LIBRARY) UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO ! PUSHED BY UNSEEN HANDS. "In the brain, that wondrous world with one in habitant, there are recesses dim and dark, treacherous sands and dangerous shores, where seeming sirens tempt and fade; streams that rise in unknown lands from hidden springs, strange seas with % ebb and flow of tides, resistless billows urged by storms of flame, profound and awful depths hidden by mist of dreams, obscure and phantom realms where vague and fear ful things are half revealed, jungles where passion's tigers crouch, and skies of cloud and blue where fan cies fly with painted wings that dazzle and mislead; and the poor sovereign of this pictured world is led by old desires and ancient hates, and stained by crimes of many vanished years, and pushed by hands that long ago were dust, until he feels like some bewildered slave that Mockery has throned and crowned." INGERSOLL. PUSHED BY UNSEEN HANDS BY HELEN H. GARDENER AUTHOR OF "Men, Women and Gods," te Sex in Brain," "Pulpit, Pew and Cradle," "Is This Your Son, My Lord?" "A Thought less Yes," "Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter," "An Unofficial Patriot," and " Facts and Fictions of Life" FOURTH EDITION NEW YORK: R. F. FENNO & COMPANY 9 AND I I EAST 1 6TH STREET Copyright 1890 BY HELEN H. GA.RDENKR CONTENTS. PREFACE, 9 AN ECHO FROM SHILOH, 17 OLD SAFETY-VALVE'S LAST RUN, .... 37 How MARY ALICE WAS CONVERTED, ... 77 A HALL OF HEREDITY, 97 "THAT REMINDS ME OF" . . . .137 His MOTHER'S BOY, 157 MR. WALK-A-LEG ADAMS "MEETS UP WITH" A TARTAR, 197 ONYX AND GOLD, 219 IN DEEP WATER, 245 A PRISON PUZZLE, 271 PREFACE. 1 > ACK of all human action there is a sufficient cause. Some of the more open and simple causes we have learned to recognize. But in the complex and as yet unanalyzed varieties of mental, moral, social, industrial, or other aberrations, of what is by courtesy called civilized society, we are constantly confronted by strange manifesta tions which we have made little intelligent effort to comprehend. In the industrial world the unseen hand of greed has pushed millions of men into an abjectness measured only by the awful limits of their dependence. It has fostered in the race those mental, moral and physical conditions which retard even the painfully slow progress of natural evolution toward a loftier manhood. io Preface. Again, in the dark and untrod halls of heredity we have ignored and. still insist upon ignoring the plainest finger-prints of the " unseen hands that long ago were dust." Only when those finger-prints are left in blood do we deign to recognize them, when it is, alas, too late to place in their shadowy grasp the roses of beauty and sheathe for them the weapons which are double-edged. And so the blind lead the blind and are pushed by the blind un til they stumble by chance or fate upon horror or hope, and, learning nothing by the experience, their children and their chil dren's children still grope within the same dark walls and draw the window-shades of habit and inherited forms of thought against the sunlight of science and a ra tional to-morrow. Often our very courts of Justice are made partners with the criminals they prosecute because they must administer laws which have come down to us from Preface. 1 1 the unseen hands of brutal power brutally applied, or from ignorance, superstition, un fairness or stealth. The Past claps its fleshless hands and the Present dances to the music of the rattling bones. Until we cease, in the darkness of willing blindness, to put patches on the Past and learn to fit a new gar ment to the fair form of the Future, we shall continue to be pushed and swayed and controlled by the myriad unseen hands that should be to us a helpful memory and not a merciless menace. In these little studies of social and hered itary conditions I hope I may have sug gested many lines of thought to those who care to think, and furnished imaginative en tertainment for those who prefer to muse. Dr. E. C. Spitzka, the leading brain spe cialist (or alienist) of America, in writing of certain of these stories, says: " I am inclined to criticise and commend this work much more earnestly than would 1 2 Preface, be looked for from the technical position of a specialist. I attach far more than a mere literary value to two of these stories, to which especial attention is not likely to be directed, and believe no other author of fiction has ever adequately attempted what is here done. The book will not only retain a place in my library, but I also feel sure that other more 'unified' works by the same pen will be placed beside it. Appealing as they may to a larger circle of readers, they must earn the author a recognition, alas, to-day, awarded to many shallow pretenders instead. . . . We see strange things in the field of heredity, and I can pay the book no higher compliment than to say that I had heretofore believed only specialists capable of at once intelli gently and popularly dealing with these subjects." . . . While this most eminent brain authority honors these sketches with a place in his library, on the basis of their scientific sug gestion and value, the late Don Piatt wrote Preface. 1 3 of similar stories by the same pen, which have appeared 'under another title : " It is not that they are beautiful stories, for the charm is not in the fact of the story, but in the delicate touch that leaves so much to the reader's imagination. It requires an imaginative genius to do this. With such a quality and with her exquisite touch she has a genius for writing fiction which she should not throw away or degrade on reformative novels or scientific specula tion. These stories are rare fiction. Facts, science and reformation work belong in an other field." And so each must decide for himself what these stories contain for him. Whether they present to his mind scientific suggestion of important facts, or merely offer the enter tainment of more or less impossible fiction. Whether they will amuse his leisure hours and tickle the fancy of a drowsy man, or whether they are a stimulus, a suggestion or 14 Preface. a query. The mental outlook of each reader will determine the value and quality of the author's message for him. HELEN H. GARDENER. New York. ^^ffiEPr AN ECHO FROM SHILOH. 'Is not this something more than fantasy? What think you of it? Before my God, I might not this believe, Without the sensible and true avouch Of mine own eyes." . . . xhe sleeping and the dead Are but as pictures: 'tis the eye of childhood, That fears a painted devil." . . . "I tell you again, Banquo's buried; he cannot come out of his grave." .... "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." SHAKESPEARE. AN ECHO FROM SHILOH, T T is impossible to recall now what started the discussion. I remember that we suddenly found ourselves as people con stantly do in the midst of a speculative phi losophical debate, the genesis of which be longs with the infancy of the race, and its exodus will possibly be coincident with the extinction of mankind. " Now, here is a thing I'd like you to ex plain to me," the thoughtful German gentle man who sat in the corner was saying. " You say that you don't believe in spirits, but how do you account for a thing like this and, mind you, I do not say it is spirits do it, but I only ask you, how do you account for it otherwise? It was in 1872. The medium was not what you call a professional ; but she was the little daughter of a friend of ours. 2O An Eclio from Shiloh. She was bareh sixteen years old then. We were all sitting around a table like this you know how they do it and it was clear day light. She went into a sort of trance. Then she began to shiver and say * Oohoo ! ' like that, a sort of tremble. At last she said to me, ' Don't you remember me ? oh, Herman, don't you know me? You did me the last kindness I received on earth. I am Lud- wig Her voice died out, and she said again, ' L-u-d-w-i-g,' in a far-away kind of tone. I couldn't remember ever having had a friend by that name for whom I had done any spe cial last service. I tried hard to think, and the others went on talking. I recalled a schoolmate, in Germany, of the name ; but he had died in California, and I was not there. Another by the name was not dead yet. And so I ran over all the people I had ever known who were named Ludwig, and I said, ' You've made a mistake. I never did a last service for anyone named Ludwig/ The girl had come out of her trance, and we told her An Echo from Shiloh, 21 what she had said. She argued with me that there must have been such a person because, she said, she had no knowledge of what she had done or said, and some one must have spoken to me through her. I said 1 No/ and I stuck to it. " At last she said she'd try again. She did. This time her hand grasped a pencil, and the moment she was unconscious she wrote: ' Oh, don't leave me ! Ludwig Maxer. Shiloh.' The memory came back to me as from the dead indeed. My heart stopped beating. I had not thought of him for years. He had never been my friend only a chance comrade in arms and so many who were nearer and dearer had gone down that same awful day, and later on, that his very memory had faded from my mind. It all came back like a lightning flash in a clear sky. That you may understand how this can be so, I shall have to tell you a little war his tory: You know I was on what you call the wrong side the Confederate side. It is no 22 An Echo from Shiloh. matter now whether it was right or wrong. One thing is very certain, it had its heroes, and few of its stories have yet been told. But dat is needer here nor dare," he said, for getting his English accent and dropping into the attractive broken inflection and pronun ciation that lend an added charm to the con versation of educated and thoughtful Ger mans, whose mother-tongue is the language of their thought and affection, no matter how carefully they school themselves to conform to the demands of the language of the land of their adoption. My German friend's ordinary every-day sentences not only followed his English grammar, but the inflection gave but slight clue to his nationality. When, however, he warmed to a thought or story that carried him out of himself, his tongue would slip certain letters, and, as I say, add charm to the earnestness and force of his un guarded naturalness, until he would notice it himself, and, with an effort of memory An Echo from Shiloh. 23 and will, set his tongue on the English track again. Some one else spoke, and, in the break which followed, much of the fire died out of his face, and perhaps out of his thought as well, and his speech resumed the beaten path of conventional English. " It was at the battle of Shiloh. I belonged to the color guard. Volunteers were called for to deploy and throw out a line toward a thicket to see if there were masked batteries behind it. At first a few men and then very nearly the whole of the Twentieth Louisiana regiment responded to the call, and we were ordered to go far enough to draw their fire if batteries were ambushed there, and then fall back when the test had been made. Nearly one thousand men marched toward those bushes. We had to march through a corn field and every old soldier will understand what that means. Hidden from each other there is no place so terrible to a soldier as a cornfield!" 24 An Echo from Shiloh. His voice dropped, and his eyes assumed a look of intense thoughtfulness as he faced his handsome wife. " I was not a married man then, and yet it took a great deal of grim determination to face the unknown but suspected danger. Gott! I haf often wondered how the men did it who knew there were wives and chil dren at home waiting for dem ! But dat is needer here nor dare!" Again he pulled back to the story and to English. "They waited until we were almost on them, and then whiz ! they opened fire. Three hundred and twenty-one of us were alive to tell the tale ! Poor August Zegler was shot through the body, and fell with the flag under him. He was the color-bearer. He was shot through the bowels, and fell on his face on the flag. As we turned to run our orders were only to learn if batteries were masked there, and then retreat and we had surely learned An Echo from Shiloh. 25 that," he added, as a grim aside "as we turned to run I rolled poor August over on his back and caught up the flag from under him. It was the Confederate flag the flag you think was on the wrong side, and no doubt it was, but it was our colors, and I saved it." Some one in the room said it was a fine action; but he did not pause, and had no thought of his deed, although he had been promoted to a staff position as a result of this bit of bravery. He was only coming to his point in the story. " Just as I caught up the flag and had got five or six feet, with an impetus that threw me still further ahead, poor Ludwig Maxer fell on one knee at my side, and said, ' Oohoo,' in a sort of a long shiver, and put out his hands. He had been shot. He cried out not especially to me: 'Oh, don't leave me behind!' With the natural impulse of a com rade I crowded my other arm around him and tried to pull him to his feet again. He 26 An EcJio from Shiloh, had been hit in the small of the back, and my arm hurt him worse dan de shot. He made a groan, his head dropped on my shoul der, and he was what you call unconscious. One of de odder boys threw an arm around him on de odder side, and we dragged him forward until, from behind a covered place, some of us carried the dead weight into the ranks and on behind de line." The German paused to wipe his fore head and begin his deliberate English again. " I say dead weight and it was that for he was all paralyzed below the waist now. But that is neither here nor there. What I'm coming to is this. The poor fellow died two days later without ever uttering a word, and the strangest thing about it all was that his little pet squirrel that he always carried in his pocket had to be buried with him. We couldn't take it away. It fought and bit us every time we tried, and ran back into his breast pocket. We wrapped the flag we had rescued around poor Maxer, and from be- An EcJw from Shiloh. 27 neath the blue folds the little head of his faithful comrade peered as we lowered him into his grave. We covered him very slowly to give it time to get out when it should un derstand that it was really to be buried ; but the trembling creature held its place and and we buried it alive."' There was a long pause. His voice had grown low and almost tender. Several per sons murmured inaudible trifles, but all were intensely interested and eager for him to go on. " But, as I say," he continued, a moment later, " there had been so many nearer and dearer to me who were killed that day and afterward, in the war, that the memory of poor Maxer and his pet squirrel had died out of my mind until this child-medium flashed it across my mental vision again like lightning in a clear sky. Now, how do you account for that? " " She had heard of it at the time," began 28 An Eclw from Skilok. the incredulous lady on his left; but he did not allow her to finish the sentence. " Mind you, I don't say it is spirits. All I say is, these are the facts, and I'd like to hear some one account for them." The gentleman opposite took up the suggestion thrown out by the skeptical lady. "The medium had heard of it at the time, or more natural still you had told it in the town after the war, and she had gotten hold of it." But the German was ready to meet both suggestions : "You must not forget that war was a mere name to the little girl who did that. She was barely sixteen, and all this had been ten years before. She could hardly have heard of it at the time and, besides, she did not even know I had been in the battle of Shiloh." He paused, and smiled in a sar castic way. "And as for me telling dose facts in dat border town so soon after de close of An Echo from SJtilok. 29 de war did any of you live in what was called de border States along about dat time ? No?" He displayed more excitement as he asked the question than at any time be fore, and his accent lapsed with his self-con trol. "No! Well, den, all I got to say is, anybody who didn't haf to tell he was with Beauregard wasn't telling it. And I was a young German. Nobody suspected that I had been in the army. They thought I had lately landed, and I let dem think dat. It was what you call healthier." We all laughed. " It was mind acting on mind," began the lady from Boston. "You were not aware that you were thinking of your comrade in arms at Shiloh; but you were, and in her supersensitive state your own thought im pressed itself on the mind of the child whom you call a medium." Several agreed to this explanation. One or two questioned it. The words " second ary consciousness," " unconscious cerebra- 30 An Echo from Shiloh. tion," "thought transference," and the like, mingled with the general flow of suggestion or assertion that each felt in duty bound to offer as his or her contribution toward the solution of the question. The German list ened to them all. Then he said slowly: " You must remember, I don't say it was the spirit of Ludwig Maxer. I don't know what it was that spoke and wrote through that child but I do know it wasn't what you are all talking about now. I tell you I couldn't recall any such man un til the second time, when she wrote the full name and ' Shiloh ! ' I had hardly known his first name. I was new to the country and new to the war. I was drafted soon after I had gone South, and was not even in a regiment of men whom I had known before. Some in my own company had become almost dear to me, but he be longed to Company K, and I to Company F. We had had nothing in common. His death and burial were to me what you call An Echo from Shiloh, 31 a mere episode, and but for the squirrel I doubt if I could have recalled any of it after so long* a time, and after so many other experiences in the war and since. For, you see, I was in a strange land then, and I had married and had a family since that happened. So much had filled in my life in these ten intervening years, and that was such a mere episode in with the rest, I had forgotten it. Oh, no, she did not get it from my mind that day. I got it from hers, and so I say how do you explain it? Spirits I do not say it was. Mind-reading and the like I know it was not." He whispered an aside to his wife, who had appeared nervous while he talked. Then he said, in the tone of one who yields a point: "My wife wants me to tell you one thing I thought I would leave out. She thinks it is strangest of all. It is dis " "This," said his wife, gently touching his hand. 32 Aii EcJw from Sliiloh. " Yes, this. When the little medium took the pencil to write the name she seemed partly conscious. As she wrote it she jerked aside, and her hand tried to drop the pen- cil and push something. When she came out of her trance again, her finger had several small bloody scratch-like marks on it, and she said that all she remembered of her second trance was that a squirrel tried to bite her finger. Now, how do you ac count for that?" The lady from Boston smiled, but made a note on an ivory tablet of the new point in the case. Under the note she wrote, "Optical illusion? Imagination or?" Two or three of the party began to talk in asides of the new feature in the matter, and labor to fit it into their previously es poused theories, each giving a different expla nation. No one doubted the German's sin cerity, and no one questioned his common- sense. His integrity was above suspicion. Yet his story was being explained away on An Echo from SJdloh. 33 all sides. Some of the explanations left the problem vaguer than it was before. Some of them were patently inadequate, and others were simply ridiculous; but each per son had a theory that appeared to satisfy himself. Each listened to his neighbor's hypothe sis with deep scorn or profound incredulity, and met some point with the German's original inquiry: "But, on that basis, how do you explain this?" And so the evening came to an end, and each went his way, triumphant in his own mental attitude, which touched the shores of the unknown at his individual angle, and, to his indi vidual satisfaction, answered the question from which we started. And yet no two answers agreed. OLD SAFETY-VALVE'S LAST RUN. . . . "But I remember now I'm in this earthly world; where, to do harm, Is often laudable: to do good, sometimes, Accounted dangerous folly." . . . SHAKESPEARE. "Another age may divide the manual labor of the world more equally on all the members of soci ety, and so make the labors of a few hours avail to the wants and add to the vigor of the man." EMERSON. "You see, her eyes are open. Ay, but their sense is shut." SHAKESPEARE. "The rich man's wealth is his strong city: the de struction of the poor is their poverty." BIBLE. OLD "SAFETY-VALVE'S" LAST RUN. I. ^XAHE express train was due at Hardy's Station twelve minutes before three A. M. The night was clear. A white moon light fell on the track direct and full. The grade was easy and the curve not unduly short, and yet there was a collision. A col lision so awful in force and so terrible in results that the entire country was thrown into a fever of excitement when the "extra" shout was heard in every city early the fol lowing day, and people read with feverish haste and shuddering horror the details of the awful calamity. " Extra ! ' stra ! ' stro ! Ex trbble sion on r road! ' "Bulloss'vlif e ! Extra!" Who has not heard the blood-curdling 40 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. cry? Who has not felt his heart stand still as it flashed through his brain that some loved one might be on that very train? Who has not felt the wildly glad sense of relief when assured that the disaster was on another road than that chosen by the treasure of his own household? Who has not, later on, been shocked by his sel fish joy and settled down to a numb, dead consciousness of pain and sorrow a vague pain, a subdued sorrow for the unknown hearts that were torn and bleeding as his own might have bled and sorrowed? Ah, the limitations of human sympathy! Who has not forgotten the very acci dent a few days later, and passed with un thinking carelessness the darkened house of the neighbor who, alas, has a home no more? Longer than the sympathy for the be reaved, there lingers in the brain resent ment against the living and a desire to bring to retributive justice the careless or Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 41 wanton cause of the accident. In the case of the disaster at Hardy's Station public opinion, as voiced by the press, asserted that it wanted, must have, and intended to find the exact cause of the terrible collision. The fireman was supposed to be one of the dead whose charred bodies had not been recognized; but the engineer a man of unusual culture and capacity in his oc cupation was in custody, and, it was said, had admitted that he was asleep at his post. At this point the superintendent of the road had sent him a warning to say ab solutely nothing until he was placed on oath, and he had obeyed the command of his superior officer. The superintendent explained that since the engineer had been an old and trusted employe, he did not want him on the im pulse of self-accusation, under the sting of conscience and public censure to say things that might lead to his own condemnation at the trial. 42 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. "It is quite possible that the rails spread or that the air brake parted, so that he shot past the siding, and into the other train so suddenly that he himself is too dazed to be sure just how it did happen. I wish to talk with him before he says any more for the public. Perhaps I can lead him to recall everything. They say he is quite dazed now and full of wild blame for himself and for some one yet unknown. Perhaps / can get at it. Let me see him alone." The superintendent had seen him alone, but this interview, he said, had not been sat isfactory. Nothing new came out. The super intendent said, "I told him that I would stand by him; that the road would be his friend; that he need not be distressed nor afraid. I thought best to quiet him. In that way he will become more collected and better able to go through the pre liminary trial next week. He is apparently both stubborn and insane now, for he was Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 43 resentful toward trie road for what reason I fail to see and full of wild blame for himself, and still he swears that he could not help it. It is a strange case." But before the trial, the self-tortured engineer had made up his mind to tell the exact truth and take the consequen ces. He felt that he would not then be the only one to fall under public censure, and still his sensitive soul shrank and shuddered at the thought of causing still farther sorrow to other homes. The super intendent had pointed out to him that no good could come of such wholesale ravings as his, and that the wives and families of others than the dead were to be thought of. " You are a bachelor, John," he had said. "Remember that, and we will stand by you to the end. The coupling broke. The switch was displaced, the air brake parted, perhaps. Who can say they did not? Are you sure they did not?" and John was silent. 44 Old " Safety -Valve s" Last Run. II. The trial began. The engineer was on the stand, and had asked to be permitted to tell his story as he could. Excitement ran high, but he sat pale and determined. Then he began in a steady, clear voice, with his eyes on the superintendent, who sat on a front seat. His first sentence sent the blood all out of his superior officer's face, and drew a hum of rage and condemna tion from the spectators, and of surprise from the legal gentlemen present. "I was asleep." There could be no mis take as to what he said, and yet no one could believe his senses. "Nothing happened to the brakes. They were not applied. It was light. The track was in order; but I was asleep and did not take the siding." There was perspiration on his brow. He raised a trembling hand and wiped it away. The superintendent moved uneasily Old "Safety-Valves'' Last Run. 45 and whispered something to the lawyer for the road. " Hanging's too good for him," some one back in the room said loud enough to be heard. The bailiff rapped for silence. The judge turned to the prisoner. "Had you no sense of responsibility? The public must be protected against en gineers who sleep when on duty." The engineer touched the bandage on his broken arm and began again: "I do not know how I escaped instant death, nor how I jumped. It must have been instinct. I was as dead asleep as a human being could be. It seems to me I woke up after I struck the ground. I was dazed like that The superintendent will tell you why. He said he would stand by me that we would tell the truth. He knows why I was asleep and" "I object," came from the legal gentle man who sat next to the superintendent "Mr. Hart is not on trial." 46 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. Mr. Hart's eyes flashed. The engineer looked at him a moment, and his face flushed. "Keep to your story," said the judge. " What business had you to be asleep on an engine going at full speed at night?" " Your Honor, I did all I could to keep awake, I fixed my eyes on the track far ahead and watched with an intentness no one can understand but the honest engineer who knows what a frightful responsibility his is; who feels keenly the value of the lives in his keeping, and yet who also realizes that his own physical powers are trembling on the verge of collapse." He paused and wiped his forehead with his roughened hand and changed the position of his bandaged arm. " Your Honor, I knew that I was keeping eyes, but not brain, awake. I struck my head a sharp rap two or three times with my fist. That called my deadened energies up for a moment but it was for a moment only. Nature Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 47 claimed my mind. I could not keep it. My eyes were fixed on the track. My hand was on the throttle but I was asleep. I realize that I was sound asleep, your Honor. No denial is possible. There" An irresistible movement of indignation stirred the court-room again. The specta tors- looked first at the prisoner, and then at the jury with eyes that conveyed no doubt as to what the verdict would be if they might give it. Asleep at his post! The guardian of all those lives those sleeping, helpless beings who had confi dently put themselves in his care but a few hours before to be trapped like rats in a burning mass of wood and iron that he might doze at his post and jump to safety, leaving them to their fate! What need to conduct the trial farther? He had admitted his guilt. Hanging was too good for him. He should have fifty lives to be taken, and each should be yielded up if that were possible. The prosecutor felt that his case 48 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. was won and repeated to himself the old maxim that he who attempts to conduct his own defense has a fool for a client. He pitied this man from the bottom of his heart for having refused to accept as coun sel the young attorney who had volun teered his services; for even he would have had more sense than to have allowed this confession. He might have set up some decently plausible theory in spite of the facts, that would have left a loop-hole of escape; but for a man to volunteer such a statement as that he was simply asleep on an engine that was speeding over a moonlit track, and that being asleep he did not see his signal orders to take a side track, and so ran full head into another train surely such a confession ended the case. He smiled at the jury with profes sional pleasure and was about to make a remark, when Juror Number Seven ad dressed the prisoner. "Do you mean to say that you simply Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 49 went to sleep on your engine? That you were sober and" The prisoner lifted his heavy, pathetic eyes and rested them on his questioner for a moment. " I was sober," he said slowly. " I never drink, but I was asleep on the engine. I could not help it. I was asleep." The re iteration was pathetic and he was trem bling now. The prosecutor remarked drily that it would be a good idea to put a man who had a little habit like that where he could do the least harm. The prisoner turned his heavy hunted eyes from the juror to the State's attorney and rested his head on one hand. Then his eyes wandered to the face of the superintendent of the road, and his lips drew themselves a little tenser, but he did not speak. The superintendent whispered to the prosecutor that they might as well close the case right there, "the quicker the 5