第32章 CHAPTER IX(2)

"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 Ihave 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."