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Page 74
Mother took them without a word.
The story leaked out somehow, and spread all over town. It raised a
great hue and cry. Four or five antediluvian ladies declared at once
that we were nothing more nor less than a family of "them spirituous
mediums," and seriously proposed to expel mother from the
prayer-meeting. Masculine Creston did worse. It smiled a pitying smile,
and pronounced the whole thing the fancy of "scared women-folks." I
could endure with calmness any slander upon earth but that. I bore it a
number of weeks, till at last, driven by despair, I sent for Winthrop,
and stated the case to him in a condition of suppressed fury. He very
politely bit back an incredulous smile, and said he should be _very_
happy to see her perform. The answer was somewhat dubious. I accepted it
in silent suspicion.
He came on a Saturday noon. That afternoon we attended _en masse_ one of
those refined inquisitions commonly known as picnics, and Winthrop lost
his pocket-knife. Selphar, of course, kept house at home.
When we returned, Winthrop made some careless reference to his loss in
her presence, and thought no more of it. About half an hour after, we
observed that she was washing the dishes with her eyes shut. The
condition had not been upon her five minutes before she dropped the
spoon suddenly into the water, and asked permission to go out to walk.
She "saw Mr. Winthrop's knife somewhere under a stone, and wanted to get
it." It was fully two miles to the picnic grounds, and nearly dark.
Winthrop followed the girl, unknown to her, and kept her in sight. She
went rapidly, and without the slightest hesitation or search, to an
out-of-the-way gully down by the pond, where Winthrop afterwards
remembered having gone to cut some willow-twigs for the girls, parted a
thick cluster of bushes, lifted a large, loose stone under which the
knife had rolled, and picked it up. She returned it to Winthrop,
quietly, and hurried away about her work to avoid being thanked.
I observed that, after this incident, masculine Creston became more
respectful.
Of several peculiarities in this development of the girl I made at the
time careful memoranda, and the exactness of these can be relied upon.
1. She herself, so far from attempting to bring on these trance states,
or taking any pride therein, was intensely troubled and mortified by
them,--would run out of the room, if she felt them coming on in the
presence of visitors.
2. They were apt to be preceded by severe headaches, but came often
without any warning.
3. She never, in any instance, recalled anything that happened during
the trance, after it was passed.
4. She was powerfully and unpleasantly affected by electricity from a
battery, or acting in milder forms. She was also unable at any time to
put her hands and arms into hot water; the effect was to paralyze them
at once.
5. Space proved to be no impediment to her vision. She has been known to
follow the acts, words, and expressions of countenance of members of the
family hundreds of miles away, with accuracy as was afterwards proved by
comparing notes as to time.
6. The girl's eyes, after her trances became habitual, assumed, and
always retained, the most singular expression I ever saw on any face.
They were oblong and narrow, and set back in her head like the eyes of a
snake. They were not--smile if you will, O practical and incredulous
reader! but they were not--eyes. The eyes of Elsie Venner are the only
eyes I can think of as at all like them. The most horrible circumstance
about them--a circumstance that always made me shudder, familiar as I
was with it--was, that, though turned fully on you, _they never looked
at you_. Something behind them or out of them did the seeing, not they.
7. She not only saw substance, but soul. She has repeatedly told me my
thoughts when they were upon subjects to which she could not by any
possibility have had the slightest clew.
8. We were never able to detect a shadow of deceit about her.
9. The clairvoyance never failed in any instance to be correct, so far
as we were able to trace it.
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