The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-03-22


something else. As to that, can only say
that none Of us children had the least fear
| OF ghosts, or knew that anybody feared
them. We had never been frightened by
inludicious means.
However, to 60 back to that hand II
was white, well-shaped, woman's hand,
with long slender fingers, and q turquoise
ring on one finger. l must not make
mystery of this. Ii was the hand of a fair
young American lady who, years after
wards. leaped or fell from steamboat in
Long Island sound, and so vanished from
this world. But at the time l write of she
was woman of happy disposition and
singular intelligence, and was a graduate
of famous Western college. Greek. and
the calculus, was as familiar TO her as
figs and grapes were to me. Either her
education. or a natural bias Of mind. once
rendered her. rather skepticai in her views;
nowadays, she might have been called an
agnostic. Nevertheless she possessed
Though she herself despised and ridi-
culcd III that still unexplained power or
susceptibility that We have agreed TO call
mediumistic. She was writing me-
dium.n
1t was the era of the Fox Sisters. and of
Home. Spiritualism has not lost its now
city. Science has delivered no verdict,
and nobody knows whether to believe or
ont. But there was an English lady liv-
ing near us. whose poetry was read by all
England and America, who was believer,
and often discoursed with earnestness on
the subject; and one day she said, 'sIf we
only had a medium -" Whereupon, this
American girl-graduate that I speak of,
out of the kindness of her heart, but with
some reluctance, intimated that she be.
lieved she had some little faculty in that
way, but that she could not herself
place the least credence in the super.
natural origin of the phenomena.
To make long story short-fOr who
could resist the urging of that little brown
eyed woman of genius, who was q lyric in
herself?-our medium consented to an ex-
pertinent; and, for a couple of weeks there.
after, while seven or eight Of us sat round
the table in the great Italian hall, the PEN
Gil in her white hand would be driven
along the paper, now under one unseen
impulse, now under another, she regarding
1t with look half apprehensivc, half in
credulous; but all of us hugely interested.
Our deceased friends and relatives an.
nounced themselves, one after another,
and expressed sentiments Of unimpeacha-
BILE morality and virtuous exhortation-
just what anyone would have expected Of
such good and respectable persons: and
the thing was becoming trifle monoto.
nous, and the medium was writing that
more useful ways of employing ones
leisure might be found; when all of sud-
den
Draw up closer, the story begins here.
Her hand, which had been moving meth
odically along under the direction of the
spirit of my maternal grandfather, and
had just written the words, 1--WE study
causes, " was suddenly and violently seized
upon as it were by new and turbulent in
| huence, almost knocking the pencil out Of
her fingers and hurrying it onward in .
quite original handwriting, uncouth and
needless and moreover incorrect in or
| biography. The medium started and
lnoE od VIC Of int
round the circle; she bent forward and
| spoke out the words: 81 must speak with
Mr.. Hawthore, ] want his sympathy"
My father laughed. He had deprecated
and made fun of the whole business from
the beginning. But with the courtesy of .
man of the world and an ex-consul Of the
United states, he consented to listen to .
communication which seemed to convey
such urgency. Who was the vehement
petitioner?
In the course Of tho next half hour We
had rs much Of her history as she ever con.
tided to US; Her name was Mary Rondel.
She was born in Boston hundred wears
before. She had died there, in pain and
misery, while still young woman. Her
troubles had their source in certain men,
Der of our own family, with whom she had
been intimately acquainted. She was not
happy even yet, and Mr.. Hawthorne's SYM
patty she must and would have.
But how shall indicate the weird. Curl
Gus and yet pathetic impression that was
produced, not more by the matter than by
the manner of her communications Mary
Rondel was bitterly in earnest; she would
be heard; she upset the propriety of ali our
other spiritual friends; it was i'm vain that
they attempted to assure us that she was
u bad, improper, untruthful, ill-conditioned
creature. In the midst of their pious
homilies she would swoop down, snatch
the pencil, and send it staggering in vio-
lent evolutions along the page; her lam
guage was anything but conventional:
nay, it sometimes became indiscreet, if not
scandalous. Occasionally our refined lit
tie medium would protest, and remove her
hand from the table. But no sooner did
she resume, than Mary was at it again.
She would not be denied. She was tenn.
permanent, will, a person. OF all our long
procession of communicates, she alone
showed an unmistakahle and vivid indi-
viduality. We would have known her
had we met her on the street. She
had been waiting in the dark void Of
the unseen world, for the better part
of century, for an opportunity to
speak and declare herself, and she
was not going to let it go unim-
knew not what to say-only that
she admired Mr. Hawthornes sympathy.
But what good it was to do her, or by what
right she demanded it, we were not in
formed. He assured her that he would
not and did not sympathize with her, hop
ing thereby TO pacify her and so get rid OF
her But no-Ahe chung to ms all the
tighter. Having at length found SYM
pathizer, she would hencefOrth cieave to
him. 1t soon became impossible to get
communications from anybody except
Mary Rondel; and, since the atmosphere
she brought with her was clearly .unheav-
emily, the seances we're finally abandoned.
and that was the end of Mary SO far as we
were concerned.
Now, the sequel was strange We re-
turned to America two or three years later,
and four years after that my father died.
Some venerable maiden cousins of ours
sent rs, some months subsequently, box
of old books and papers that had belonged
to our family in the last century. Among
the books was a dilapidated copy of Sir
Philip Sydney's Arcadia" bearing date
1886. On the fy-leaves were the auto
the first emigrant down to Daniel Haw.
thorne, who, history says, commanded Q
privateer during the revolution. And on
the broad margin at the bottom of tho
| tenth page was inscribed, in faded brown
ink, a woman's name, MARY Rondel."
! 1t is before me as / write, an Informed
name. but showing character.
After some reflection / remember the
| circumstances under which / had seen
| that name before. Searching further into
the book, came upon the love sonncts
| and stanzas in the latter part Of the vol
| ume; but several of these had been marked
| round with pen, and such CLOSES writ
| ten in the margin as "Pray, rnistris, read
! it." Some of these writings were in the
1 oh nh Of nonfnl nth