The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1888-09-08
SEPTEMBER 8, 1888.

others have witnessed over inanimate OBJ
jects-fll the air with sights and sounds"
"Or impress our senses with the belief
in them, we never having been en- rap
port with the person acting ON us? No.
What is commonly called mesmerism could
not do this: but there may be power akin
to mesmerism, and superior to 1.-THE
power that in old days was called Magic.
That such power may extend to all imam
innate objects of matter do not say; but
if so it would not be against nature, only
rare power in nature, which might be
given to constitutions with certain peeu-
liarities, and cultivated by practice to an
extraordinary degree That such a power
might extend over the dead, that is, over
certain thoughts and memories that the
dead may still retain-and compel, not that
which ought properly to be called the soul,
and which is far beyond human reach but
rather phantom Of what has been most
earth-stained on earth, to make It's self APP
parent to our senses-it is a very ancient
though obsolete theory, upon which /
will hazard no opinion. But do not con-
ceiye the power would be supernatural.
Let me illustrate what l mean, for an ex-
pertinent which Paracelsus described as
not difficult, and which the author of the
'Curiosities of Literature cities as credi-
BILE: A flower perishes; you burn it. What
ever were the elements of that flower
while it lived are gone, dispersed, you
know not whittier; you can never discover
nor recollect them. But you can, by
chemistry, out of the burnt dust of that
flower, raise spectrum of the flower, Just
as it seemed in life. 1t may be the same
with human being. The soul has as
much escaped you as the essence or ele-
ments of the flower. Still you may make
a spectrum of it. And this phantom,
though in the popular superstition it is
held to be the soul of the departed, must
not be COMPOUNDED with the true soul; it is
but the eidolon of the dead form Hence,
like the best attested stories of ghosts or
spirits, the thing that most strikes us is the
absence of what we hold to be the soul
that is, of superior, emancipated intelli-
gence. They came for little or no object;
they seldom speak, if they do come; they
utter no ideas above those of an ordinary
person on earth. These American spirit
seers have published volumes of communi-
cation in prose and verse, which they as
sert to be given in the names of the most
illustrious dead,-Shakespeare, Bacon,
Heaven knows whom. Those communica-
tons, taking the best, are certainly of not
a whit higher order than would be COM
munications from living persons of fair tai
ent and education; they are woudrously in
ferior to what Bacon, Shakespeare, and
Plato said and wrote when on earth. Nor,
what is more notable, do they ever contain
an idea that was not on the earth before.
Wonderful, therefore, as such phenomena
may be Granting them to be truthful, L
see much that philosophy may question,
nothing that it is incumbent on philosophy
to deny, namely, nothing supernatural.
They are but ideas conveyed some how or
other 1--WE have not yet discovered the
means) from one mortal brain to another.
Whether in so doing tables walk on their
own accord, or fend-like shapes appear in
magic circle, or bodiless hands rise and
remove material objects, or thing of dark
ness, such as presented itself to me, freeze
our blood, still am persuaded that these
are but agencies conveyed, as by electric
wires, to my own brain from the brain of
another. That this brain is of immense
power, that it can set matter into move
ment, that it is malignant and destructive,
l believe. Some material force must have
killed my dog; it might, for aught know,
have suficed to kill myself, had been as
subjugated by terror as the dog,-had my
intellect or my spirit gave no countervail-
ing resistance in my will.
at killed your dog that IS fearful! In
deed it is strange that no animal can be i'll
duced to stay in that house; not even a cat,
Rats and mice are never found in it.
"The instincts of the brute creation de-
tect influences deadly to their existence,
Mans reason has sense less subtle, because
it has resisting power more supreme.
But enough, do you comprehend my
theory2"
ayes, though imperfectly; and l ae-
cept any crochet pardon the world, how
ever odd, rather than embrace at once the
notion of ghosts and hobgoblins we embib-
ed in our nurseries Still, to my unfortu-
nate house the evil is the same. What on
earth can l do with the house?"
II will tell you what would do. I
am convinced from my own internal feel
ings that the small unfinished room, at
right angles to the door of the bedroom
which l occupied, forms starting-point
or receptacle for the influences which
haunt the house; and | strongly advise
you to have the walls opened, the floor
removed, nay, the whole room pulled down.
I observe that it is detached from the
house, built over the small back yard, and
could be removed without injury to the
rest of the building"
'And you think if did that
"You would cut off the telegraph-wires.
Try it. l am so persuaded that l am
right, that l will pay half the expense, if
you will allow me to direct the operations
aNay, am well able to afford the cost;
for the rest, allow me to write to you"
About ten days afterwards l received
letter from Mr.. j, telling me that he
had visited the house since had seen him;
that he had found the two letters had
described placed in the drawer from which
l had taken them; that he had read them
with misgivings like my own; that he had
instituted cautious inquiry about the
woman to whom had rightly conjectured
they had been written. 1t seemed that
thirty-six years ago "a year before the date
of the letters) she had married against the
wish of her relatives, an American of very
suspicious character; in fact, he was gener-
ally believed to be pirate. She herself
was the daughter of very respectable
trades-people, and had served in the capa-
city of nursery goyernness before her mar
riage. She had brother, a widower, who
was considered wealthy, and who had one
child about six years old, A month after
the body of this brother was found in the
Thames, near London Bridge: there seemed
some marks of violence about the throat,
but they were not deemed sufficient to
warrant the inquest in any other verdict
n m 4 l. 4