University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.
DOWN THE RIVER.

LOOK at the flower of a morning-glory the evening before
the dawn which is to see it unfold. The delicate
petals are twisted into a spiral, which at the appointed
hour, when the sunlight touches the hidden springs of its
life, will uncoil itself and let the day into the chamber of
its virgin heart. But the spiral must unwind by its own
law, and the hand that shall try to hasten the process will
only spoil the blossom which would have expanded in
symmetrical beauty under the rosy fingers of morning.

We may take a hint from Nature's handling of the
flower in dealing with young souls, and especially with
the souls of young girls, which, from their organization
and conditions, require more careful treatment than those
of their tougher-fibred brothers. Many parents reproach
themselves for not having enforced their own convictions
on their children in the face of every inborn antagonism
they encountered. Let them not be too severe in their
self-condemnation. A want of judgment in this matter
has sent many a young person to Bedlam, whose nature
would have opened kindly enough if it had only been trusted
to the sweet influences of morning sunshine. In such
cases it may be that the state we call insanity is not always
an unalloyed evil. It may take the place of something
worse, — the wretchedness of a mind not yet dethroned,
but subject to the perpetual interferences of
another mind governed by laws alien and hostile to its

own. Insanity may perhaps be the only palliative left
to Nature in this extremity. But before she comes
to that, she has many expedients. The mind does
not know what diet it can feed on until it has been
brought to the starvation point. Its experience is like
that of those who have been long drifting about on rafts
or in long-boats. There is nothing out of which it will not
contrive to get some sustenance. A person of note, long
held captive for a political offence, is said to have owed
the preservation of his reason to a pin, out of which he
contrived to get exercise and excitement by throwing it
down carelessly on the dark floor of his dungeon, and then
hunting for it in a series of systematic explorations until
he had found it.

Perhaps the most natural thing Myrtle Hazard could
have done would have been to go crazy, and be sent to
the nearest asylum, if Providence, which in its wisdom
makes use of the most unexpected agencies, had not made
a special provision for her mental welfare. She was in
that arid household as the prophet in the land where there
was no dew nor rain for these long years. But as he had
the brook Cherith, and the bread and flesh in the morning
and the bread and flesh in the evening which the ravens
brought him, so she had the river and her secret store of
books.

The river was light and life and music and companionship
to her. She learned to row herself about upon it,
to swim boldly in it, for it had sheltered nooks but a little
way above The Poplars. But there was more than that
in it, — it was infinitely sympathetic. A river is strangely
like a human soul. It has its dark and bright days, its
troubles from within, and its disturbances from without.

It often runs over ragged rocks with a smooth surface,
and is vexed with ripples as it slides over sands that are
level as a floor. It betrays its various moods by aspects
which are the commonplaces of poetry, as smiles and dimples
and wrinkles and frowns. Its face is full of winking
eyes, when the scattering rain-drops first fall upon it, and
it scowls back at the storm-cloud, as with knitted brows,
when the winds are let loose. It talks, too, in its own
simple dialect, murmuring, as it were, with busy lips all
the way to the ocean, as children seeking the mother's
breast and impatient of delay. Prisoners who know what
a flower or an insect has been to them in their solitary
cell, invalids who have employed their vacant minds in
studying the patterns of paper-hangings on the walls of
their sick-chambers, can tell what the river was to the
lonely, imaginative creature who used to sit looking into
its depths, hour after hour, from the airy height of the
Fire-hang-bird's Nest.

Of late a thought had mingled with her fancies which
had given to the river the aspect of something more than
a friend and a companion. It appeared all at once as a
Deliverer. Did not its waters lead, after long wanderings,
to the great highway of the world, and open to her the
gates of those cities from which she could take her departure
unchallenged towards the lands of the morning or of
the sunset? Often, after a freshet, she had seen a child's
miniature boat floating down on its side past her window,
and traced it in imagination back to some crystal brook
flowing by the door of a cottage far up a blue mountain
in the distance. So she now began to follow down
the stream the airy shallop that held her bright fancies.
These dreams of hers were colored by the rainbows of an

enchanted fountain, — the books of adventure, the romances,
the stories which fortune had placed in her hands,
— the same over which the heart of the Pride of the
County had throbbed in the last century, and on the
pages of some of which the traces of her tears might still
be seen.

The literature which was furnished for Myrtle's improvement
was chiefly of a religious character, and, however
interesting and valuable to those to whom it was
adapted, had not been chosen with any wise regard to its
fitness for her special conditions. Of what use was it to
offer books like the “Saint's Rest” to a child whose idea
of happiness was in perpetual activity? She read “Pilgrim's
Progress,” it is true, with great delight. She liked
the idea of travelling with a pack on one's back, the odd
shows at the House of the Interpreter, the fighting, the
adventures, the pleasing young ladies at the palace the
name of which was Beautiful, and their very interesting
museum of curiosities. As for the allegorical meaning, it
went through her consciousness like a peck of wheat
through a bushel measure with the bottom out, — without
touching.

But the very first book she got hold of out of the hidden
treasury threw the “Pilgrim's Progress” quite into
the shade. It was the story of a youth who ran away
and lived on an island, — one Crusoe, — a homely narrative,
but evidently true, though full of remarkable adventures.
There too was the history, coming much
nearer home, of Deborah Sampson, the young woman who
served as a soldier in the Revolutionary War, with a portrait
of her in man's attire, looking intrepid rather than
lovely. A virtuous young female she was, and married

well, as she deserved to, and raised a family with as good
a name as wife and mother as the best of them. But
perhaps not one of these books and stories took such hold
of her imagination as the tale of Rasselas, which most
young persons find less entertaining than the Vicar of
Wakefield, with which it is now-a-days so commonly
bound up. It was the prince's discontent in the Happy
Valley, the iron gate opening to the sound of music, and
closing forever on those it admitted, the rocky boundaries
of the imprisoning valley, the visions of the world beyond,
the projects of escape, and the long toil which ended in
their accomplishment, which haunted her sleeping and
waking. She too was a prisoner, but it was not in the
Happy Valley. Of the romances and the love-letters we
must take it for granted that she selected wisely, and read
discreetly; at least we know nothing to the contrary.

There were mysterious reminiscences and hints of her
past coming over her constantly. It was in the course of
the long, weary spring before her disappearance, that a
dangerous chord was struck which added to her growing
restlessness. In an old closet were some sea-shells and
coral-fans, and dried star-fishes and sea-horses, and a natural
mummy of a rough-skinned dog-fish. She had not
thought of them for years, but now she felt impelled to look
after them. The dim sea odors which still clung to them
penetrated to the very inmost haunts of memory, and called
up that longing for the ocean breeze which those who have
once breathed and salted their blood with it never get over,
and which makes the sweetest inland airs seem to them at
last tame and tasteless. She held a tiger-shell to her ear,
and listened to that low, sleepy murmur, whether in the
sense or in the soul we hardly know, like that which had

so often been her lullaby, — a memory of the sea, as Landor
and Wordsworth have sung.

“You are getting to look like your father,” Aunt Silence
said one day; “I never saw it before. I always thought
you took after old Major Gideon Withers. Well, I hope
you won't come to an early grave like poor Charles, — or,
at any rate, that you may be prepared.”

It did not seem very likely that the girl was going out
of the world at present, but she looked Miss Silence in the
face very seriously, and said, “Why not an early grave,
aunt, if this world is such a bad place as you say it is?”

“I 'm afraid you are not fit for a better.”

She wondered if Silence Withers and Cynthia Badlam
were just ripe for heaven.

For some months Miss Cynthia Badlam, who, as was
said, had been an habitual visitor at The Poplars, had
lived there as a permanent resident. Between her and
Silence Withers, Myrtle Hazard found no rest for her
soul. Each of them was for untwisting the morning-glory
without waiting for the sunshine to do it. Each had her
own wrenches and pincers to use for that purpose. All
this promised little for the nurture and admonition of the
young girl, who, if her will could not be broken by imprisonment
and starvation at three years old, was not likely to
be over-tractable to any but gentle and reasonable treatment
at fifteen.

Aunt Silence's engine was responsibility, — her own responsibility,
and the dreadful consequences which would
follow to her, Silence, if Myrtle should in any way go
wrong. Ever since her failure in that moral coup d'état
by which the sinful dynasty of the natural self-determining
power was to be dethroned, her attempts in the way of

education had been a series of feeble efforts followed by
plaintive wails over their utter want of success. The face
she turned upon the young girl in her solemn expostulations
looked as if it were inscribed with the epitaphs of hope and
virtue. Her utterances were pitched in such a forlorn
tone, that the little bird in his cage, who always began
twittering at the sound of Myrtle's voice, would stop in his
song, and cock his head with a look of inquiry full of pathos,
as if he wanted to know what was the matter, and
whether he could do anything to help.

The specialty of Cynthia Badlam was to point out all the
dangerous and unpardonable transgressions into which young
people generally, and this young person in particular, were
likely to run, to hold up examples of those who had fallen
into evil ways and come to an evil end, to present the most
exalted standard of ascetic virtue to the lively girl's apprehension,
leading her naturally to the conclusion that a
bright example of excellence stood before her in the irreproachable
relative who addressed her. Especially with
regard to the allurements which the world offers to the
young and inexperienced female, Miss Cynthia Badlam
was severe and eloquent. Sometimes poor Myrtle would
stare, not seeing the meaning of her wise caution, sometimes
look at Miss Cynthia with a feeling that there was
something about her that was false and forced, that she had
nothing in common with young people, that she had no
pity for them, only hatred of their sins, whatever these
might be, — a hatred which seemed to extend to those
sources of frequent temptation, youth and beauty, as if they
were in themselves objectionable.

Both the lone women at The Poplars were gifted with a
thin vein of music. They gave it expression in psalmody,

of course, in which Myrtle, who was a natural singer, was
expected to bear her part. This would have been pleasanter
if the airs most frequently selected had been cheerful
or soothing, and if the favorite hymns had been of a sort to
inspire a love for what was lovely in this life, and to give
some faint foretaste of the harmonies of a better world to
come. But there is a fondness for minor keys and wailing
cadences common to the monotonous chants of cannibals
and savages generally, to such war-songs as the wild, implacable
“Marseillaise,” and to the favorite tunes of low-spirited
Christian pessimists. That mournful “China,”
which one of our most agreeable story-tellers has justly
singled out as the cry of despair itself, was often sung
at The Poplars, sending such a sense of utter misery
through the house, that poor Kitty Fagan would cross herself,
and wring her hands, and think of funerals, and wonder
who was going to die, — for she fancied she heard the
Banshee's warning in those most dismal ululations.

On the first Saturday of June, a fortnight before her
disappearance, Myrtle strolled off by the river-shore, along
its lonely banks, and came home with her hands full of
leaves and blossoms. Silence Withers looked at them
as if they were a kind of melancholy manifestation of
frivolity on the part of the wicked old earth. Not that
she did not inhale their faint fragrance with a certain
pleasure, and feel their beauty as none whose souls are
not wholly shrivelled and hardened can help doing, but
the world was, in her estimate, a vale of tears, and it was
only by a momentary forgetfulness that she could be moved
to smile at anything.

Miss Cynthia, a sharper-edged woman, had formed the
habit of crushing everything for its moral, until it lost its

sweetness and grew almost odious, as flower-de-luces do
when handled roughly. “There 's a worm in that leaf,
Myrtle. He has rolled it all round him, and hidden himself
from sight; but there is a horrid worm in it, for all it
is so young and fresh. There is a worm in every young
soul, Myrtle.”

“But there is not a worm in every leaf, Miss Cynthia.
Look,” she said, “all these are open, and you can see all
over and under them, and there is nothing there. Are
there never any worms in the leaves after they get old and
yellow, Miss Cynthia?”

That was a pretty fair hit for a simple creature of fifteen,
— but perhaps she was not so absolutely simple as one
might have thought.

It was on the evening of this same day that they were
sitting together. The sweet season was opening, and it
seemed as if the whispering of the leaves, the voices of the
birds, the softness of the air, the young life stirring in
everything, called on all creatures to join the universal
chorus of praise that was going up around them.

“What shall we sing this evening?” said Miss Silence.

“Give me one of the books, if you please, Cousin Silence,”
said Miss Cynthia. “It is Saturday evening.
Holy time has begun. Let us prepare our minds for the
solemnities of the Sabbath.”

She took the book, one well known to the schools and
churches of this nineteenth century.

“Book Second. Hymn 44. Long metre. I guess
`Putney' will be as good a tune as any to sing it to.”

The trio began, —

and got through the first verse together pretty well.

Then came the second verse: —

Myrtle's voice trembled a little in singing this verse, and
she hardly kept up her part with proper spirit.

“Sing out, Myrtle,” said Miss Cynthia, and she struck
up the third verse: —

This last verse was a duet, and not a trio. Myrtle
closed her lips while it was singing, and when it was done
threw down the book with a look of anger and disgust.
The hunted soul was at bay.

“I won't sing such words,” she said, “and I won't stay
here to hear them sung. The boys in the streets say just
such words as that, and I am not going to sing them.
You can't scare me into being good with your cruel hymn-book!”

She could not swear: she was not a boy. She would
not cry: she felt proud, obdurate, scornful, outraged. All
these images, borrowed from the Holy Inquisition, were
meant to frighten her, and had simply irritated her. The
blow of a weapon that glances off, stinging, but not penetrating,
only enrages. It was a moment of fearful danger
to her character, to her life itself.

Without heeding the cries of the two women, she sprang
up stairs to her hanging chamber. She threw open the
window and looked down into the stream. For one moment

her head swam with the sudden, overwhelming,
almost maddening thought that came over her, — the impulse
to fling herself headlong into those running waters
and dare the worst these dreadful women had threatened
her with. Something — she often thought afterwards it
was an invisible hand — held her back during that brief
moment, and the paroxysm — just such a paroxysm as
throws many a young girl into the Thames or the Seine —
passed away. She remained looking, in a misty dream,
into the water far below. Its murmur recalled the whisper
of the ocean waves. And through the depths it seemed
as if she saw into that strange, half-remembered world of
palm-trees and white robes and dusky faces, and amidst
them, looking upon her with ineffable love and tenderness,
until all else faded from her sight, the face of a fair
woman, — was it hers, so long, long dead, or that dear
young mother's who was to her less a recollection than
a dream?

Could it have been this vision that soothed her, so that
she unclasped her hands and lifted her bowed head as if
she had heard a voice whispering to her from that unknown
world where she felt there was a spirit watching over her?
At any rate, her face was never more serene than when
she went to meeting with the two maiden ladies on the following
day, Sunday, and heard the Rev. Mr. Stoker preach
a sermon from Luke vii. 48, which made both the women
shed tears, but especially so excited Miss Cynthia that she
was in a kind of half-hysteric condition all the rest of the
day.

After that Myrtle was quieter and more docile than
ever before. Could it be, Miss Silence thought, that the
Rev. Mr. Stoker's sermon had touched her hard heart?

However that was, she did not once wear the stormy look
with which she had often met the complaining remonstrances
Miss Silence constantly directed against all the
spontaneous movements of the youthful and naturally vivacious
subject of her discipline.

June is an uncertain month, as everybody knows, and
there were frosts in many parts of New England in the
June of 1859. But there were also beautiful days and
nights, and the sun was warm enough to be fast ripening
the strawberries, — also certain plans which had been in
flower some little time. Some preparations had been going
on in a quiet way, so that at the right moment a decisive
movement could be made. Myrtle knew how to use her
needle, and always had a dexterous way of shaping any
article of dress or ornament, — a natural gift not very rare,
but sometimes very needful, as it was now.

On the morning of the 15th of June she was wandering
by the shores of the river, some distance above The Poplars,
when a boat came drifting along by her, evidently
broken loose from its fastenings farther up the stream. It
was common for such waifs to show themselves after heavy
rains had swollen the river. They might have run the
gauntlet of nobody could tell how many farms, and perhaps
passed by half a dozen towns and villages in the night, so
that, if of common, cheap make, they were retained without
scruple, by any who might find them, until the owner called
for them, if he cared to take the trouble.

Myrtle took a knife from her pocket, cut down a long,
slender sapling, and coaxed the boat to the side of the bank.
A pair of old oars lay in the bottom of the boat; she took
one of these and paddled it into a little cove, where it could
lie hid among the thick alders. Then she went home and

busied herself about various little matters more interesting
to her than to us.

She was never more amiable and gracious than on this
day. But she looked often at the clock, as they remembered
afterwards, and studied over a copy of the Farmer's
Almanae which was lying in the kitchen, with a somewhat
singular interest. The days were nearly at their longest,
the weather was mild, the night promised to be clear and
bright.

The household was, to all appearance, asleep at the usual
early hour. When all seemed quiet, Myrtle lighted her
lamp, stood before her mirror, and united the string that
bound her long and beautiful dark hair, which fell in its
abundance over her shoulders and below her girdle.

She lifted its heavy masses with one hand, and severed
it with a strong pair of scissors, with remorseless exaction
of every wandering curl, until she stood so changed by the
loss of that outward glory of her womanhood, that she felt
as if she had lost herself and found a brother she had never
seen before.

“Good by, Myrtle!” she said, and, opening her window
very gently, she flung the shining tresses upon the running
water, and watched them for a few moments as they floated
down the stream. Then she dressed herself in the character
of her imaginary brother, took up the carpet-bag in
which she had placed what she chose to carry with her,
stole softly down stairs, and let herself out of a window on
the lower floor, shutting it very carefully so as to be sure
that nobody should be disturbed.

She glided along, looking all about her, fearing she
might be seen by some curious wanderer, and reached the
cove where the boat she had concealed was lying. She

got into it, and, taking the rude oars, pulled herself into
the middle of the swollen stream. Her heart beat so that
it seemed to her as if she could hear it between the strokes
of the oar. The lights were not all out in the village, and
she trembled lest she should see the figure of some watcher
looking from the windows in sight of which she would
have to pass, and that a glimpse of this boat stealing along
at so late an hour might give the clew to the secret of her
disappearance, with which the whole region was to be busied
in the course of the next day.

Presently she came abreast of The Poplars. The house
lay so still, so peaceful, — it would wake to such dismay!
The boat slid along beneath her own overhanging chamber.

“No song to-morrow from the Fire-hang-bird's Nest!”
she said. So she floated by the slumbering village, the
flow of the river carrying her steadily on, and the careful
strokes of the oars adding swiftness to her flight.

At last she came to the “Broad Meadows,” and knew
that she was alone, and felt confident that she had got
away unseen. There was nothing, absolutely nothing,
to point out which way she had gone. Her boat came
from nobody knew where, her disguise had been got together
at different times in such a manner as to lead to
no suspicion, and not a human being ever had the slightest
hint that she had planned and meant to carry out the enterprise
which she had now so fortunately begun.

Not till the last straggling house had been long past,
not till the meadows were stretched out behind her as well
as before her, spreading far off into the distance on each
side, did she give way to the sense of wild exultation
which was coming fast over her. But then, at last, she
drew a long, long breath, and, standing up in the boat,

looked all around her. The stars were shining over her
head and deep down beneath her. The cool wind came
fresh upon her cheek over the long grassy reaches. No
living thing moved in all the wide level circle which lay
about her. She had passed the Red Sea, and was alone
in the Desert.

She threw down her oars, lifted her hands like a priestess,
and her strong, sweet voice burst into song, — the
song of the Jewish maiden when she went out before the
chorus of women and sang that grand solo, which we all
remember in its ancient words, and in their modern paraphrase,
—

The poor child's repertory was limited to songs of
the religious sort mainly, but there was a choice among
these. Her aunt's favorites, beside “China,” already
mentioned, were “Bangor,” which the worthy old New
England clergyman so admired that he actually had
the down-east city called after it, and “Windsor,” and
“Funeral Hymn.” But Myrtle was in no mood for these.
She let off her ecstasy in “Ballerma,” and “Arlington,”
and “Silver Street,” and at last in that most riotous of
devotional hymns, which sounds as if it had been composed
by a saint who had a cellar under his chapel, —
“Jordan.” So she let her wild spirits run loose; and then
a tenderer feeling stole over her, and she sang herself into
a more tranquil mood with the gentle music of “Dundee.”
And again she pulled quietly and steadily at her oars, until
she reached the wooded region through which the river
winds after leaving the “Broad Meadows.”

The tumult in her blood was calmed, yet every sense

and faculty was awake to the manifold delicious, mysterious
impressions of that wonderful June night. The stars were
shining between the tall trees, as if all the jewels of heaven
had been set in one belt of midnight sky. The voices of
the wind, as they sighed through the pines, seemed like
the breath of a sleeping child, and then, as they lisped
from the soft, tender leaves of beeches and maples, like
the half-articulate whisper of the mother hushing all the
intrusive sounds that might awaken it. Then came the
pulsating monotone of the frogs from a far-off pool, the
harsh cry of an owl from an old tree that overhung it, the
splash of a mink or musquash, and nearer by, the light
step of a woodchuck, as he cantered off in his quiet way to
his hole in the nearest bank. The laurels were just coming
into bloom, — the yellow lilies, earlier than their fairer
sisters, pushing their golden cups through the water, not
content, like those, to float on the surface of the stream
that fed them, — emblems of showy wealth, and, like that,
drawing all manner of insects to feed upon them. The
miniature forests of ferns came down to the edge of the
stream, their tall, bending plumes swaying in the night
breeze. Sweet odors from oozing pines, from dewy flowers,
from spicy leaves, stole out of the tangled thickets,
and made the whole scene more dream-like with their
faint, mingled suggestions.

By and by the banks of the river grew lower and
marshy, and in place of the larger forest-trees which had
covered them stood slender tamaracks, sickly, mossy,
looking as if they had been moon-struck and were out of
their wits, their tufts of leaves staring off every way from
their spindling branches. The winds came cool and damp
out of the hiding-places among their dark recesses. The

country people about here called this region the “Witches'
Hollow,” and had many stories about the strange things
that happened there. The Indians used to hold their
“powwows,” or magical incantations, upon a broad mound
which rose out of the common level, and where some old
hemlocks and beeches formed a dark grove, which served
them as a temple for their demon-worship. There were
many legends of more recent date connected with this spot,
some of them hard to account for, and no superstitious
or highly imaginative person would have cared to pass
through it alone in the dead of the night, as this young
girl was doing.

She knew nothing of all these fables and fancies. Her
own singular experiences in this enchanted region were
certainly not suggested by anything she had heard, and
may be considered psychologically curious by those who
would not think of attributing any mystical meaning to
them. We are at liberty to report many things without
attempting to explain them, or committing ourselves to
anything beyond the fact that so they were told us. [The
reader will find Myrtle's “Vision,” as written out at a later
period from her recollections, at the end of this chapter.]

The night was passing, and she meant to be as far away
as possible from the village she had left, before morning.
But the boat, like all craft on country rivers, was leaky,
and she had to work until tired, bailing it out, before she
was ready for another long effort. The old tin measure,
which was all she had to bail with, leaked as badly as the
boat, and her task was a tedious one. At last she got it in
good trim, and sat down to her oars with the determination
to pull steadily as long as her strength would hold out.

Hour after hour she kept at her work, sweeping round

the long bends where the river was hollowing out one
bank and building new shore on the opposite one, so as
gradually to shift its channel; by clipper-shaped islands,
sharp at the bows looking up stream, sharp too at the
stern, looking down, — their shape solving the navigator's
problem of least resistance, as a certain young artist had
pointed out; by slumbering villages; by outlying farmhouses;
between cornfields where the young plants were
springing up in little thready fountains; in the midst of
stumps where the forest had just been felled; through
patches where the fire of the last great autumnal drought
had turned all the green beauty of the woods into brown
desolation; and again amidst broad expanses of open
meadow stretching as far as the eye could reach in the
uncertain light. A faint yellow tinge was beginning to
stain the eastern horizon. Her boat was floating quietly
along, for she had at last taken in her oars, and she was
now almost tired out with toil and excitement. She rested
her head upon her hands, and felt her eyelids closing in
spite of herself. And now there stole upon her ear a low,
gentle, distant murmur, so soft that it seemed almost to
mingle with the sound of her own breathing, but so steady,
so uniform, that it soothed her to sleep, as if it were the
old cradle-song the ocean used to sing to her, or the lullaby
of her fair young mother.

So she glided along, slowly, slowly, down the course of
the winding river, and the flushing dawn kindled around
her as she slumbered, and the low, gentle murmur grew
louder and louder, but still she slept, dreaming of the murmuring
ocean.

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII.
MYRTLE HAZARD'S STATEMENT.

NOTE BY THE FRIEND.

“This statement must be accounted for in some way, or

pass into the category of the supernatural. Probably it
was one of those intuitions, with objective projection, which
sometimes come to imaginative young persons, especially
girls, in certain exalted nervous conditions. The study of
the portraits, with the knowledge of some parts of the history
of the persons they represented, and the consciousness
of instincts inherited in all probability from these same
ancestors, formed the basis of Myrtle's `Vision.' The
lives of our progenitors are, as we know, reproduced in
different proportions in ourselves. Whether they as individuals
have any consciousness of it, is another matter. It
is possible that they do get a second as it were fractional
life in us. It might seem that many of those whose blood
flows in our veins struggle for the mastery, and by and by
one or more get the predominance, so that we grow to be
like father, or mother, or remoter ancestor, or two or more
are blended in us, not to the exclusion, however, it must
be understood, of a special personality of our own, about
which these others are grouped. Independently of any
possible scientific value, this `Vision' serves to illustrate
the above-mentioned fact of common experience, which is
not sufficiently weighed by most moralists.

“How much it may be granted to certain young persons
to see, not in virtue of their intellectual gifts, but through
those direct channels which worldly wisdom may possibly
close to the luminous influx, each reader must determine
for himself by his own standards of faith and evidence.

“One statement of the narrative admits of a simple
natural explanation, which does not allow the lovers of the
marvellous to class it with the quasi miraculous appearance
seen by Colonel Gardiner, and given in full by Dr.
Doddridge in his Life of that remarkable Christian soldier.

Decaying wood is often phosphorescent, as many readers
must have seen for themselves. The country people are
familiar with the sight of it in wild timber-land, and have
given it the name of `Fox-fire.' Two trunks of trees in
this state, lying across each other, will account for the fact
observed, and vindicate the truth of the young girl's story
without requiring us to suppose any exceptional occurrence
outside of natural laws.”