Book: Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860




An eminent divine once described to me a scene he witnessed at a
funeral, which he said nearly caused him to expire with--well, you shall
see. An intimate acquaintance of his, who belonged to a neighboring
parish, having died, he was naturally induced to assist at the
burial-service. The rector of this parish was a man who, though
sensitive in the extreme to the absurdities of others,--being, in fact,
a regular son of Momus,--was entirely unconscious of his own amusing
eccentricities. Among these, numerous and singular, he had the habit
of suddenly stopping in the middle of a sentence, while preaching, and
calling out to the sexton, across the church, "Dooke, turn on more gas!"
or "Dooke, shut that window!" or "Dooke, do"--something else which
was pretty sure to be wanting itself done during the delivery of his
discourse. Nearly every Sunday, strangers not acquainted with his ways
were startled out of their propriety by some such unexpected behavior.

On the occasion referred to, the funeral procession having entered the
churchyard, and my informant and the officiating clergyman having taken
their places at the head of the grave, the undertaker and his assistants
having removed the coffin from the hearse, and the mourners, of whom
there was a large crowd, having gathered into a circular audience, the
Reverend Doctor ---- began the service.

"'Man that is born of a woman'--Oh, stop those carriages! don't you see
where they are going to?" (he suddenly broke out, rushing from the place
where he stood, frantically, among the bystanders; and then returning to
his former position, continued,)--"'hath but a short time to live, and
is full of misery. He cometh up'--Oh, don't let that coffin down
yet! wait till I tell you to," (addressed to the undertaker, who was
anticipating the proper place in the service,)--"'and is cut down like a
flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow,'--Please to hold the umbrella
a little further over my head," (_sotto voce_ to the man who was
endeavoring to protect his head from the sun,)-"'and never continueth in
one stay.'--Hold the umbrella a little higher, will you?" (_sotto voce_
again to the man holding the umbrella.)--"'In the midst of life we are
in death.'--Stand down from there, boys, and be quiet!" (addressed to
some urchins who were crowding and pushing one another about the grave,
in their efforts to look at the coffin.) At length he had proceeded
without further interruptions as far as the sentence, "'We therefore
commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to
dust,'"--when Dooke, the sexton,--a queer, impetuous fellow,--who was
vainly endeavoring to keep the boys away from the edge of the grave,
seized suddenly the rope with which the coffin had just been lowered
down, and, stooping forward, laid it like a whip-lash, "cut!" across the
shins of a dozen youngsters, making them leap with "Oh! oh! oh!" a
foot from the ground, and scatter in short order,--"'looking for
the'"--(turning to my friend, as he witnessed the successful exploit of
his favorite sexton, and whispering in his ear,) "_Dooke made 'em hop
that time, didn't he!_--'general resurrection in the last day, and the
life of the world to come.'"

Dooke's mode of dispersing the boys, and the officiating clergyman's
comment upon it, parenthesized into the middle of the most solemn
sentence of the burial-service, were too much for the usual stern
gravity of my clerical friend, and, under pretence of shedding tears, he
buried his face in his handkerchief and his handkerchief in his hat and
shook with laughter.

Speaking of funerals reminds me of a congenial subject.--Nothing in New
York astonishes visitors from the country so much as the magnificent
coffin-shops, rivalling, in the ostentatious and tempting display of
their wares, the most elegant stores on Broadway. Model coffins, of the
latest style and pattern, are set up on end in long rows and protected
by splendid show-cases, with the lids removed to exhibit their rich
satin lining. Fancy coffins, decorated with glittering ornaments, are
placed seductively in bright plate-glass windows, and put out for
baiting advertisements upon the side-walks: as much as to say, "Walk in,
walk in, ladies and gentlemen! Now's your chance! here's your fine, nice
coffins!"--while in ornamental letters upon extensive placards hung
about the doors, "IRON COFFINS," "ROSEWOOD COFFINS," "AIR-TIGHT
COFFINS," "MAHOGANY COFFINS," "PATENT SARCOPHAGI," address the eyes
and appeal to the purses of the passers-by. And I saw in one of these
places, the other day, painted on glass and inclosed in an elegant gilt
frame, "ICE COFFINS," which struck me as queer enough. As though it were
not sufficiently cool to be dead!

It seems to me, that, in this matter, the undertakers, digging a little
too deep below the surface of the present age, have thrown out some of
the mystical and grotesque remains of a very antique religious faith,
which look as singular just now to the eyes of common people as would an
Egyptian temple with its sacred Apis in Broadway, or a Sphinx on Boston
Common. To the eyes of an old Egyptian, no object could be more grateful
than the sarcophagus in which he was to repose at death. He purchased it
as early in life as he could raise the means, and displayed it in his
parlor as an attractive and costly ornament. Indeed, I do not know but
it was useful as well, and the children kept their playthings in it, or
the young ladies their knitting-work and embroidery.

Are we not, in this class of our tastes and feelings, becoming rapidly
Egyptianized? Why, I expect in a year or two to see coffins introduced
into the parlors of the Fifth Avenue, and to find them, when their
owners fail or absquatulate, advertised for sale at auction, with the
rest of the household furniture, at a great sacrifice on the original
cost.

"--> ONE SUPERB COFFIN OF ELEGANT PATTERN AND SUPERIOR WORKMANSHIP, AS
GOOD AS NEW. TWO DITTO, SLIGHTLY DAMAGED."

And then the fashion will become popular with the less aristocratic
portion of the community, and you will see crowds of servant-girls and
street-loungers around the windows of our magnificent coffin-bazaars,
and hear from them such exclamations as these: "Oh! do look here,
Matilda! Wouldn't you like to have such a nice coffin as that?" or,
"What a dear, sweet sarcophagus that one is there!" or, "Faith, I should
like to own that air-tight!"

* * * * *

But the day is now far advanced. The funeral processions have ceased to
arrive, and the husbandmen, having sown the immortal seed furnished by
the metropolis, with shovels and empty dinner-pails, are on their way,
whistling and talking in groups, homeward. The number of loungers and
sight-seers is rapidly diminishing as the light in the more thickly
shaded walks becomes dim, and the clock at the gateway indicates the
near approach of the hour when the portals will be closed.

--Alone with the dead! Alone in the night among tombs and graves! How
many readers do not at the sight of these words feel an involuntary
_soupcon_ of a shudder? Would not the cause of this indefinable secret
dread of the darkness which covers a graveyard be a curious matter
of inquiry? Let one ever so cultivated and skeptical, familiar as a
physician or a soldier with the spectacle of death, ever so full of
mental and physical courage, passing alone late at night through a
graveyard, hear the least sound among the graves, or see a moving object
of any kind, especially a white one, and he will instantly feel an
_alloverishness_ foreign to ordinary experience, and I will not answer
for him that his hair does not stand on end and his flesh grow rough as
a nutmeg-grater. A company of three or four persons would feel far less
disturbed. This proves the emotion to be genuine _fear_. And with this
recognized as a fact, ask the question, Of what are you afraid? What
makes your feet stick to the ground so fast, or inspires you to take to
your legs and run for your life? "A ridiculous, foolish superstition,"
reason answers.

I do not intend by this to intimate that you, reader, bold and
courageous person that I know you to be, would not dare to go through a
graveyard at night. By no means. I only predicate the existence within
you of this ridiculous, foolish superstition, and maintain that you
would do so under _all_ circumstances with peculiar feelings which you
did not possess before you entered it and which you will not possess
as soon as you have left it, and under _certain_ circumstances with a
trembling of the nerves and a palpitation of the heart, and that the
occasion _might_ occur when you would be still _more_ strongly and
strangely affected. To illustrate the latter case I have an anecdote
_a-propos_.

A college class-mate, (Poor B----! the shadows of the Pyramids now fall
upon his early grave!) a young man easily agitated, to be sure, and
possibly timid, on his way home, late one autumn night, from the
house of a relative in the country, was hurrying past a dismal old
burying-yard in the midst of a gloomy wood, when he was suddenly
startled by a strange noise a short distance from the road. Turning
his head, alarmed, in the direction whence it proceeded, he was
horror-struck at seeing through the darkness a white object on the
ground, struggling as if in the grasp of some terrible monster.
Instantly the blood froze in his veins; he stood petrified,--the
howlings of the wind, clanking of chains, and groans of agony, filling
his ears,--with his eyes fixed in terror upon the white shape rolling
and plunging and writhing among the tombs. Attempting to run, his feet
refused to move, and he swooned and fell senseless in the road. A party
of travellers, happening shortly to pass, stumbled over his body.
Raising him upon his feet, they succeeded by vigorous shakes in
restoring him to a state of consciousness.

While explaining to them the cause of his fright, the noise was renewed.
The men, although somewhat alarmed, clubbed their individual courage,
climbed the wall, and found--nearly in the centre of the graveyard--_an
old white horse_ thrown down by his fetters and struggling violently to
regain his feet.

B---- assured me, the explanation of the spectacle instinctively
occurring to his mind at the moment as indubitable was that some
reprobate had just been buried there, and that the Devil, coming for
his body, was engaged in binding his unwilling limbs, preparatory to
carrying him away!

The reader may smile at the weakness and folly displayed in this case,
but the assertion may nevertheless be safely ventured, that there is not
one person in a hundred who would not under the same circumstances have
been greatly disturbed, or would have invented a much less frightfully
absurd solution of the phenomenon than poor B----'s.

I think the singular feelings associated with graveyard darkness, which
the wisest and bravest of men find slumbering beneath all their courage
and philosophy, would be found upon investigation to proceed principally
from two sources,--a constitutional inclination to religious
superstition, and an acquired educational belief in the reality of the
dreams and fancies of poets, mingled, of course, with some natural
cowardice.

The dryest and hardest men have more poetry in them than they or we
begin to suspect. Indeed, if we could take our individual or collective
culture to pieces and award to each separate influence its due and just
share of results, I should not be surprised at finding that the poet had
done more in the way of fashioning our education than the scientist
or any other teacher. Milton, to give but a single example, with his
speculations concerning the Fall,--its effects upon humanity, the brute
creation, and physical nature,--and his imaginary conflicts between
the hostile armies of heaven, and his celestial and Satanic
personifications, has had so much influence in Anglo-Saxon culture, that
nine-tenths of the people believe, without knowing it, as firmly in
"Paradise Lost" as in the text of the Bible. The Governor of Texas,
citing in his proclamation a familiar passage in Shakspeare as emanating
from the inspired pen of the Psalmist, is not to so great extent
an example of ignorance as an illustration of the lofty peerage
instinctively assigned the great dramatist in the ordinary associations
of our thoughts. This faith in the visionary world of poets is instilled
into us (and it is for this reason that Rousseau, in his masterly
work on education, the "Emile," reprobates the custom as promotive of
superstition) in early infancy by our parents and nurses with their
stories of nymphs, fairies, elves, dwarfs, giants, witches, hobgoblins,
and the like fabulous beings, and, as soon as we are able to read, by
the tales of genii, sorcerers, demons, ghouls, enchanted caves and
castles, and monsters and monstrosities of every name. The exceedingly
impressible and poetical nature of children (for all children are poets
and talk poetry as soon as they can lisp) appropriates and absorbs with
intense relish these fanciful myths, and for years they believe more
firmly in their truth than in the realities of the actual world. And I
more than suspect that this child-credulity rather slumbers in the grown
man, smothered beneath superimposed skepticisms and cognitions, than is
ever eradicated from his mind, and thus, upon the shock of an emergency
disturbing him suddenly to the foundation, is ready to burst up through
the crevices of his shattered practical experience and appear on the
surface of his judgment and understanding.

In addition, then, to an instinctive tendency to religious superstition,
(of which I shall here say nothing,) to the fairy mythology of the
nursery, and the phantom machinery invented by poets to clothe with the
semblance of reality their dreams and fancies, can be traced in a great
measure the existence in the mind of the _credulity_ which renders the
_fear_ in question possible, opening an introduction for it into the
heart excited by inexplicable phenomena or circumstanced where such
phenomena might, according to our superstitious beliefs, easily occur.

Without entering into an analysis of the _fear_ itself, beyond the
remark that any extraordinary sight or sound not immediately explicable
by the eye or ear to the understanding (as a steamboat to the Indians or
a comet to our ancestors) is a legitimate cause of the emotion, as well
as the _possibility_ of the occurrence of such sights and sounds,
for believing which we have seen man prepared, first by natural
superstitious inclination, and secondly by a peculiar education,--I will
only further add, for the purpose of a brief introduction to an anecdote
I wish to relate, that there is another fountain of knowledge, from
which we drink at a later period than childhood, as well as then, whose
waters are strongly impregnated with this superstitious, fear-provoking
credulity: I mean the stories of _ghosts_ which have been seen and heard
in all ages and countries, revealing important secrets, pointing out
the places where murder has been committed or treasure concealed,
foretelling deaths and calamities, and forewarning men of impending
dangers. Hundreds of books familiar to all have been written upon this
subject and form an extensive department of our literature, especially
of our older literature.

The philosopher attempts to account for such phenomena by referring them
to optical illusions or a disordered condition of the brain, making them
_subjective_ semblances instead of _objective_ realities. But one is
continually being puzzled and perplexed with evidence contradicting this
hypothesis, which, upon any other subject _a priori_ credible to the
reason and judgment, would be received as satisfactory and decisive
without a moment's hesitation. In truth, with all the light which
science is able to shed upon it, and all the resolute shutting of the
eyes at points which no elucidating theory is available to explain,
there are facts in this department of supernaturalism which stagger the
unbelief of the stoutest skeptic.

It is constantly urged, among other objections to the credibility
of supernatural apparitions, that the names of the witnesses have
singularly and suspiciously disappeared,--that you find them, upon
investigation, substantiated thus: A very worthy gentleman told another
very worthy gentleman, who told a very intelligent lady, who told
somebody else, who told the individual who finally communicated the
incident to the world. There are, however, as just intimated, instances
in which such ambiguity is altogether wanting. Among these is one so
well authenticated by well-known witnesses of undoubted veracity, that,
having never before been published, I venture to relate it here.

My informant was Professor Tholuck, of Halle University, the most
eminent living theologian in Germany, and the principal ecclesiarch of
the Prussian Church. He prefaced the account by assuring me that it
was received from the lips of De Wette himself, immediately after the
occurrence,--that De Wette was an intimate personal friend, a plain,
practical man, of remarkably clear and vigorous intellect, with no more
poetry and imagination in his nature than just sufficient to keep him
alive,--in a word, that he would rely upon his coolness of judgment
and accuracy of observation, under any possible combination of
circumstances, as confidently as upon those of any man in the world.

Dr. De Wette, the famous German Biblical critic, returning home one
evening between nine and ten o'clock, was surprised, upon arriving
opposite the house in which he resided, to see a bright light burning in
his study. In fact, he was rather more than surprised; for he distinctly
remembered to have extinguished the candles when he went out, an hour or
two previously, locked the door, and put the key in his pocket, which,
upon feeling for it, was still there. Pausing a moment to wonder by
what means and for what purpose any one could have entered the room, he
perceived the shadow of a person apparently occupied about something in
a remote corner. Supposing it to be a burglar employed in rifling his
trunk, he was upon the point of alarming the police, when the man
advanced to the window, into full view, as if for the purpose of looking
out into the street. _It was De Wette himself!_--the scholar, author,
professor,--his height, size, figure, stoop,--his head, his face, his
features, eyes, mouth, nose, chin, every one,--skullcap, study-gown,
neck-tie, all, everything: there was no mistaking him, no deception
whatever: there stood Dr. De Wette in his own library, and he out in
the street:--why, he must be _somebody else!_ The Doctor instinctively
grasped his body with his hands, and tried himself with the
psychological tests of self-consciousness and identity, doubtful, if
he could believe his senses and black were not white, that he longer
existed his former self, and stood, perplexed, bewildered, and
confounded, gazing at his other likeness looking out of the window. Upon
the person's retiring from the window, which occurred in a few moments,
De Wette resolved not to dispute the possession of his study with
the other Doctor before morning, and ringing at the door of a house
opposite, where an acquaintance resided, he asked permission to remain
over night.

The chamber occupied by him commanded a full view of the interior of
his library, and from the window he could see his other self engaged
in study and meditation, now walking up and down the room, immersed in
thought, now sitting down at the desk to write, now rising to search
for a volume among the book-shelves, and imitating in all respects
the peculiar habits of the great Doctor engaged at work and busy with
cogitations. At length, when the cathedral clock had finished striking
through first four and then eleven strokes, as German clocks are wont
to do an hour before twelve, De Wette Number Two manifested signs of
retiring to rest,--took out his watch, the identical large gold one the
other Doctor in the other chamber felt sure was at that moment safe
in his waistcoat-pocket, and wound it up, removed a portion of his
clothing, came to the window, closed the curtains, and in a few moments
the light disappeared. De Wette Number One, waiting a little time until
convinced that Number Two had disposed himself to sleep, retired also
his-self to bed, wondering very much what all this could mean.

Rising the next morning, he crossed the street, and passed up-stairs to
his library. The door was fastened; he applied the key, opened it, and
entered. No one was there; everything appeared in precisely the same
condition in which he had left it the evening before,--his pen lying
upon the paper as he had dropped it on going out, the candles on the
table and the mantel-piece evidently not having been lighted, the
window-curtains drawn aside as he had left them; in fine, there was not
a single trace of any person's having been in the room. "Had he been
insane the night before? He must have been. He was growing old;
something was the matter with his eyes or brain; anyhow, he had been
deceived, and it was very foolish of him to have remained away all
night." Endeavoring to satisfy his mind with some such reflections
as these, he remembered he had not yet examined his bed-room. Almost
ashamed to make the search, now convinced it was all an hallucination of
the senses, he crossed the narrow passageway and opened the door. He
was thunderstruck. The ceiling, a lofty, massive brick arch, had fallen
during the night, filling the room with rubbish and crushing his bed
into atoms. De Wette the Apparition had saved the life of the great
German scholar.

Tholuck, who was walking with me in the fields near Halle when relating
the anecdote, added, upon concluding, "I do not pretend to account
for the phenomenon; no knowledge, scientific or metaphysical, in my
possession, is adequate to explain it; but I have no more doubt it
actually, positively, literally did occur, than I have of the existence
of the sun _im Himmel da_."




CULTURE.


The word of ambition at the present day is Culture. Whilst all the world
is in pursuit of power, and of wealth as a means of power, culture
corrects the theory of success. A man is the prisoner of his power. A
topical memory makes him an almanac; a talent for debate, a disputant;
skill to get money makes him a miser, that is, a beggar. Culture reduces
these inflammations by invoking the aid of other powers against the
dominant talent, and by appealing to the rank of powers. It watches
success. For performance Nature has no mercy, and sacrifices the
performer to get it done,--makes a dropsy or a tympany of him. If she
wants a thumb, she makes one at the cost of arms and legs, and any
excess of power in one part is usually paid for at once by some defect
in a contiguous part.

Our efficiency depends so much on our concentration, that Nature
usually, in the instances where a marked man is sent into the world,
overloads him with bias, sacrificing his symmetry to his working power.
It is said, no man can write but one book; and if a man have a defect,
it is apt to leave its impression on all his performances. If she create
a policeman like Fouche, he is made up of suspicions and of plots to
circumvent them. "The air," said Fouche, "is full of poniards." The
physician Sanctorius spent his life in a pair of scales, weighing his
food. Lord Coke valued Chaucer highly, because the Canon Yeman's Tale
illustrates the Statute _Hen. V. Chap. 4_, against Alchemy. I saw a man
who believed the principal mischiefs in the English state were derived
from the devotion to musical concerts. A freemason, not long since, set
out to explain to this country, that the principal cause of the success
of General Washington was the aid he derived from the freemasons.

But, worse than the harping on one string, Nature has secured
individualism by giving the private person a high conceit of his weight
in the system. The pest of society is egotists. There are dull and
bright, sacred and profane, coarse and fine egotists. 'Tis a disease
that, like influenza, falls on all constitutions. In the distemper
known to physicians as _chorea_, the patient sometimes turns round
and continues to spin slowly on one spot. Is egotism a metaphysical
varioloid of this malady? The man runs round a ring formed by his own
talent, falls into an admiration of it, and loses relation to the world.
It is a tendency in all minds. One of its annoying forms is a craving
for sympathy. The sufferers parade their miseries, tear the lint from
their bruises, reveal their indictable crimes, that you may pity them.
They like sickness, because physical pain will extort some show of
interest from the bystanders; as we have seen children, who, finding
themselves of no account when grown people come in, will cough till they
choke, to draw attention.

This distemper is the scourge of talent,--of artists, inventors, and
philosophers. Eminent spiritualists shall have an incapacity of putting
their act or word aloof from them, and seeing it bravely for the nothing
it is. Beware of the man who says, "I am on the eve of a revelation!" It
is speedily punished, inasmuch as this habit invites men to humor it,
and, by treating the patient tenderly, to shut him up in a narrower
selfism, and exclude him from the great world of God's cheerful fallible
men and women. Let us rather be insulted, whilst we are insultable.
Religious literature has eminent examples; and if we run over our
private list of poets, critics, philanthropists, and philosophers, we
shall find them infected with this dropsy and elephantiasis, which we
ought to have tapped.

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