remem-
brance Of the picture of the rough old
Yarmouth fisherman. whispering be-
hind his huge, horny, caloused. un-
|. Icouth hand: '.He's going out with the
tide" has possessed the peculiar real
ity Of something actually remembered
from visual contact. instead of the
mere yiyidnes that inheres to the re-
OF scenes more or less
graphically described. If Psychologists
are correct in ascribing to the retina
of the eye a memory of its own, inde-
pendent of the mere cerebral recollec-
" tions Of impressions, the explanation of
this fact is obvious Recolections of
scenes, faces or situations, which date
from previous visual impression, and
depend upon the faculty of the retina
for reproducing images, are necessarily
imbued with certain Photographic
vividnesss and fidelity, to which the
recollection of ideal pictures produced
by reflex action but dinly approximates.
Biographers say that Goethe and Shelley
were gifted with rare faculty of Sec
aondarys vision, not shared by any COM
mon humanity which enabled them at
! will, BY mere effort of the memory to
reproduce upon the retina of the eye
impressions that had once been pro-
iected upon that delicate membrane,
and thence transmitted to the brain-a
faculty whose influence can be traced
in their literature, in a certain pictorial
quality impaired to scenes purely
imaginary, as well as in a. certain
graphic tone of imagery and descrip-
ton.
! ~ Not many handlers of the pen, how
ever, poets or mere romancers, gifted
with secondary vision or not, have
ever acquired the wizardry of touching
their descriptions with the simple and
direct reality of optical impression.
Such magic Of the pen pertains only to
masters, and to them only in their
highest moods-moments of supreme
command of plastic materials such as
the reader may wade through pages OF
commonplace to discover in the best
writers. All the works of Dickens con-
. stains scarcely a score of such passages;
and no other British writer, except
! sMr. Charles Kingsley in 'sAlton
ELocke," and George Eliot in ssSilas
1 sMarner," the least of her creations in
bulk, the finest and most artistic in
yreality, has ever touched, in evanescent
fglimpses even, this supreme summit of
descriptive excellence. str-Ff..t
The simple, direct, artistic pictur-
!. .aesqueness that appears in the narrative
n of the death of Barkis -as if the writer
s were describing from life lis thus,
then, probably due to his familiarity
with superstition common to mari
time population, that the souls of dying
men pass away with the tide out-out
-far1out to sea. The touch ofmystery
with which the superstition is imbued,
was of a kind to quicken the active,
sympathetic imagination Of Dickens;
and the result appears in the wizard
death-bed picture evoked by that con-
Juror with the pen.
But is this weird belief about the
souls of dying men going out with the
tide-which find as deep-seated and
strong with the shrewd, hard-headed,
horny-handed sfarmer-fshermen of this
old New England town (MadisOn,
Conn., as Dickens did, no doubt, with
3 the bloaters of old Yarmouth -merely
groundless, but very natural, supers
stitition of sea-going races, or is it 2
fact that for some reason not yet faith
. on1ed by science, the sick, old and en-
feebled are more apt to die at ebb-tide
than when the tide is rising. remem-
Der, appropos Of the foregoing, the
medical superintendent of one of the
largest and finest asylums for the in
sane in this country once remarked to
mG speaking of the ancient notion of
~ the noon exercising potent influence
- on the nervous system Of man, that the
cycle of recurrent phases through
which the mind of a madman periodic
ally passes seldom or never varies from
the limit. of ono month that is, coin
cides substantially with the moons as
poets. The learned expert did not pre-
tend 70 explain why or how this coin-
cident occur only that such, is the
f4ct, md that the apdents denoted it
ia their derivation of the word lunatic.
In similar manner, speaking with q
= prominent physician in this section OF
the State of Connecticut, whose prac-
tice embraces the three-shore towns OF
Guilford, Madison and Clinton, with q
large fishing and coast population. the
old whim that men are prone to die at
ebb-fde thannt other hopra Of the day
crops out from source that entities it
to consideration