Chapter 5

Twelve years after, Junker, having occasion to go to Amsterdam, was accosted on the Exchange by a man well-dressed and of the best appearance, who, he had been informed, was one of the most respectable merchants in that city. The merchant, in a polite manner, inquired whether he was not Professor Junker of Halle; and, on being answered in the affirmative, he requested, in an earnest manner, his company to dinner. The Professor consented. Having reached the merchant's house, he was shewn into an elegant apartment, where he found a beautiful wife, and two fine healthy children: but he could scarcely suppress his astonishment at meeting with so cordial a reception from a family with whom, he thought he was entirely unacquainted.

After dinner, the merchant, taking him into his counting-room, said, "You do not recollect me?"--"Not at all."--"But I well recollect you; and never shall your features be effaced from my remembrance. You are my benefactor. I am the person who came to life in your closet, and to whom you paid so much attention. On parting from you, I took the road to Holland. I wrote a good hand, was tolerably expert at accounts; my figure was somewhat interesting; and I soon obtained employment as a merchant's clerk. My good conduct, and my zeal for the interests of my patron, procured me his confidence, and his daughter's love. On his retiring from business, I succeeded him, and became his son-in-law. But for you, however, I should not have lived to experience all these enjoyments. Henceforth, look upon my house, my fortune, and myself, as at your disposal."

Those who possess the smallest portion of sensibility can easily represent to themselves the feelings of Junker.

THE

DRUNKEN BUCKS,

AND

_CHIMNEY-SWEEP_.

On March the 19th, 1765, four bucks assembled at an inn in Grantham, to drink a glass, and play a game of cards. The glass circulating very briskly, before midnight they became so intoxicated, that not one of them was able to determine how the game stood; and several disputes, interspersed with a considerable number of oaths, ensued, till they agreed to let the cards lie, and endeavour to drink themselves sober. Shortly after they resumed the game; and each man imagining himself capable of directing the rest, they soon came again to very high words; when the waiter, fearful that some bad consequences might ensue, let them know it was near three o'clock, and, if any gentleman pleased, he would wait on him home. Instead of complying with his request, the geniuses looked upon it as an indignity offered them, and declared, with the most horrid imprecations, that not one of them would depart till day-light. But, in the height of their anger, an uncommon noise in the chimney engaged their attention; when, on looking towards the fire-place, a black spectre made its appearance, and crying out in a hollow menacing tone--"_My father has sent me for you, infamous reprobates!_" They all, in the greatest fright, flew out of the room, without staying to take their hats, in broken accents confessing their sins, and begging for mercy.

It appears, that the master of the inn, finding he could not get rid of his troublesome guests, and having a chimney-sweeper in his house sweeping other chimneys, he gave the boy directions to descend into the room as above related, whilst he stood at a distance, and enjoyed the droll scene of the bucks' flight.

THE

CRIPPLEGATE GHOST.

The following story, well authenticated in the neighbourhood of Cripplegate, will convince the reader, that vicious intentions are sometimes productive of much good to the parties they intended to injure.

A gentlewoman in that parish, having lain for some days in a trance, was at length laid out and buried for dead, with a gold ring on her finger. The sexton knowing thereof, he and his wife, with a lanthorn and candle, went privately the next night, and dug up the coffin, opened it, untied the winding sheet, and was going to cut off her finger for the sake of the valuable ring buried with her, they not being otherwise able to remove it; when, suddenly, the lady raised herself up (being just then supposed miraculously to come out of her trance). The sexton and his wife ran away in a horrible fright, leaving their lanthorn behind them; which the lady took up, and made haste home to her house. When knocking hard at the door, the maid-servant asked who was there? "'Tis I, your mistress," replied the lady; "and do, for God's sake, let me in immediately, as I am very cold." The maid, being much surprised and terrified at this reply, neglected to open the door, ran away to her master, and acquainted him with the circumstance; who would scarcely believe her tale, till he went himself to the door, and heard his wife relate the dreadful particulars. He immediately let her in, put her into a warm bed; and, by being well looked after, she soon perfectly recovered, and lived to have three children afterwards.

This extraordinary resuscitation is conjectured, by the faculty, to have been occasioned by the sudden circulation of the blood on the villain's attempting to cut off the finger.

A monument, with a curious inscription of this affair, is still to be seen in Cripplegate church.

THE

VENTRILOQUIST.

The following anecdotes are related by the Abbé de la Chapelle, of the French Academy.

This gentleman, having heard many surprising circumstances related concerning one Monsieur St. Gille, a grocer, at St. Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, whose astonishing powers as a ventriloquist had given occasion to many singular and diverting scenes, formed the resolution to see him. Struck by the many marvellous anecdotes related concerning him, the Abbé judged it necessary first to ascertain the truth by the testimony of his own senses, and then to inquire into the cause and manner in which the phenomena were produced.

After some preparatory and necessary steps (for Monsieur St. Gille had been told he did not chuse to gratify the curiosity of every one), the Abbé waited upon him, informed him of his design, and was very cordially received. He was taken into a parlour on the ground floor; when Monsieur St. Gille and himself sat on the opposite sides of a small fire, with only a table between them, the Abbé keeping his eyes constantly fixed on Monsieur St. Gille all the time. Half an hour had passed, during which that gentleman diverted the Abbé with a relation of many comic scenes which he had given occasion to by this talent of his; when, all on a sudden, the Abbé heard himself called by his name and title, in a voice that seemed to come from the roof of a house at a distance. He was almost petrified with astonishment: on recollecting himself, however, he asked Monsieur St. Gille whether he had not just then given him a specimen of his art? He was answered only by a smile. But while the Abbé was pointing to the house from which the voice had appeared to him to proceed, his surprise was augmented on hearing himself answered, "It was not from that quarter," apparently in the same kind of voice as before, but which now seemed to issue from under the earth, at one of the corners of the room. In short, this factitious voice played, as it were, every where about him, and seemed to proceed from any quarter or distance from which the operator chose to transmit it to him. The illusion was so very strong, that, prepared as the Abbé was for this kind of conversation, his mere senses were absolutely incapable of undeceiving him. Though conscious that the voice proceeded from the mouth of Monsieur St. Gille, that gentleman appeared absolutely mute while he was exercising this talent; nor could the author perceive any change whatever in his countenance. He observed, however, at this first visit, that Monsieur St. Gille contrived, but without any affectation, to present only the profile of his face to him, while he was speaking as a ventriloquist.

The next experiment made was no less curious than the former, and is related as follows--

Monsieur St. Gille, returning home from a place where his business had carried him, sought for shelter from an approaching thunder-storm, in a neighbouring convent. Finding the whole community in mourning, he inquires the cause, and is told, that one of their body had lately died, who was the ornament and delight of the whole society. To pass away the time, he walks into the church, attended by some of the religious, who shew him the tomb of their deceased brother, and speak feelingly of the scanty honours they had bestowed on his memory. Suddenly, a voice is heard, apparently proceeding from the roof of the choir, lamenting the situation of the deceased in purgatory, and reproaching the brotherhood with their lukewarmness and want of zeal on his account. The friars, as soon as their astonishment gave them power to speak, consult together, and agree to acquaint the rest of the community with this singular event, so interesting to the whole society.

Monsieur St. Gille, who wished to carry on the deception still farther, dissuaded them from taking this step; telling them, that they will be treated by their absent brethren as a set of fools and visionaries. He recommended to them, however, the immediately calling the whole community into the church, when the ghost of their departed brother may, probably, reiterate his complaints. Accordingly, all the friars, novices, lay-brothers, and even the domestics of the convent, are immediately summoned and collected together. In a short time, the voice from the roof renewed its lamentations and reproaches; and the whole convent fell on their faces, and vowed a solemn reparation. As a first step, they chaunted a _De Profundis_ in full choir; during the intervals of which, the ghost occasionally expressed the comfort he received from their pious exercises and ejaculations on his behalf. When all was over, the Prior entered into a serious conversation with Monsieur St. Gille; and, on the strength of what had just passed, sagaciously inveighed against the absurd incredulity of our modern sceptics, and pretended philosophers, as to the existence of ghosts or apparitions. Monsieur St. Gille thought it now high time to undeceive the good fathers. This purpose, however, he found extremely difficult to effect, till he had prevailed upon them to return with him into the church, and there be witnesses of the manner in which he had conducted this ludicrous deception.

In consequence of these memoirs, presented by the author to the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, in which he communicated to them the observations that he had collected on the subject of ventriloquism in general, and those he had made on Monsieur St. Gille in particular; that learned body deputed two of its members, M. de Fouchy and Le Roi, to accompany him to St. Germain-en-Laye, in order to verify the facts, and to make their observations on the nature and causes of this extraordinary faculty. In the course of this inquiry, a very singular plan was laid and executed, to put Monsieur St. Gille's powers of deception to the trial, by engaging him to exert them in the presence of a large party, consisting of the commissaries of the Academy, and some persons of the highest quality, who were to dine in the open forest near St. Germain-en-Laye on a particular day. All the members of this party were in the secret, except a certain lady, here designated by the title of the Countess de B. who was pitched upon as a proper person for Monsieur St. Gille's delusive powers, as she knew nothing either of him or of ventriloquism; and possibly for another reason, which the Abbé, through politeness, suppresses. She had been told in general, that this party had been formed in consequence of a report, that an aërial spirit had lately established itself in the forest of St. Germain-en-Laye; and that a grand deputation from the Academy of Sciences was to pass the day there, to inquire into the reality of the fact.

Monsieur St. Gille was one of the first of this select party; and, previous to his joining the company in the forest, he completely deceived one of the Commissaries of the Academy, who was then walking apart from the rest, and whom he accidentally met. Just as he was abreast of him, prepared and guarded as the academician was against a deception of this kind, he verily believed that he heard his associate M. de Fouchy, who was then with the company at above an hundred yards distance, calling after him to return as expeditiously as possible. His valet, too, after repeating to his master the purport of M. de Fouchy's supposed acclamation, turned about towards the company, and, with the greatest simplicity imaginable, bawled out as loud as he could, in answer to him, "Yes, Sir."

After this promising beginning, the party sat down to dinner; and the aërial spirit, who had been previously furnished with proper anecdotes respecting the company, soon began to address the Countess of B. particularly, in a voice that seemed to be in the air over their heads. Sometimes he spoke to her from the tops of the trees around them, or from the surface of the ground, but at a great distance; and at other times seemed to speak from a considerable depth under her feet. During the dinner, the spirit appeared to be absolutely inexhaustible in the gallantries he addressed to her; though he sometimes said civil things to the rest of the company. This kind of conversation lasted above two hours; and, in fine, the Countess was firmly persuaded, as the rest of the company affected to be, that this was the voice of an aërial spirit: nor would she, as the author affirms, have been undeceived, had not the rest of the company, by their unguarded behaviour, at length excited in her some suspicions. The little plot against her was then owned; and she acknowledged herself to be mortified only in being awakened from such a pleasing delusion.

Several other instances of Monsieur St. Gille's talents are related. He is not, however, the only ventriloquist now in being. The author, in the course of his inquiries on this subject, was informed that the Baron de Mengin, a German nobleman, possessed this art in a very high degree. The Baron has also constructed a little puppet, or doll, (the lower jaw of which he moves by a particular contrivance), with which he holds a spirited kind of dialogue. In the course of it, the little virago is so impertinent, that at last he thrusts her into his pocket; from whence she seems, to those present, to grumble, and complain of her hard treatment. Some time ago, the Baron, who was then at the court of Bareith, being in company with the Prince de Deux Ponts, and other noblemen, amused them with this scene. An Irish officer, who was then present, was so firmly persuaded that the Baron's doll was a real living animal, previously taught by him to repeat these responses, that he watched his opportunity at the close of the dialogue, and suddenly made an attempt to snatch it from his pocket. The little doll, as if in danger of being suffocated, during the struggle occasioned by this attempt, called out for help, and screamed incessantly from the pocket till the officer desisted. She then became silent; and the Baron was obliged to take her out from thence, to convince him, by handling her, that she was a mere piece of wood.

It should have been observed, at the beginning of the Abbé's anecdotes, that ventriloquism is the art of vocal deception. It is an art, or quality, possessed by certain persons, by means of which they are enabled to speak inwardly, having the power of forming speech by drawing the air into the lungs, and to modify the voice in such a manner as to make it seem to proceed from any distance, or in any direction whatever.

There is no doubt but many of these deceptions have been magnified by weak people into those dreadful stories of apparitions and hobgoblins, which the credulous and enthusiastic are too apt implicitly to believe.

THE

SCHOOL-BOY APPARITION.

A few years since, the inhabitants of Dorking, in Surrey, entertained a notion, that a ghost walked in a certain place in that neighbourhood; and that she (for it was an ancient lady, lately dead) was seen hovering about the mansion-house, which was left uninhabited for some time; that she would be up and down in the house very often in the day-time, making a rumbling and a clattering noise; and in the night-time she walked in the neighbouring fields, with a candle in her hand, and though the wind blew ever so hard, it would not blow the candle out; that sometimes she would appear in the open fields, sometimes up in the trees; and, in particular, there was a little heath near Dorking, called Cotman Dean, where, it was said, she was frequently seen.

There was a boarding-school of boys in that town, some of whom were particularly roguish, and contrived all this walking, from the beginning to the end. First, they got a small rope; and, tying one end of it to an old chair which stood in an upper room of the house (for they had found the means to get in and out of the house at pleasure), they brought the other end of the rope down on the other side of the house, in a private place, where it could not easily be seen; and by this they pulled the old chair up, and then let it fall down again: this made a great noise in the house, and was heard distinctly by many of the neighbours. Then other boys of the same gang took care to call out the old women in the next houses, that now they might hear the old lady playing her pranks; and, accordingly, they would all assemble in the court-yard, where they could plainly hear the noises, but not one of them would venture to go up stairs. If any one offered to go a little way up, then all was quiet; but, as soon as ever they retired, the rumbling would begin again. This was the day's deception.

In the night, one of these unlucky boys got a dark lanthorn, which was a thing, at that time, the country-people did not understand; and with this he walked about the orchard, and two or three closes near the house, shewing the light in different directions. His comrades would then call all the old women about them to see it. Then, on a sudden, the light would seem to go out, as the boy closed up the lanthorn. Then he would run swiftly across the whole field, and shew his light again on the other side. Now he would be up in a tree, then in the road, then upon the middle of the heath; so that the country-people made no more question, but that the old lady walked with a candle in her hand, and that they saw the light of it; in a word, it passed for an apparition, and was generally conceived as such by the neighbourhood, till the knavery was discovered, the boys punished, and the towns-people laughed at for their credulity.

THE

CREDULOUS PEASANTS.

No longer ago than the year 1788, when the husbandmen of Paris suffered so severely by the devastation on the 13th of July in that year, many of the farmers were positively so superstitious at their own created fears, that, notwithstanding considerable sums were offered to indemnify them for their losses, and to encourage them to carry on with spirit the cultivation of their lands, with new seeds, new implements, &c. they peremptorily refused, on account of a foolish report that was then prevalent in some parts of the country where the storm happened. They said, that two giants were seen peeping out of the clouds, and threatening, with terrible countenances, gigantic frowns, and high-sounding words, that they would return next year on the same thirteenth day of July, with a greater scourge than they then felt. Terrified either at the imagined report, or at the fancied sight of the giants (which terror and a weak brain will often produce), many of the unhappy sufferers abandoned their houses, and commenced beggars, rather than return to the labours of the field: so great was their affright, in consequence of that tremendous storm.

This story, though hardly credible, may be depended on as a fact, and may be seen in many of the public prints of that time.

THE

NOCTURNAL DISTURBERS.

The following authentic story is related by Dr. Plot, in his Natural History of Oxfordshire.

Soon after the murder of King Charles the First, a commission was appointed to survey the King's house at Woodstock, with the manor, park, woods, and other demesnes thereunto belonging; and one Collins, under a feigned name, hired himself as Secretary to the Commissioners: who, upon the thirteenth of October 1849, met, and took up their residence in the King's own rooms. His Majesty's bed-chamber they made their kitchen; the council-hall, their pantry; and the presence-chamber was the place where they sat for the dispatch of business. His Majesty's dining room they made their wood-yard, and stored it with the wood of the famous royal oak, from the high park; which, that nothing might be left with the name of the King about it, they had dug up by the roots, and split, and bundled up into faggots for their firing.

Things being thus prepared, they sat on the 16th of the same month for the dispatch of business; and in the midst of their first debate, there entered a large black dog, as they thought, which made a dreadful howling, overturned two or three of their chairs, and then crept under a bed, and vanished. This gave them the greater surprise, as the doors were kept constantly locked, so that no real dog could get in or out. The next day, their surprise was increased; when, sitting at dinner in a lower room, they heard plainly the noise of persons walking over their heads, though they well knew the doors were all locked, and there could be nobody there. Presently after, they heard also all the wood of the King's oak brought by parcels from the dining-room, and thrown with great violence into the chamber; as also the chairs, stools, tables, and other furniture, forcibly hurled about the room; their own papers of the minutes of their transactions torn; and the ink-glass broken. When this noise had some time ceased, Giles Sharp, their Secretary, proposed to enter first into these rooms; and, in presence of the Commissioners, of whom he received the key, he opened the doors, and found the wood spread about the room, the chairs tossed about, and broken, the papers torn, and the ink-glass broken (as has been said); but not the least track of any human creature, nor the least reason to suspect one, as the doors were all fast, and the keys in the custody of the Commissioners. It was therefore unanimously agreed, that the power who did this mischief must have entered the room at the key-hole.

The night following, Sharp, the Secretary, with two of the Commissioners' servants, as they were in bed in the same room (which room was contiguous to that where the Commissioners lay), had their beds' feet lifted so much higher than their heads, that they expected to have their necks broken; and then they were let fall at once with so much violence, as shook the whole house, and more than ever terrified the Commissioners.