Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems.Fuller, Margaret
History
Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems.
Fuller, Margaret
Essays; Literature -- History and criticism; Poetry
Some years ago I went, unexpectedly, into a house where a blind girl,
thought at that time to have attained an extraordinary degree of
clairvoyance, lay in a trance of somnambulism. I was not invited there,
nor known to the party, but accompanied a gentleman who was.
The somnambulist was in a very happy state. On her lips was the
satisfied smile, and her features expressed the gentle elevation
incident to the state. At that time I had never seen any one in it, and
had formed no image or opinion on the subject. I was agreeably impressed
by the somnambulist, but on listening to the details of her observations
on a distant place, I thought she had really no vision, but was merely
led or impressed by the mind of the person who held her hand.
After a while I was beckoned forward, and my hand given to the blind
girl. The latter instantly dropped it with an expression of pain, and
complained that she should have been brought in contact with a person so
sick, and suffering at that moment under violent nervous headache. This
really was the case, but no one present could have been aware of it.
After a while the somnambulist seemed penitent and troubled. She asked
again for my hand which she had rejected, and, while holding it,
attempted to magnetize the sufferer. She seemed touched by profound
pity, spoke most intelligently of the disorder of health and its causes,
and gave advice, which, if followed at that time, I have every reason to
believe would have remedied the ill.
Not only the persons present, but the person advised also, had no
adequate idea then of the extent to which health was affected, nor saw
fully, till some time after, the justice of what was said by the
somnambulist. There is every reason to believe that neither she, nor the
persons who had the care of her, knew even the name of the person whom
she so affectionately wished to help.
Several years after, in visiting an asylum for the blind, I saw this
same girl seated there. She was no longer a somnambulist, though, from a
nervous disease, very susceptible to magnetic influences. I went to her
among a crowd of strangers, and shook hands with her as several others
had done. I then asked, "Do you not not know me?" She answered, "No."
"Do you not remember ever to have met me?" She tried to recollect, but
still said, "No." I then addressed a few remarks to her about her
situation there, but she seemed preoccupied, and, while I turned to
speak with some one else, wrote with a pencil these words, which she
gave me at parting:--
"The ills that Heaven decrees
The brave with courage bear."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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