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The Guardian Angel, a novel by Oliver Wendell Holmes |
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APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII. MYRTLE HAZARD'S STATEMENT |
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_ APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII. MYRTLE HAZARD'S STATEMENT "A Vision seen by me, Myrtle Hazard, aged fifteen, on the night of June 15, 1859. Written out at the request of a friend from my recollections. "The place where I saw these sights is called, as I have been told since, Witches' Hollow. I had never been there before, and did not know that it was called so, or anything about it. "The first strange thing that I noticed was on coming near a kind of hill or mound that rose out of the low meadows. I saw a burning cross lying on the slope of that mound. It burned with a pale greenish light, and did not waste, though I watched it for a long time, as the boat I was in moved slowly with the current and I had stopped rowing. "I know that my eyes were open, and I was awake while I was looking at this cross. I think my eyes were open when I saw these other appearances, but I felt just as if I were dreaming while awake. "I heard a faint rustling sound, and on looking up I saw many figures moving around me, and I seemed to see myself among them as if I were outside of myself. "The figures did not walk, but slid or glided with an even movement, as if without any effort. They made many gestures, and seemed to speak, but I cannot tell whether I heard what they said, or knew its meaning in some other way. "I knew the faces of some of these figures. They were the same I have seen in portraits, as long as I can remember, at the old house where I was brought up, called The Poplars. I saw my father and my mother as they look in the two small pictures; also my grandmother, and her father and mother and grandfather, and one other person, who lived a great while ago. All of these have been long dead, and the longer they had been dead the less like substance they looked and the more like shadows, so that the oldest was like one's breath of a frosty morning, but shaped like the living figure. "There was no motion of their breasts, and their lips seemed to be moving as if they were saying, Breath! Breath! Breath! I thought they wanted to breathe the air of this world again in my shape, which I seemed to see as it were empty of myself and of these other selves, like a sponge that has water pressed out of it. "Presently it seemed to me that I returned to myself, and then those others became part of me by being taken up, one by one, and so lost in my own life. "My father and mother came up, hand in hand, looking more real than any of the rest. Their figures vanished, and they seemed to have become a part of me; for I felt all at once the longing to live over the life they had led, on the sea and in strange countries. "Another figure was just like the one we called the Major, who was a very strong, hearty-looking man, and who is said to have drank hard sometimes, though there is nothing about it on his tombstone, which I used to read in the graveyard. It seemed to me that there was something about his life that I did not want to make a part of mine, but that there was some right he had in me through my being of his blood, and so his health and his strength went all through me, and I was always to have what was left of his life in that shadow-like shape, forming a portion of mine. "So in the same way with the shape answering to the portrait of that famous beauty who was the wife of my great-grandfather, and used to be called the Pride of the County. "And so too with another figure which had the face of that portrait marked on the back, Ruth Bradford, who married one of my ancestors, and was before the court, as I have heard, in the time of the witchcraft trials. "There was with the rest a dark, wild-looking woman, with a head-dress of feathers. She kept as it were in shadow, but I saw something of my own features in her face. "It was on my mind very strongly that the shape of that woman of our blood who was burned long ago by the Papists came very close to me, and was in some way made one with mine, and that I feel her presence with me since, as if she lived again in me; but not always,--only at times,--and then I feel borne up as if I could do anything in the world. I had a feeling as if she were my guardian and protector. "It seems to me that these, and more, whom I have not mentioned, do really live over some part of their past lives in my life. I do not understand it all, and perhaps it can be accounted for in some way I have not thought of. I write it down as nearly as I can give it from memory, by request, and if it is printed at this time had rather have all the real names withheld. "MYRTLE HAZARD." 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." _ |
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