University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.
PIN-HOLES IN THE CURTAIN.

THE conversation between the English traveller and the
Virginia Doctor of Divinity was brought to a close, and
Peek jumped down from the table on which he had been listening,
refreshed and inspired by the eloquent words he had
taken in.

A week afterwards he made a second attempt to escape from
bondage. He was caught and sold to Mr. Carberry Ratcliff,
who had an estate on the Red River. Here, failing in obedience
to an atrocious order, he received a punishment, the scars
of which always remained to show the degree of its barbarity.
He was soon after sent to Texas, where he became the slave
of Mr. Barnwell.

Here he was at first put to the roughest work in the cotton-field.
It tasked all his ingenuity to slight or dodge it. Luckily
for him, about the time of his arrival he found an opportunity
to make profitable use of the ecclesiastical knowledge he
had derived from the Rev. Messrs. Bloom and Palmer.

Braxton, the overseer, had been frightened into a concern
for his soul. He had a heart-complaint which the doctor told
him might carry him off any day in a flash. A travelling
preacher completed the work of terror by satisfying him he
was in a fair way of being damned. The prospect did not
seem cheerful to Braxton. He had found exhilaration and
comfort in whipping intractable niggers. The amusement
now began to pall. Besides, the doctor had told him to shun
excitement.

In this state of things, enter Mr. Peculiar Institution. That
gentleman soon learnt what was the matter; and he contrived
that the overseer, seemingly by accident, should overhear him
at prayers. Braxton had heard praying, but never any that

had the unction of Peek's. From that time forth Peek had
him completely under his control.

Peek did not abuse his authority. He ruled wisely, though
despotically. At last the accidental encounter with his dying
mother introduced a new world of thoughts and emotions.
Short as was his opportunity for acquaintance with her, such a
wealth of tenderness and love as she lavished upon him developed
a hitherto inactive and undreamed-of force in his soul.
The affectional part of his nature was touched. She told him
of the delight his father used to take in playing with him, an
infant; and when he thought of that father's fate, shot down
for resisting the lash, he felt as if he could tear the first upholder
of slavery he might meet limb from limb, in his rage.

The mother died, and then all seemed worthless and insipid
to Peek. Having seen how little heed was paid to the feelings
of slaves in separating those of opposite sex who had
become attached to each other, he early in life resolved to shun
all sexual intimacies, till he should be free. He saw that in
slavery the distinction between licit and illicit connections was
a playful mockery. The thought of being the father of a slave
was horrible to him; and neither threats of the lash nor coaxings
from masters and overseers could induce him to enter into
those temporary alliances which Mr. Herbert used pleasantly
to call “the holy bonds of matrimony.” His resolution grew
to be a passion stronger even than desire.

Thus the affections were undeveloped in him till he encountered
his mother. He knew of no relative on earth, after her,
to love, — no one to be loved by. Life stretched before him
flat, dull, and unprofitable; and death, — what was that but
the plunge into nothingness?

True, Mr. Herbert and the clergyman who drank claret
with Mr. Herbert after the latter had shot down Big Sam
talked of a life beyond the grave; but could such humbugs
as they were be believed? Could the stories be trustworthy,
which were based mainly on the truth of a book which all the
preachers (so he supposed) declared was the all-sufficient authority
for slavery? Well might Peek distrust the promise
that was said to rest only on writings that were made to supply
the apology of injustice and bloody wrong!

While in this state of mind, he heard of Corinna, the quadroon
girl. Unattractive in person, slow of apprehension, and
rarely uttering a word, she had hitherto excited only his pity.
But now she fell into trances during which she seemed to be
a new and entirely different being. At his first interview with
her when she fell into one of these inexplicable states, she
seized his hand, and imitating the look, actions, and very tone
of his dying mother, poured forth such a flood of exhortations,
comfortings, warnings, and encouragements, that he was bewildered
and confounded.

What could it all mean? The power that spoke through
Corinna claimed to be his mother, and seemed to identify
itself, as far as revelations to the understanding could go. It
recalled the little incidents that had passed between them in
the presence of no other witness. It pierced to his inmost
secrets, — secrets which he well knew he had communicated
to no human being.

And yet Peek saw upon reflection that, though a preternatural
faculty was plainly at work, — a faculty that took possession
of his mind as a photographer does of all the stones, flaws,
and stains in the wall of a building, — there was no sufficient
identification of that faculty with the individual he knew as
his mother. Little that might not already have been in his
own mind, long hidden, perhaps, and forgotten, was revealed to
him.

He also concluded that the intelligence, whatever it might
be, was a fallible one, and that it would be folly to give up to
its guidance his own free judgment.

He renewed his interviews daily as long as the quadroon
girl lived. Skeptical, cautious, and meditative, he must test
all these phenomena over and over again. And he did test
them. He established conditions. He made records on the
spot. He removed all possibilities of collusion and deception.
And still the same phenomena!

Nor were they confined to the imperfect wonders of clairvoyance
and prophecy. Once in the broad daylight, when he
was alone with the invalid girl in her hut, and no other human
being within a distance of a quarter of a mile, she was lifted
horizontally before his eyes into the air, and kept there sway

ing about at least a third of a minute, while the drapery of her
dress clung to her person as if held by an invisible hand.[1]

A bandore — a stringed musical instrument the name of which
has been converted by the negroes into banjo — hung on a nail
in the wall. One moonlight evening, when no third person was
present, this African lute was detached by some invisible force
and carried by it through the room from one end to the other!
It would touch Peek on the head, then float away through the
air, visible to sight, and sending forth from its chords, smitten
by no mortal fingers, delectable strains. The same invisible
power would tune the instrument, tightening the strings and
trying them with a delicate skill; and then it would hang the
banjo on its nail.

After this improvised concert, Peek felt all at once a warm
living hand upon his forehead, first lovingly patting it and then
passing round his cheek, under his chin, and up on the other
side of his face. He grasped the hand, and it returned his
pressure. It was a hand much larger than Corinna's, and she
lay on her back several feet from him, too far to touch him
with any part of her person. Plainly in the moonlight he
could see it, — a perfect hand, resembling his mother's! It
shaded off into vacuity above the wrist, and, even while he
held it solid and flesh-like, melted all at once, like an impalpable
ether, in his grasp.[2]

These phenomena, with continual variations, were repeated
day after day and night after night. Flowers would drop from
the ceiling into his hands, delicious odors of fruits would diffuse
themselves through the room. A music like that of the Swiss
bell-ringers would break upon the silence, continuing for a
minute or more. A pen would start up from the table and
write an intelligible sentence. A castanet would be played on
and dashed about furiously, as if by some invisible Bacchante.
A clatter, as of the hammering of a hundred carpenters, would
suddenly make itself heard. A voice would speak intelligible
sentences, sometimes using a tin trumpet for the purpose. Articles
of furniture would pass about the room and cross each
other with a swiftness and precision that no mortal could imitate.
The noise of dancers, using their feet, and keeping time,
would be heard on the floor.

Once Corinna asked him to leave his watch with her. He
did so. When he was several rods from the house she called
to him, “You are sure you have n't your watch?” “Yes,
sure,” replied Peek. He hurried home, a distance of two
miles, without meeting a human being. On undressing to go
to bed, he found his watch in his vest pocket.

These physical thaumaturgies produced upon Peek a more
astounding effect than all the evidences of mind-reading and
clairvoyance. In the communications made to him by the
“power,” there was generally something unsatisfying or incomplete.
He would, for instance, think of some departed friend,
— a white man, perhaps, — and, without uttering or writing a
word, would desire some manifestation from that friend. Immediately
Corinna would strip from her arm the drapery, and
show on her skin, written in clear crimson letters, some brief
message signed by the right name. And then the supposed
bearer of that name (speaking through Corinna) would correctly
recall incidents of his acquaintance with Peek.[3]

Thus much was amazing and satisfactory; but when Peek
analyzed it all in thought, he found that no sufficient proof of
identification had been given. A “power,” able to probe his
own mind, might get from it all that was spoken relative to the
individual claiming identity; might even know how to imitate
that individual's handwriting. Peek concluded that one must
be himself in a spiritual state in order to identify a spirit. The
so-called “communications” he found, for the most part, monotonous.
They were, some of them, above Corinna's capacity,
but not above his own. Erroneous answers were not unfrequently
given, especially in reply to questions upon matters of
worldly concern. He was repeatedly told of places where he
could find silver and gold, and never truly.

He concluded that to surrender one's faith implicitly to the
word of a spirit out of the flesh, either on moral or on secular
questions, was about as unwise as it would be to give one's self
up to the control of a spirit in the flesh, — a mere mortal like
himself. He was satisfied by his experience that it was not
in the power of spirits to impair his own freedom of will and
independence of thought, so long as he exercised them manfully.
And this assurance was to his mind not only a guaranty
of his own spiritual relationship, but it pointed to a supreme,
omniscient Spirit, the gracious Father of all. If the words
that came through Corinna had proved, in every instance, infallible,
what would Peek have become but a passive, unreasoning
recipient, as sluggish in thought as Corinna herself!

We have said that the “communications” were generally on
a level with Peek's own mind. There was once an exception.
Said a very learned spirit (learned, as to him it seemed) one
night, speaking through Corinna: —

“Attend, even if you do not understand all that I may utter.
The great purpose of creation is to exercise and develop independent,
individual thought, and through that, a will in harmony
with the Supreme Wisdom. Men are subjected to the
discipline of the earth-sphere, not to be happy there, but to
qualify themselves for happiness, — to deserve happiness.

“What would all created wonders be without thought to
appreciate and admire them? Study is worship. Admiration
is worship. Of what account would be the starry heavens, if

there were not mind to study and to wonder at creation, and
thus to fit itself for adoration of the Creator?

“My friend Lessing, when he was on your earth, once said,
that, if God would give him truth, he would decline the gift,
and prefer the labor of seeking it for himself. But most men
are mentally so inert, they would rather believe than examine;
and so they flatter themselves that their loose, unreasoning
acquiescence is a saving belief. Pernicious error! All the
mistakes and transgressions of men arise either from feeble, imperfect
thinking, or from not thinking at all.

“The heart is much, — is principal; but men must not hope
to rise until they do their own thinking. They cannot think
by proxy. They must exercise the mind on all that pertains
to their moral and mental growth. You may perhaps sometimes
wish that you too, like this poor, torpid, parasitical
creature, Corinna, might be a medium for outside spirits to
influence and speak through. But beware! You know not
what you wish. Learn to prize your individuality. The wisdom
Corinna may utter does not become hers by appropriation.
In her mind it falls on barren soil.

“We all are more or less mediums; but the innocent man
is he who resists and overcomes temptation, not he who never
felt its power; and the wise man is he who, at once recipient
and repellent, seeks to appropriate and assimilate with his
being whatever of good he can get from all the instrumentalities
of nature, divine and human, angelic and demoniac.”

Peek derived an indefinable but awakening impression from
these words, and asked, “Is the Bible true?”

The reply was: “It is true only to him who construes it
aright. If you find in it the justification of American slavery,
then to you it is not true. All the theologies which would
impose, as essentials of faith, speculative dogmas or historical
declarations which do not pertain to the practice of the highest
human morality and goodness, as taught in the words and the
example of Christ, are, in this respect at least, irreverent, mischievous,
and untrue.”

“How do I know,” asked Peek, “that you are not a devil?”

“I am aware of no way,” was the reply, “by which, in your
present state, you can know absolutely that I am not a devil,

— even Beelzebub, the prince of devils. Each man's measure
of truth must be the reason God has given him. But of this
you may rest assured: it is a great point gained to be able to
believe really even in a devil. Given a devil, you will one day
work yourself so far into the light as to believe in an angel.”

“Is there a God?” asked the slave.

“God is,” said the spirit, “and says to thee, as once to Pascal,
`Be consoled! Thou wouldst not seek me, if thou hadst
not found me.'”

These were almost the only words Peek ever received
through Corinna that struck him by their superiority to what
he himself could have imagined; and he was impressed by
them accordingly. Though they were above his comprehension
at the moment, he thought he might grow up to them, and
he caused them to be repeated slowly while he wrote them
down.

Corinna died, and Peek kept on thinking.

What rapture in thought now! What a new meaning in life!
What a new universe for the heart was there in love! Henceforth
the burden and the mystery of “all this unintelligible
world” was lightened if not dissolved; for death was but the step
to a higher plane of life. The old, trite emblem of the chrysalis
was no mere barren fancy. Continuous life was now to his
mind a certainty; arrived at, too, by the deductions of experience,
sense, and reason, as well as intimated by the eager
thirst of the heart.

The process by which he made the phenomena he had witnessed
conduce to this conclusion was briefly this. An invisible,
intelligent force had lifted heavy articles before his eyes, played
on musical instruments, written sentences, and spoken words.
This force claimed to be a human spirit in a human form, of
tissues too fine to be visible to our grosser senses. It could
pass, like heat and electricity, through what might seem material
impediments. It had a plastic power to reincarnate itself
at will, and imitate human forms and colors, under certain circumstances,
and it gave partial proof of this by showing a
hand, an arm, or a foot undistinguishable from one of flesh and
blood. On one occasion the human form entire had been displayed,
been touched, and had then dissolved into invisibility
and intangibility before him.

Now he must either take the word of this intelligent “force,”
that it was an independent spiritual entity, or he must account
for its acts by some other supposition. The “force,” in its
communications to his mind, had shown it was not infallible;
it had erred in some of its predictions, although in others it
had been wonderfully correct. If its explanation of itself was
untrue, — if no outside intelligent force were operating, — the
other supposition was, that the phenomena were a proceeding
either from himself, the spectator, or from Corinna. And here,
without knowing it, Peek found himself speculating on the
theory of Count Gasparin,[4] who has had the candor to brave
the laugh of modern science (a very different thing from
scientia) by recounting as facts what Professor Faraday and
our Cambridge savans denounce as impositions or delusions.

Peek was therefore reduced to these two explanations: either
the “force” was a spirit (call it, if you please, an outside
power), as it claimed to be, or it was a faculty unconsciously
exerted by the mortals present. In either case, it supplied an
assurance of spirit and immortality; for it might fairly be presumed
that such wonderful powers would not be wrapt up in the
human organism except for a purpose; and that purpose, what
could it be but the future development of those powers under
suitable conditions? So either of Peek's hypotheses led to the
same precious and ineffable conviction of continuous life, — of
the soul's immortality!

On one occasion a Northern Professor, who had given his days
to the positive sciences, and who believed in matter and motion,
and nothing else, passed a week, while visiting the South for
his health, with his old friend and classmate, Mr. Barnwell;
and Peek overheard the following conversation.

“How do you get rid of all this testimony on the subject?”
asked Mr. Barnwell.

“Stuff and nonsense!” exclaimed the Professor. “That a
poor benighted nigger should believe this trash is n't surprising.
That poets, like Willis and Mrs. Browning, should give in to it
may be tolerated, for they are privileged. In them the imaginative
faculty is irregularly developed. But that sane and

intelligent white men like Edmonds, and Tallmadge, and Bowditch,
and Brownson, and Bishop Clark of Rhode Island, and
Howitt, and Chambers, and Coleman, and Dr. Gray, and Wilkinson,
and Mountford, and Robert Dale Owen, should gravely
swallow these idiotic stories, is lamentable indeed. The
spectacle becomes humiliating, and I sigh, `Poor human nature!'”

“But Peek is far from being a benighted nigger,” replied
Barnwell; “he can read and write as well as you can; he
is the best shot in the county; he is a good mechanic; for a
time he waited on one of the great jugglers at the St. Charles;
he can explain or cleverly imitate all the tricks of all the conjurers;
he is not a man to be humbugged, especially by a poor
sick girl in a hut with no cellar, no apparatus, no rooms where
any coadjutor could hide. It has been the greatest puzzle of
my life to know how to explain Peek's stories.”

“Half that is extraordinary in them,” said the Professor, “is
probably a lie, and the other half is delusion. Not one man in
fifty is competent to test such occurrences. Men's senses have
not been scientifically trained; their love of the marvellous
blinds them to the simplest solutions of a mystery. How to
observe is one of the most difficult of arts; and one must undergo
rigid scientific culture in the practical branches before he
can observe properly.”

“Under your theory, Professor, ninety-eight men out of
every hundred ought to be excluded as witnesses from our
courts of justice. It strikes me that a fellow like Peek —
with his senses always in good working trim, who never misses
his aim, who can hit a mark by moonlight at forty paces, and
shoot a bird on the wing in bright noonday, who can detect a
tread or a flutter of wings when to your ear all is silence — is
as competent to see straight and judge of sights and sounds as
any blinkard from a college, even though he wear spectacles
and call himself professor of mathematics. Remember, Peek
is not a superstitious nigger. He will feel personally obliged
to any ghost who will show himself. He shrinks from no
haunted room, no solitude, no darkness.”

“Truly, Horace, you speak as if you half believed these
absurdities.”

“No, — I wish I could. Peek once said to me, that he
would n't have believed these things on my testimony, and
could n't expect me to believe them on his.”

“Our business,” said the Professor, “is with the life before
us. I agree with Comte, that we ought to confine ourselves
to positive, demonstrable facts; with Humboldt, that `there is
not much to boast of after our dissolution,' and that `the blue
regions on the other side of the grave'[5] are probably a poet's
dream. Let us not trouble ourselves about the inexplicable or
the uncertain.”

“But you do not consider, Professor, that Peek's facts are
positive to his experience. Besides, to say, with Comte, that
a fact is inexplicable, and that we can't go beyond it, is not to
demonstrate that the fact has its cause in itself; it is merely to
confess the mystery of a cause unknown.”[6]

“Well, Horace, I 'm sleepy, and must retire. I 'll find an
opportunity to cross-examine Peek before I go, and you shall
see how he will contradict and stultify himself.”

Before the opportunity was found, the Professor had passed
on. Less modest than Rabelais was in his last moments, he
did not condescend to say, “I go to inquire into a great possibility.”
The physician in attendance, who was a young man,
and had recently “experienced religion,” asked the Professor
if he had found the Lord Jesus. To which the Professor,
making a wry face, replied, “Jargon!” “Have you no regard
for your soul?” asked the well-meaning doctor. “Can you
prove to me, young man, that I have a soul?” returned the
Professor, trying to raise himself on his pillow, in an argumentative
posture. “Don't you believe in a future state?”
asked the doctor. “I believe what can be proved,” said the
Professor; “and there are two things, and only two, that can be
proved, — though Berkeley thinks we can't prove even those,
— matter and motion.[7] All phenomena are reducible to matter
and motion, — matter and motion, — matter and mo-o-o—”

The effort was too much for the moribund Professor. He
did not complete the utterance of his formula, at least on this
side of the great curtain. Probably when he awoke in the
next life, conscious of his identity, he felt very much in the
mood of that other man of science, who, on being told that the
microscope would confute an elaborate theory he had raised,
refused to look through the impertinent instrument.

For several months Peek retained his place under Braxton.
But even overseers, whip in hand, cannot frighten off Death.
Braxton disappeared through the common portal. His successor,
Hawks, had a theory that the true mode of managing
niggers was to overawe them by extreme severity at the start,
and then taper off into clemency. He had been lord of the lash
a week or two, when he was asked by Mr. Barnwell how he
got along with Peek.

“Capitally!” replied Hawks. “I took care to put him
through his paces at our first meeting, — took the starch right
out of him. He 'd score his own mother now if I told him to.
He 's a thorough nigger — is Peek. A nigger must fear a
white man before he can like him. Peek would go through
fire and water for me now. He has behaved so well, I have
given him a pass to visit his sister at Carter's.”

“I never knew before that Peek had a sister,” said Barnwell.

Peek did not come back from that visit.