 Chapter 32 of the Humbugs of the World The most stupendous scientific imposition upon the public that the generation with which we are numbered has known was the so-called moon hoax, published in the columns of the New York Sun in the months of August and September 1835. The sensation created by this immense imposter, not only throughout the United States, but in every part of the civilized world, and the consummate ability with which it was written, will render it interesting so long as our language shall endure. And indeed astronomical science has actually been indebted to it from any most valuable hints, a circumstance that gives the production a still higher claim to immortality. At the period when the wonderful yarn to which I elude first appeared, the science of astronomy was engaging particular attention. And all work on the subject were eagerly bought up and studied by immense masses of people, the real discoveries of the younger Herschel, whose fame seemed destined to eclipse that of the elder sage of the same name, and the eloquent startling works of Dr. Dick, which the harpers were publishing in popular form from the English edition, did much to increase and keep up this peculiar mania of the time, until the whole community, at last, were literally occupied with little else than stargazing. Dick's works on the sidereal heavens, celestial scenery, the improvement of society, etc., were read with the utmost avidity by rich and poor, old and young, in season and out of season. They were quoted in the parlor, at the table, on the promenade, at church, and even in the bedroom, until it absolutely seemed as though the whole community had Dick upon the brain. To the highly educated and imaginative portion of our good Gothamite population, the doctor's glowing periods, full of the grandest speculations as to the starry worlds around us, their wondrous magnificence and ever-varying aspects of beauty and happiness were inexpressibly fascinating. The author's well-reasoned conjectures as to the majesty and beauty of their landscapes, the fertility and diversity of their soil, and the exalted intelligence and calmness of their inhabitants found hosts of believers, and nothing else formed the staple of conversation until the bow and bell and dealers in small talk generally began to grumble and openly express their wishes that the Dickens had Dr. Dick and all his works. It was at the very height of the Fuhrer above mentioned that one morning the readers of The Sun, at that time only 2,500 in number, were thrilled with the announcement in its columns of certain, quote, great astronomical discoveries lately made by Sir John Herschel, LLD, FRS, etc., at the Cape of Good Hope, end quote, purporting to be a republication from a supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science. The heading of the article was striking enough, yet was far from conveying any adequate idea of its contents. When the latter became known, the excitement went beyond all bounds and grew until the Sun office was positively beseeched with crowds of people of the very first class vehemently applying for copies of the issue containing the wonderful details. As the pamphlet form in which the narrative was subsequently published is now out of print, and a copy can hardly be had in the country, I will recall a few passages from a rare edition for the gratification of my friends who have never seen the original. Indeed, the whole story is altogether too good to be lost, and it is a great pity that we cannot have a handsome reprint of it given to the world from time to time. It is constantly in demand, and during the year 1859 a single copy of sixty pages sold at the auction of Mr. Haswell's library brought the sum of three dollars and seventy-five cents. In that same year a correspondent in Wisconsin, writing to the Sunday Times of this city, inquired where the book could be procured, and was answered that he could find it at the old bookstore number eighty-five Centre Street, if anywhere. Thus, after a search of many weeks, the Western Bibliopole succeeded in obtaining a well-thumbed specimen of the precious work. Acting upon this chance suggestion, Mr. William Gowans of this city, during the same year, brought out a very neat edition in paper covers, illustrated with a view of the moon, as seen through Lord Ross's grand telescope in 1856. But this too has all been sold, and the most indefatigable book collector might find it difficult to purchase a single copy at the present time. I, therefore, render the inquiring reader no slight service in calling for him some of the flowers from this curious astronomical garden. The opening of the narrative was in the highest review style, and the majestic yet subdued dignity of its periods at once claimed respectful attention, while its perfect candor and its wealth of accurate scientific detail exacted the homage of belief from all but cross-grained and inexorable skeptics. It commences thus. In this unusual addition to our journal, we have the happiness to make known to the British public, and thanks to the whole civilized world, recent discoveries in astronomy, which will build an imperishable monument to the age in which we live, and confer upon the present generation of the human race a proud distinction through all future time. It has been poetically said that the stars of heaven are the hereditary regalia of men, as the intellectual sovereign of the animal creation. He may now fold the zodiac around him with a loftier consciousness of his mental superiority, etc., etc. The writer then eloquently descanted upon the sublime achievement by which man pierced the bounds that hemmed him in, and with sensations of awe approached the revelations of his own genius in the far-off heavens, and with intense dramatic effect described the younger Herschel surpassing all that his father had ever attained, and by some stupendous apparatus about to unveil the remotest mysteries of the sidereal space, pausing for many hours ere the excess of his emotions would allow him to lift the veil from his own overwhelming success. I must quote a line or two of this passage, for it capped the climax of public curiosity. Well might he pause! He was about to become the sole depository of wondrous secrets which had been hid from the eyes of all men that had lived since the birth of time. He was about to crown himself with a diadem of knowledge which would give him a conscious preeminence above every individual of his species who had then lived, or who had lived in the generations that are passed away. He paused ere he broke the seal of the casket that contained it. Was not this introduction enough to stimulate the wonder-bump of all the star-gazers until each particular hair had stood on end, like quills upon the fretful porcupine? And at all events such was the effect, and it was impossible at first to supply the frantic demand, even of the city, not to mention the country reader. I may very briefly sum up the outline of the discoveries alleged to have been made in a few paragraphs, so as not to protract the suspense of my readers too long. It was claimed that the Edinburgh Journal was indebted for its information to Dr Andrew Grant, a savant of celebrity, who had, for very many years, been the scientific companion, first of the elder, and subsequently of the younger, Herschel, and had gone with the latter in September 1834 to the Cape of Good Hope, whether he had been sent by the British government, acting in conjunction with the governments of France and Austria, to observe the transit of Mercury over the disc of the sun, an astronomical point of great importance to the lunar observations of longitude, and consequently to the navigation of the world. This transit was not calculated to occur before the 7th of November 1835, the year in which the hoax was printed, but Sir John Herschel set out nearly a year in advance, for the purpose of thoroughly testing a new and stupendous telescope devised by himself under this peculiar inspiration, and infinitely surpassing anything of the kind ever before attempted by mortal man. It has been discovered by previous astronomers, and among others, by Herschel's illustrious father, that the sidereal object becomes dim in proportion as it is magnified, and that, beyond a certain limit, the magnifying power is consequently rendered almost useless. Thus an impassable barrier seemed to lie in the way of future close observation, unless some means could be devised to illuminate the object to the eye. By intense research, and the application of all recent improvements in optics, Sir John had succeeded in securing a beautiful and perfectly lighted image of the moon, with a magnifying power that increased its apparent size in the heavens six thousand times. By dividing the distance of the moon from the earth, that is, two hundred forty thousand miles, by six thousand, we have forty miles as the distance at which she would then seem to be seen. And as the elder Herschel, with a magnifying power only one thousand, had calculated that he could distinguish an object on the moon's surface not more than one hundred twenty-two yards in diameter, it was clear that his son, with six times the power, could see an object there only twenty-two yards in diameter. But for any further advance in power and light, the way seemed insuperably closed, until a profound conversation with the great savant and optician, Sir David Brewster, led Herschel to suggest to the latter the idea of the re-adoption of the old-fashioned telescopes without tubes, which threw their images upon reflectors in a dark apartment, and then the illumination of these images by the intense hydro-oxygen light used in the ordinary illuminated microscope. At this suggestion Brewster is represented by the voracious chronicler as leaping with enthusiasm from his chair, exclaiming in rapture to Herschel, Thou art the man. This suggestion was happily approved, was immediately acted upon, and a subscription, headed by that liberal patron of science, the Duke of Sussex, with ten thousand pounds, was backed by the reigning King of England with his royal word for any sum that might be needed to make up seventy thousand pounds, the amount required. No time was lost, and after one or two failures, in January 1833, the house of Hartlett and Grant at Dumbarton succeeded in casting the huge object glass of the new apparatus, measuring twenty-four feet, or six times that of the elder Herschel's glass in diameter, weighing fourteen thousand eight hundred twenty-six pounds, or nearly seven tons, after being polished, and possessing a magnifying power of forty-two thousand times, a perfectly pure, spotless, acromatic lens without a material bubble or flaw. Of course, after so elaborate a description of so astounding a result as this, the Edinburgh Scientific Journal, i.e., the writer in The New York Sun, could not avoid being equally precise in reference to subsequent details, and he proceeded to explain that Sir John Herschel and his amazing apparatus, having been selected by the Board of Launchitude to observe the transit of Mercury, the Cape of Good Hope was chosen because, upon the former expedition to Peru, acting in conjunction with one to Lapland, which was sent out for the same purpose in the eighteenth century, it had been noticed that the attraction of the mountainous regions deflected the plumb line of the large instruments seven or eight seconds from the perpendicular and consequently greatly impaired the enterprise. At the Cape, on the contrary, there was a magnificent table-land of vast expanse where this difficulty could not occur. Accordingly, on the fourth of September, 1834, with a design to become perfectly familiar with the working of his new gigantic apparatus, and with the southern constellations before the period of his observations of Mercury, Sir John Herschel sailed from London, accompanied by Dr. Grant, the supposed informant, Lieutenant Drummond of the Royal Engineers, F-R-A-S, and a large party of the best English workmen. On their arrival at the Cape, the apparatus was conveyed, in four days' time, to the great elevated plain, thirty-five miles to the northeast of Cape Town, on trains drawn by two relief teams of oxen, eighteen to a team, the ascent aided by gangs of Dutch boars. For the details of the huge fabric in which the lens and its reflectors were set up, I must refer the curious reader to the pamphlet itself, not that the presence of the Dutch boars alarms me at all, since we have plenty of boars at home, and one gets used to them in the course of time, but because the elaborate scientific description of the structure would make most readers see stars in broad daylight before they get through. I shall only go on to say that by the tenth of January everything was complete, even to the two pillars one hundred and fifty feet high that sustained the lens. Operations then commenced forthwith, and so, too, did the special wonder of the readers. It is a matter of congratulation to mankind that the writer of the hoax, with an apology, heaven save the mark, spared us Herschel's notes of the moon's tropical, sidereal, and synodic revolutions, and the phenomena of the scissorges, and proceeded at once to the pith of the subject. Here came in his grand stroke, informing the world of complete success in obtaining a distinct view of objects in the moon fully equal to that which the unaided eye commands of terrestrial objects at the distance of a hundred yards, affirmatively settling the question whether the satellite be inhabited and by what order of beings, firmly establishing a new theory of commentary phenomena, etc., etc. This announcement alone was enough to take one's breath away, but when the green marble shores of the Mare Nubium, the mountains shaped like pyramids, and of the purest at most dazzling crystallized wine-colored amethyst dotting greened valleys skirted by round-breasted hills, summits of the purest vermilion fringed with arching cascades, and buttresses of white marble glistening in the sun, when these began to be revealed, the delight of our lunatic's knew no bounds, and the whole town went moon-mad. But even these immense pictures were surpassed by the lunatic animals discovered. First came the herds of brown quadrupeds, very like a—no, not a whale, but a bison—and with a tail resembling that of the boss Grooniennes. The reader probably understands what kind of a boss that is, if he's apprenticed to a theatre in midsummer with musicians on a strike. Then a creature, which the hoax-man naively declared would be clasped on earth as a monster—I rather think it would—of a bluish-led colour, about the size of a goat, with a head and a beard like him, and a single horn, slightly inclined forward from the perpendicular. It is clear that if this goat was cut down to a single horn, other people were not. I could not but fully appreciate the exquisite distinction accorded by the rider to the female of this lunar animal, for she, while deprived of horn and beard, he explicitly tells us, had a much larger tail. When the astronomers put their fingers on the beard of this beautiful little creature, on the reflector, mind you, it would skip away in high dudgeon, which, considering that 240,000 miles intervened, was something to show its delicacy of feeling. Next, in the procession of discovery, among other animals of less note, was presented a quadruped with an amazingly long neck, head like a sheep, bearing two long spiral horns, white as polished ivory, and standing in perpendicular parallel to each other. Its body was like that of a deer, but its four legs were most disproportionately long, and its tail, which was very bushy and of a snowy whiteness, curled high over its rump and hung two or three feet by its side. Its colors were bright, gray, and white, brindled in patches, but of no regular form. This is probably the animal known to us on earth, and particularly along the Mississippi River, as the Guyascutus, to which I may particularly refer in a future article. But all these things faded into insignificance, compared with the first sight of the genuine lunatics, or men in the moon. Four feet high, covered, except in the face, with short, glossy, copper-colored hair, and with wings composed of a thin membrane, without hair, lying snugly upon their backs from the top of their shoulders to the calves of their legs. With faces of yellowish flesh color, a slight improvement on the large orangutan, complementary for the lunatics. But, says the chronicler, Lieutenant Drummond declared that, but for their long wings, they would look as well on a parade ground as some of the Cockney militia. A little rough, my friend the reader will exclaim, for the aforesaid militia. Of course it is impossible, in a sketch like the present, to do more than give a glimpse of this rare combination of astronomical realities and the vagaries of mere fancy, and I must omit the golden fringed mountains, the veil of the triads, with their splendid triangular temples, etc. But I positively cannot pass by the glowing mention of the inhabitants of this wonderful valley, a superior race of lunatics, as beautiful and as happy as angels, spread like eagles on the grass, eating yellow gourds and red cucumbers, and played with by snow-white stags with jet-black horns. The description here is positively delightful, and I even now remember my poignant sigh of regret when at the conclusion I read that these innocent and happy beings, although evidently creatures of order and subordination and very polite, were seen indulging in amusements which would not be deemed within the bounds of strict propriety on this degenerate ball. The story wound up rather abruptly by referring the reader to an extended work on the subject by Herschel, which has not yet appeared. One can laugh very heartily now at all this, but nearly everybody, the gravest and the wisest two, was completely taken in at the time, and the sun, then established at the corner of Spruce Street, where the Tribune office now stands, reaped an increase of more than fifty thousand to its circulation, in fact, there gained the foundation of its subsequent prolonged success. Its proprietors sold no less than twenty-five thousand dollars worth of the moon hoax over the counter, even exhausting an addition of sixty thousand in pamphlet form. And who was the author? A literary gentleman who has devoted very many years of his life to mathematical and astronomical studies, and was at the time connected as an editor with the sun, one whose name has since been widely known in literature and politics, Richard Adams Locke Esquire, then in his youth, and now in the decline of years. Mr. Locke, who still survives, is a native of the British Isles, and at the time of his first connection with the New York Press, was the only shorthand reporter in this city, where he laid the basis of a competency he now enjoys. Mr. Locke declares that his original object in writing the moon story was to satirize some of the extravagances of Dr. Dick, and to make some astronomical suggestions which he felt diffident about offering seriously. Whatever may have been his object, his hit was unrivaled, and for months the press of Christendom, but far more in Europe than here, teamed with it, until Sir John Herschel was actually compelled to come out with a denial over his own signature. In the meantime it was printed and published in many languages, with superb illustrations. Mr. Endicott, the celebrated lithographer, some years ago had in his possession a splendid series of engravings of extrafolio size, got up in Italy, in the highest style of art, and illustrating the moon hoax. Here in New York the public were for a long time divided on the subject, the vast majority believing, and a few grumpy customers rejecting the story. One day Mr. Locke was introduced by a mutual friend at the door of the Sun Office to a very grave old orthodox Quaker, who in the calmest manner went on to tell him all about the embarkation of Herschel's apparatus at London, where he had seen it with his own eyes. Of course, Locke's optics expanded somewhat while he listened to this remarkable statement, but he wisely kept his own counsel. The discussions of the press were very rich, Sun, of course, defending the affair as genuine, and others doubting it. The mercantile advertiser, the Albany Daily advertiser, the New York Commercial advertiser, the New York Times, the New Yorker, the New York Spirit of 76, the Sunday News, the United States Gazette, the Philadelphia Enquirer, and hosts of other papers came out with the most solemn acceptance and admiration of these wonderful discoveries, and were eclipsed in their approval only by the scientific journals abroad. The evening post, however, was decidedly skeptical and took up the matter in this irreverent way. Quote, It is quite proper that the sun should be the means of shedding so much light on the moon, that there should be winged people in the moon, does not strike us as more wonderful than the existence of such a race of beings on the earth, and that there does still exist such a race, rests on the evidence of that most veracious of voyagers and circumstantial of chroniclers, Peter Wilkins, whose celebrated work not only gives an account of the general appearance and habits of a most interesting tribe of flying Indians, but also of all those more delicate and engaging traits which the author was enabled to discover by reason of the conjugal relations he entered into with one of the females of the winged tribe. The moon hoax had its day, and some of its glory still survives. Mr. Locke, its author, is now quietly residing in the beautiful little home of a friend in the clove-road Staten Island, and no doubt, as he gazes up at the evening luminary, often fancies that he sees a broad grin on the countenance of its only well-authenticated tenant, the hoary solitary whom the criminal code of the nursery has banished thither for collecting fuel on the Sabbath-day. End of Chapter 32 A great literary cell, political humbugging, tricks of the wire-pullers, machinery employed to render the pamphlet notorious, who were sold and how it was done. Some persons say that all is fair in politics. Without agreeing with this doctrine, I nevertheless feel that the history of ancient and modern humbugs would not be complete without a record of the last and one of the most successful of known literary hoaxes. This is the pamphlet entitled Miscegenation, which advocates the blending of the white and black races upon this continent, as a result not only inevitable from the freeing of the negro, but desirable as a means of creating a more perfect race of men than any now existing. This pamphlet is a clever political quiz, and was written by three young gentlemen of the World newspaper, namely D. G. Crowley, George Wakeman, and E. C. Howell. The design of Miscegenation was exceedingly ambitious, and the machinery employed was probably among the most ingenious and audacious ever put into operation to procure the endorsement of absurd theories and give the subject the widest notoriety. The object was so to make use of the prevailing ideas of the extremists of the anti-slavery party, as to induce them to accept doctrines which would be obnoxious to the great mass of the community, and which would, of course, be used in the political canvas which was to ensue. It was equally important that the Democrats should be made to believe that the pamphlet in question emanated from a Republican source. The idea was suggested by a discourse delivered by Mr. Theodore Tilton at the Cooper Institute, before the American Anti-Slavery Society in May 1863, on the negro, in which that distinguished orator argued that in some future time the blood of the negro would form one of the mingled bloods of the great regenerated American nation. The scheme once conceived, it began immediately to be put into execution. The first stumbling block was the name Amalgamation, by which this fraternizing of the races had been always known. It was evident that a book advocating amalgamation would fall stillborn, and hence some new and novel word had to be discovered with the same meaning but not so objectionable. Such a word was coined by the combination of the Latin misere to mix and genus race, from these miscegenation, a mingling of the races. The word is as euphonious as amalgamation and much more correct in meaning. It has passed into the language and no future dictionary will be complete without it. Next it was necessary to give the book an erudite appearance, and arguments from ethnology must form no unimportant part of this matter. Neither of the authors being versed in this science they were compelled to depend entirely on encyclopedias and books of reference. This obstacle to a New York editor or reporter was not so great as it might seem. The public are often favored in our journals with dissertations upon various abstruse matters by men who are entirely ignorant of what they are writing about. It was said of Cuvier that he could restore the skeleton of an extinct animal if he were only given one of its teeth, and so a competent editor or reporter of a city journal can get up an article of any length on any given subject if he is only furnished one word or name to start with. There was but one writer on ethnology distinctly known to the authors, which was Prichard, but that being secured all the rest came easily enough. The authors went to the Aster library and secured a volume of Prichard's works, the perusal of which, of course, gave them the names of many other authorities, which were also consulted, and thus a very respectable array of scientific arguments in favour of miscegenation were soon compiled. The sentimental and argumentative portions were quickly suggested from the knowledge of the authors of current politics, of the vagaries of some of the more visionary reformers, and from their own native wit. The book was at first written in a most cursory manner, the chapters got up without any order or reference to each other, and afterward arranged. As the impression sought to be conveyed was a serious one, it would clearly not do to commence with the extravagant and absurd theories to which it was intended that the reader should gradually be led. The scientific portion of the work was therefore given first, and was made as grave and terse and unobjectionable as possible, and merely urged, by arguments drawn from science and history, that the blending of the different races of men resulted in a better progeny. As the work progressed, they continued to pile on the agony, until, at the close, the very fact that the statue of the Goddess of Liberty on the capital is of a bronze tint, is looked upon as an omen of the colour of the future American. When the traveller approaches the city of magnificent distances, it says, the seat of what is destined to be the greatest and most beneficent power on earth, the first object that will strike his eye will be the figure of liberty surmounting the capital. Not white, symbolizing but one race, nor black, typifying another, but a statue representing the composite race, whose sway will extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, from the Equator to the North Pole, the Missedgins of the future. The book once written, plans were laid to obtain the endorsement of the people who were to be humbugged. It was not only necessary to humbug the members of the Reform and Progressive Party, but to present, as I have before said, such serious arguments that Democrats should be led to believe it as a bona fide revelation of the infernal designs of their antagonists. In both respects there was complete success. Although, of course, the mass of the Republican leaders entirely ignored the book, yet a considerable number of anti-slavery men with more transcendental ideas were decidedly sold. The machinery employed was exceedingly ingenious. Before the book was published, proof copies were furnished to every prominent abolitionist in the country, and also to prominent spiritual mediums, to ladies known to wear bloomers, and to all that portion of our population who are supposed to be a little soft on the subject of reform. A circular was also enclosed, requesting them, before the publication of the book, to give the author the benefit of their opinions as to the value of the arguments presented, and the desirability of the immediate publication of the work, to be enclosed to the American News Company, 121 Nassau Street, New York, the agents for the publishers. The bait took. Letters came pouring in from all sides, and among the names of prominent persons who gave their endorsements were Albert Brisbane, Parker Pillsbury, Lucretia Mott, Sarah M. Grimke, Angelina J. Weld, Dr. J. McEwn Smith, William Wells Brown. Mr. Pillsbury was quite excited over the book, saying, Your work has cheered and gladdened a winter morning which I began in cloud and sorrow. You are on the right track. Pursue it, and the good God speed you. Mr. Theodore Tilton, upon receiving the pamphlet, wrote a note promising to read it, and to write the author a long and candid letter as soon as he had time, and saying that the subject was one to which he had given much thought. The promised letter, I believe, however, was never received. Probably because, on a careful perusal of the book, Mr. Tilton smelt a rat. He might also have been influenced by an ironical paragraph relating to himself, and arguing that as he was a pure specimen of the blonde, and when a young man was noted for his angelic type of feature, his sympathy for the colored race was accounted for by the natural love of opposites, says the author with much gravity. The sympathy Mr. Greeley, Mr. Phillips, and Mr. Tilton feel for the negro is the love which the blonde bears for the black. It is the love of race, a sympathy stronger to them than the love they bear to woman. It is founded upon natural law, we love our opposites. It is the nature of things that we should do so, and where nature has free course, men like those we have indicated, whether anti-slavery or pro-slavery, conservative or radical, Democrat or Republican, will marry and be given in marriage to the most perfect specimens of the colored race. So far things worked favorably, and having thus bagged a goodly number of prominent reformers, the next effort was to get the ear of the public. Here new machinery was brought into play. A statement was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, a paper which, ever since the war commenced, has been notorious for its sensation news, that a charming and accomplished young mulatto girl was about to publish a book on the subject of the blending of the races, in which she took the affirmative view. Of course, so peekant a paragraph was immediately copied by almost every paper in the country. Various other stories, equally ingenious and equally groundless, were set afloat, and public expectation was riveted on the forthcoming work. Sometime in February last the book was published. Copies, of course, were sent to all the leading journals. The Anglo-African, the organ of the colored population of New York, warmly and at great length endorsed the doctrine. The anti-slavery standard, edited by Mr. Oliver Johnson, gave over a column of serious argument and endorsement to the work. Mr. Tilton, of the Independent, was not to be caught napping. In that journal, under date of February 25, 1864, he devoted a two-column leader to the subject of miscegenation and the little pamphlet in question. Mr. Tilton was the first to announce a belief that the book was a hoax. I quote from his article, Remaining awhile on our table unread, our attention was specially called to it by noticing how savagely certain newspapers were abusing it. The authorship of the pamphlet is a well-kept secret, at least it is unknown to us. Nor, after a somewhat careful reading, are we convinced that the writer is in earnest. Our first impression was, and remains, that the work was meant as a piece of pleasantry, a burlesque upon what are popularly called the extreme and fanatical notions of certain radical men named therein. Certainly the essay is not such a one as any of these gentlemen would have written on the subject, though some of their speeches are conspicuously quoted and commended in it. If written in earnest, the work is not thorough enough to be satisfactory. If ingest, we prefer Sidney Smith or McClellan's report. Still, to be frank, we agree with a large portion of these pages, but disagree heartily with another portion. The idea of scientifically undertaking to intermingle existing populations according to a predetermined plan for reconstructing the human race, for flattening out its present varieties into one final, unvarious dead level of humanity, is so absurd that we are more than ever convinced such a statement was not written in earnest. Mr. Tilton, however, hints that the colored race is finally in some degree to form a component part of the future American, and that in time the negro of the south growing paler with every generation will at last completely hide his face under the snow. One of the editorial writers for the Tribune was so impressed with the book that he wrote an article on the subject, arguing about it with apparent seriousness, and in a manner which some readers supposed to be rather favorable than otherwise to the doctrine. Mr. Greeley and the publishers, at his understood, were displeased at the publication of the article. The next morning nearly all the city journals had editorial articles upon the subject. The next point was to get the miscegenation controversy into Congress. The book, with its endorsements, was brought to the notice of Mr. Cox of Ohio, commonly called Sunset Cox, and he made an earnest speech on the subject. Mr. Washburn replied wittily, reading and commenting on extracts from a work by Cox, in which the latter deplored the existence of the prejudice against the Africans. A few days after, Mr. Kelly of Pennsylvania replied very elaborately to Mr. Cox, bringing all his learning and historical research to bear on the topic. It was the subject of a deal of talk in Washington afterward. Mr. Cox was charged by some of the more shrewd members of Congress with writing it. It was said that Mr. Sumner, on reading it, immediately pronounced it a hoax. Through the influence of the authors, a person visited James Gordon Bennett, of the Herald, and spoke to him about miscegenation. Mr. Bennett thought the idea too monstrous and absurd to waste an article upon. But, said the gentleman, the Democratic papers are all noticing it. The Democratic editors are asses, said Bennett. Senator Cox has just made a speech in Congress on it. Cox is an ass, responded Bennett. Greeley had an article about it the other day. Well, Greeley's a donkey. The Independent, yesterday, had a leader of a column and a half about it. Well, Beecher is no better, said Bennett. They're all asses. But what did he say about it? Oh, he rather endorsed it. Well, I'll read the article, said Bennett, and perhaps I'll have an article written ridiculing Beecher. It will make a very good handle against the radicals, said the other. Oh, I don't know, said Bennett. Let them marry together if they want to, with all my heart. For some days the Herald said nothing about it, but the occasion of the departure of a coloured regiment from New York City, having called forth a flattering address to them from the Ladies of the Loyal League, the Herald saw a chance to make a point against Mr. Charles King and others, and the next day it contained a terrific article, introducing miscegenation in the most violent and offensive manner, and saying that the Ladies of the Loyal League had offered to marry the coloured soldiers on their return. After that the Herald kept up a regular fuselage against the supposed misogenic proclivities of the Republicans, and thus, after all, Bennett swallowed the critter, horns, hoof, tail, and all. The authors even had the impudence to attempt to entrap Mr. Lincoln into an endorsement of the work, and asked permission to dedicate a new work on a kindred subject, mellilocation, to him. Honest old Abe, however, who can see a joke, was not to be taken in so easily. About the time the book was first published, Miss Anne E. Dickinson happened to lecture in New York. The authors here exhibited a great degree of acuteness and tact, as well as sublime impudence, in seizing the opportunity to have some small handbills with the endorsement of the book printed and distributed by boys among the audience. Before Miss Dickinson appeared, therefore, the audience were gravely reading the miscegenation handbill, and the reporters, noticing it, coupled the facts in their reports. From this it went forth and was widely circulated that Miss Dickinson was the author. Dr. MacKay, the correspondent of the London Times in New York, was very decidedly sold, and hurled all manner of big words against the doctrine in his letters to the Thunderer, and thus the leading paper of Europe was, for the hundredth time during the American rebellion, decidedly taken in and done for. The Saturday review, perhaps the cleverest, and certainly the sauciest of the English hebdomitals, also berated the book and its authors in the most pompous language at its command. Indeed, the Westminster review seriously refers to the arguments of the book in connection with Dr. Broca's pamphlet on human hybridity, a most profound work. Miscegenation was republished in England by Trübner and Company, and very extensive translations from it are still passing the rounds of the French and German papers. Thus passes into history one of the most impudent, as well as ingenious, literary hoaxes of the present day. There is probably not a newspaper in the country but has printed much about it, and enough of extracts might be collected from various journals upon the subject to fill my whale tank. It is needless to say that the book passed through several editions. Of course the mass of the intelligent American people rejected the doctrines of the work, and looked upon it either as a political dodge, or as the ravings of some crazy man. But the authors have the satisfaction of knowing that it achieved notoriety which has hardly been equalled by any mere pamphlet ever published in this country. End of chapter 33 For more information or to volunteer please visit Libervox.org Recording by Roger Maline The Humbugs of the World by P. T. Barnum Ghosts and Witchcrafts Chapter 34 Haunted houses, a knight spent alone with a ghost Kirby the actor Colt's Pistols versus Hobgoblins The mystery explained A great many persons believe more or less in haunted houses. In almost every community there is some building that has had a mysterious history. This is true in all countries and among all races and nations. Indeed it is to this very fact that the ingenious author of the twenty seventh street ghost may attribute his success in creating such an excitement. In fact I will say under the rose he predicted his hopes of success entirely upon this weakness in human nature. Even in this day and age of the world there are hundreds of deserted buildings which are looked upon with awe or terror or superstitious interest. They have frightened their former inhabitants away and left the buildings in the almost undisputed possession of real moles, bats and owls and imaginary goblins and sprites. In the course of my travels in both hemispheres I have been amazed at the great number of such cases that have come under my personal observation. But for the present I will give a brief account of a haunted house in Yorkshire, England in which some twenty years ago Kirby the actor who formerly played at the Chatham Theatre passed a pretty strange night. I met Mr. Kirby in London in 1844 and I will give in nearly his own language a history of his lone night in this haunted house as he gave it to me within a week after its occurrence. I will add that I saw no reason to doubt Mr. Kirby's veracity and he assured me upon his honour that the statement was literally true to the letter. Having myself been through several similar places in the daytime I felt a peculiar interest in the subject and hence I have a vivid recollection of nearly the exact words in which he related his singular nocturnal adventure. One thing is certain. Kirby was not the man to be afraid of trying such an experiment. I had heard wonderful stories about this house, said Mr. Kirby to me, and I was very glad to get a chance to enter it although I confess the next morning I was about as glad to get out of it. It was an old country seat, a solid stone mansion which had long borne the reputation of a haunted house. It was watched by only one man. He was the old gardener, an ancient servant of the family that once lived there and a person in whom the family reposed implicit confidence. Having had some inkling of this wonderful place, and having a few days to spare before going to London to fulfil an engagement at the Surrey Theatre, I thought I would probe this haunted house story to the bottom. I therefore called on the old gardener who had charge of the place and introduced myself as an American traveller, desirous of spending a night with his ghosts. The old man seemed to be about seventy-five or eighty years of age. I met him at the gate of the estate where he kept guard. He told me when I applied that it was a dangerous spot to enter, but I could pass it if I pleased. I should, however, have to return by the same door if I ever came back again. Wishing to make sure of the job, I gave him a sovereign and asked him to give me all the privileges of the establishment. And if his bill amounted to more, I would settle it when I returned. He looked at me with an expression of doubt and apprehension, as much as to say that he neither understood what I was going to do nor what was likely to happen. He merely remarked, You can go in. Will you go with me and show me the road? I will. Go ahead. We entered. The gate closed. I suddenly turned on my man, the old gardener and custodian of the place, and said to him, Now, my patriarchal friend, I am going to sift this humbug to the bottom, even if I stay here forty nights in succession, and I am prepared to lay all spirits that present themselves. But if you will save me all trouble in the matter and frankly explain to me the whole affair, I will never mention it to your injury, and I will present you with ten golden sovereigns. The old fellow looked astonished, but he smirked and whimpered and trembled and said, I am afraid to do that, but I will warn you against going too far. When we had crossed a courtyard he rang a bell, and several strange noises were distinctly heard. I was introduced to the establishment through a well-constructed archway which led to a large stairway, from which we proceeded to a great door which opened into a very large room. It was a library. The old custodian had carried a torch, and I was prepared with a box of matches. He was acting evidently on the square, and I sat myself down in the library, where he told me that I should soon see positive evidence that this was a haunted house. Not being a very firm believer in the doctrine of houses really haunted, I proposed to keep a pretty good hold of my matchbox, and lest there should be any doubt about it, I had also provided myself with two sperm-candles which I kept in my pocket, so I should not be left too suddenly and too long in the dark. Now, sir, said he, I wish you to hold all your nerves steady and keep your courage up, because I intend to stand by you as well as I can, but I never come into this house alone. Well, what is the matter with the house? Oh, everything, sir. What? Well, when I was much younger than I am now, the master of this estate got frightened here by some mysterious appearances, noises, sounds, etc., and he preferred to leave the place. Why? He had a tradition from his grandfather, and pretty well kept alive in the family, that it was a haunted house, and he let out the estate to the smaller farmers of the neighborhood, and quit the premises, and never returned again except one night, and after that one night he left. We suppose he is dead. Now, sir, if you wish to spend the night here as you have requested, what may happen to you I don't know, but I tell you, it is a haunted house, and I would not sleep here tonight for all the wealth of the Bank of England. This did not deter me in the least, and having the means of self-protection around me, and plenty of Lucifer matches, etc., I thought I would explore this mystery and see whether a humbug which had terrified the proprietors of that magnificent house in the midst of a magnificent estate for upward of sixty years could not be explored and exploded. That it was a humbug I had no doubt, that I would find it out I was not so certain. I sat down in the library, fully determined to spend the night in the establishment. A door was opened into an adjoining-room where there was a dust-covered lounge, and everything promised as much comfort as could be expected under the circumstances. However, before the old keeper of the house left, I asked him to show me over the building, and to let me explore for myself the different rooms and departments. To all this he readily consented, and as he had some prospect before him of making a good job out of it, he displayed a great deal of alacrity, and moved along very quick and smart for a man apparently eighty years of age. I went from room to room and story to story. Everything seemed to be well arranged, but somewhat dusty and time-worn. I kept a pretty sharp lookout, but I could see no sort of machinery for producing a grand effect. We finally descended to the library when I closed the door, and bolting and locking it took the key and put it in my pocket. Now, sir, I said to the keeper, where is the humbug? There is no humbug here, he answered. Well, why don't you show me some evidence of the haunted house? You wait, said he, till twelve o'clock tonight, and you will see haunting enough for you. I will not stay till then. He left. I stayed. Everything was quiet for some time. Not a mouse was heard, not a rat was visible, and I thought I would go to sleep. I lay down for this purpose, but I soon heard certain extraordinary sounds that disturbed my repose. Chains were clanked, noises were made, and shrieks and groans were heard from various parts of the mansion. All of these I had expected. They did not frighten me much. A little while after, just as I was going to sleep again, a curious string of light burned around the room. It ran along on the walls in a zigzag line, about six feet high, entirely through the apartment. I did not smell anything bituminous, or like sulfur. It flashed quicker than powder, and it did not smell like it. Thinks I, this looks pretty well. We will have some amusement now. Then the jangling of bells, and clanking of chains, and flashes of light. Then thumpings and knockings of all sorts came along, interspersed with shrieks and groans. I sat very quiet. I had two of Colt's best pistols in my pocket, and I thought I could shoot anything spiritual or material with these machines made in Connecticut. I took them out and laid them on the table. One of them suddenly disappeared. I did not like that. Still my nerves were firm, for I knew it was all gammon. I took the other pistol in my hand and surveyed the room. Nobody was there. And finally, half suspicious that I had gone to sleep and had a dream, I woke up with a grasp in my hand which was holding the other pistol. This soon made me fully awake. I tried to recover my balance, and at this moment the candle went out. I lit it with one of my lucifers. No person was visible, but the noises began again, and they were infernal. I then took one of my sperm candles out and went to unlock the door. I attempted to take the key out of my pocket. It was not there. Suddenly the door opened. I saw a man, or somebody, about the size of a man, standing straight in front of me. I pointed one of the Colt's revolvers at his head, for I thought I saw something human about him, and I told him that whether he was ghost or spirit, goblin or robber, he had better stand steady, or I would blow his brains out if he had any. And to make sure that he should not escape, I got hold of his arm and told him that if he was a ghost he would have a tolerably hard time of it, and that if he was a humbug I would let him off if he would tell me the whole story about the trick. He saw that he was caught, and he earnestly begged me not to fire that American pistol at him. I did not, but I did not let go of him. I brought him into the library, and with pistol in hand I put him through a pretty close examination. He was clad in mailed armor with breastplate and helmet and a great sword in the style of the Crusaders. He promised, on condition of saving his life, to give me an honest account of the facts. In substance they were that he, an old family servant, and ultimately a gardener in charge of the place, had been employed by an enemy of the gentleman who owned the property to render it so uncomfortable that the estate should be sold for much less than its value, and that he had got an ingenious machinist and chemist to assist him in arranging such contrivances as would make the house so intolerable that they could not live there. A galvanic battery with wires were provided, and every device of chemistry and mechanism was resorted to in order to effect this purpose. One by one the family left, and they had remained away for nearly two generations under the terror of such forms and appearances and sights and sounds as frightened them almost to death. And furthermore, the old gardener added, that he expected his own granddaughter to become the lady of that house when the property should have been neglected so long and the place became so fearful that no one in the neighborhood would undertake to purchase it, or to even pass one moment after dark in exploring its horrible mysteries. He begged on his knees that I would spare him with his gray hairs since he had so short a time to live. He declared that he had been actuated by no other motive than pride and ambition for his child. I told the poor old fellow that his secret should be safe with me and should not be made public so long as he lived. The old man grasped my hand eagerly and expressed his gratitude in the strongest terms. Thus, Mr. Barnum, I have given you the pure and honest facts in regard to my adventure in a so-called haunted house. Don't make it public until you are convinced that the old gardener has shuffled off this mortal coil. So much for Kirby's story of the haunted house. No doubt the old gardener has before this become in reality a disembodied spirit, but that his granddaughter became legally possessed of the estate is not at all probable. Real estate does not change hands so easily in England. So powerful, however, is the superstitious belief in haunted houses that it is doubtful whether that property will for many years sustain half so great a cash value in the market as it would have done had it not been considered a haunted house. It is to be hoped that as schools multiply and education increases the follies and superstitions which underlie a belief in ghosts and hobgoblins will pass away. End of Chapter 34. Recording by Roger Maline Chapter 35 of The Humbugs of the World This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Roger Maline The Humbugs of the World by P. T. Barnum Ghosts and Witchcrafts Chapter 35 Haunted Houses Ghosts Ghouls Phantoms Vampires Conjurers Devining Goblins Fortunetelling Magic Witches Sorcery Obi Dreams Signs Spiritual Mediums False Prophets Demonology Devil Tree, generally. Whether superstition is the father of humbug or humbug the mother of superstition, as well as its nurse, I do not pretend to say. For the biggest fools and the greatest philosophers can be numbered among the believers in and victims of the worst humbugs that ever prevailed on the earth. As we grow up from childhood and begin to think we are free from all superstitions, absurdities, follies, a belief in dreams, signs, omens, and other similar stuff, we afterward learn that experience does not cure the complaint. Doubtless much depends upon our bringing up. If children are permitted to feast their ears, night after night, as I was, with stories of ghosts, hobgoblins, ghouls, witches, apparitions, bugaboos, it is more difficult in afterlife for them to rid their minds of impressions thus made. But whatever may have been our early education, I am convinced that there is an inherent love of the marvelous in every breast and that everybody is more or less superstitious, and every superstition I denominate a humbug, for it lays the human mind open to any amount of belief, in any amount of deception that may be practiced. One object of these chapters consists in showing how open everybody is to deception, that nearly everybody hankers after it, that solid and solemn realities are frequently set aside for silly impositions and delusions, and that people, as a too general thing, like to be led into the region of mystery. As Hudibras has it, doubtless the pleasure is as great of being cheated as to cheat, as lookers on feel most delight that last perceive a juggler's slight, and still the less they understand, the more they admire his slight of hand. The amount or strength of man's brains have little to do with the amount of their superstitions. The most learned and the greatest men have been the deepest believers in ingeniously contrived machines for running human reason off the track. If any expositions I can make on this subject will serve to put people on their guard against impositions of all sorts, as well as foolish superstitions, I shall feel a pleasure in reflecting that I have not written in vain. The heading of this chapter enumerates the principal kinds of supernatural humbugs. These, it must be remembered, are quite different from religious imposters. It is astonishing to reflect how ancient is the date of this class of superstitions, as well as of most others, in fact, and how universally they have prevailed. Nearly thirty-six hundred years ago it was thought a matter of course that Joseph, the Hebrew Prime Minister of Pharaoh, should have a silver cup that he commonly used to do his divining with, so that the practice must already have been an established one. In Homer's time, about twenty-eight hundred years ago, ghosts were believed to appear. The witch of Endor pretended to raise the ghost of Samuel at about the same time. Today, here in the city of New York, dream-books are sold by the addition. A dozen fortune-tellers regularly advertise in the papers. A haunted house can gather excited crowds for weeks. Abundance of people are uneasy if they spill salt, dislike to see the new moon over the wrong shoulder, and are delighted if they can find an old horseshoe to nail to their doorpost. I have already told about one or two haunted houses, but must devote part of this chapter to that division of the subject. There are hundreds of such, that is, of those reputed to be such, and have been for hundreds of years. In almost every city, and in many towns and country places, they are to be found. I know of one, for instance, in New Jersey, one or two in New York, and have heard of several in Connecticut. There are great numbers in Europe. For as white men have lived there so much longer than in America, ghosts naturally accumulated. In this country there are houses and places haunted by ghosts of Hessians, and Yankee ghosts, not to mention the headless Dutch phantom of Tarrytown that turned out to be Brom bones, but who ever heard of the ghost of an Indian? And as for the ghosts of a black man, evidently it would have to appear by daylight. You couldn't see it in the dark. I have no room to even enumerate the cases of haunted houses. One in A. La Chapelle, a fine large house, stood empty five years on account of the knockings in it, until it was sold for almost nothing, and the new owner, Lucky Man, discovered that the ghost was a draft through a broken window that banged a loose door. An English gentleman once died, and his air, in a day or two, heard of mysterious knockings which the frightened servants attributed to the defunct. He, however, investigated a little, and found that a rat in an old storeroom was trying to get out of an old-fashioned box trap, and being able to lift the door only partly, it dropped again, constituting the ghost. Better pleased to find the rat than his father, the young man exterminated rat and phantom together. A very ancient and impressive specimen of a haunted house was the palace of Vauvère, belonging to King Louis IX of France, who was so pious that he was called St. Louis. This fine building was so situated as to become very desirable in the year 1259 to some monks. So there was forthwith horrid shriekings at night-times, red and green lights shown through the windows, and finally a large green ghost, with a white beard and a serpent's tail, came every midnight to a front window and shook his fist, and howled at those who passed by. Everybody was frightened. King Louis, good simple soul, as well as the rest. Then the bold monks appearing at the nick of time intimated that if the king would give them the palace, they would do up the ghosts in short order. He did it, and was very thankful to them besides. They moved in, and sure enough the ghost appeared no more. Why should he? The ghosts of Woodstock are well known. How they tormented the Puritan commissioners who came thither in 1649 to break up the place and dispose of it for the benefit of the Commonwealth. The poor Puritans had a horrid time. A disembodied dog growled under their bed and bit the bed clothes. Something invisible walked all about. The chairs and tables danced. Something threw the dishes about, like the Davenport spirits. Put logs for the pillows. Flung brick-bats up and down, without regard to heads. Smashed the windows. Threw pebbles in at the frightened commissioners. Stuck a lot of pewter-platters into their beds. Ran away with their britches. Threw dirty water over them in bed. Banged them over the head. Until, after several weeks, the poor fellows gave it up and ran away back to London. Many years afterward it came out that all this was done by their clerk who was secretly a royalist, though they thought him a furious Puritan, and who knew all the numerous secret passages and contrivances in the old palace. Most people have read Sir Walter Scott's capital novel of Woodstock, founded on this very story. The well-known Demon of Tedworth, that drummed and scratched and pounded and threw things about in 1661, in Mr. Montpassant's house turned out to be a gypsy drummer and confederates. The still more famous Ghost and Cock Lane in London in 1762 consisted of a Mrs. Parsons and her daughter, a little girl, trained by Mr. Parsons to knock and scratch very much after the fashion of the alphabet talking of the spirits of today. Parsons got up the whole affair to revenge himself on a Mr. Kent. The Ghost pretended to be that of a deceased sister-in-law of Kent and to have been poisoned by him. But Parsons and his assistants were found out and had to smart for their fun, being heavily fined, imprisoned, etc. A very able Ghost indeed, a Methodist Ghost, the spectral property consequently of my good friends the Methodists, used to rattle and clatter and bang and communicate in the house of the Reverend Mr. Wesley, the father of John Wesley at Epworth in England. This Ghost was very troublesome and utterly useless. In fact, none of the Ghosts that haunt houses are of the least possible use. They plague people, but do no good. They act like the spirits of departed monkeys. I must add two or three short anecdotes about Ghosts, got up in the devil manner. They are not new, but illustrate very handsomely the state of mind in which a Ghost should be met. One is that somebody undertook to scare Cuvier, the great naturalist, with a Ghost having an ox's head. Cuvier woke and found the fearful thing glaring and grinning at his bedside. What do you want? To devour you, growled the Ghost. Devour me, quote the great Frenchman. Hoofs, horns, Griminiverus! You can't do it! Clear out! And he did clear out. A pious maiden-lady in one of our New England villages was known to possess three peculiarities. First, she was a very religious, honest, and matter-of-fact woman. Second, she supposed everybody else was equally honest. Hence she was very credulous, always believing everything she heard. And third, having a conscience void of offence, she saw no reason to be afraid of anything. Consequently she feared nothing. On a dark night some boys, knowing that she would be returning home alone from prayer-meeting through an unfrequented street, determined to test two of her peculiarities, viz her credulity and her courage. One of the boys was sewed up in a huge shaggy bear-skin, and as the old lady's feet were heard pattering down the street, he threw himself directly in her path and commenced making a terrible noise. Mercy! exclaimed the old lady. Who are you? I am the devil! was the reply. Well, you are a poor creature! responded the antiquated virgin, as she stepped aside and passed by the strange animal, probably not for a moment doubting it was his satanic majesty, but certainly not dreaming of being afraid of him. It is said that a Yankee tin-peddler, who had frequently cheated most of the people in the vicinity of a New England village through which he was passing, was induced by some of the acute ones to join them in a drinking-bout. He finally became stone-drunk, and in that condition these wags carried him to a dark rocky cave near the village. Then, dressing themselves in raw-head and bloody-bone style, awaited his return to consciousness. As he began rousing himself, they lighted some huge torches and also set fire to some bundles of straw and three or four rolls of brimstone, which they had placed in different parts of the cavern. The peddler rubbed his eyes, and seeing and smelling all these evidences of pandemonium, concluded he had died and was now partaking of his final doom. But he took it very philosophically, for he complacently remarked to himself, In hell, just as I expected! A story is told of a cool old sea-captain with the varago of a wife who met one of these artificial devils in a lonely place. As the ghost obstructed his path, the old fellow remarked, If you are not the devil, get out. If you are, come along with me and get supper. I married your sister. End of Chapter 35 Recording by Roger Maline Chapter 36 of The Humbugs of the World This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Roger Maline The Humbugs of the World by P. T. Barnum Ghosts and Witchcrafts Chapter 36 Magical Humbugs Virgil A Pickled Sorcerer Cornelius Agrippa His students and his black dog Dr. Faustus Humbugging horse-jockeys Zito and his large swallow Salamanca Devil take the hindmost. Magic, sorcery, witchcraft, enchantment, necromancy, conjuring, incantation, soothsaying, divining, the black art are all one and the same humbug. They show how prone men are to believe in some supernatural power, in some beings wiser and stronger than themselves, but at the same time how they stop short and find satisfaction in some debasing humbug, instead of looking above and beyond it all to God, the only being that it is really worthwhile for man to look up to or beseech. Magic and witchcraft are believed in by the vast majority of mankind and by immense numbers even in Christian countries. They have always been believed in so far as I know. In following up the thread of history we always find conjuring or witch work of some kind just as long as the narrative has space enough to include it. Already in the early dawn of time the business was a recognized and long-established one, and its history is as unbroken from that day down to this as the history of the race. In the narrow space at my command at present I shall only gather as many of the more interesting stories about these humbugs as I can make room for. Reasoning about the subject, or full details of it, are at present out of the question. A whole library of books exists about it. It is a curious fact that throughout the Middle Ages the Roman poet Virgil was commonly believed to have been a great magician. Traditions were recorded by monastic chroniclers about him that he made a brass fly and mounted it over one of the gates of Naples, having instilled into this metallic insect such potent magical qualities that as long as it kept guard over the gate no mosquitoes or flies or cockroach or other troublesome insects could exist in the city. What would have become of the celebrated bug-powder man in those days? The story is told about Virgil as well as about Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, and other magicians that he made a brazen head which could prophesy. He also made some statues of the gods of the various nations subject to Rome, so enchanted that if one of those nations was preparing to rebel, the statue of its god wrung a bell and pointed a finger toward the nation. The same set of stories tells how poor Virgil came to an untimely end in consequence of trying to live forever. He had become an old man, it appears, and wishing to be young again, he used some appropriate incantations and prepared a secret cavern. In this he caused a confidential disciple to cut him up like a hog and pack him away in a barrel of pickle, out of which he was to emerge in his new magic youth after a certain time. But by that special bad luck which seems to attend such cases some malapopo traveller somehow made his way into the cavern where he found the magic pork barrel standing silently all alone in the middle of the place and an ever-burning lamp illuminating the room and slowly distilling a magic oil upon the salted sorcerer who was cooking below. The traveller rudely jarred the barrel, the light went out as the torches flared upon it, and suddenly there appeared to the eyes of the astounded man close at one side of the barrel a little naked child which ran thrice around the barrel uttering deep curses upon him who had thus destroyed the charm and vanished. The frightened traveller made off as fast as he could, and poor old Virgil, for what I know, is in pickle yet. Cornelius Agrippa was one of the most celebrated magicians of the Middle Ages. He lived from the year 1486, six years before the discovery of America, until 1534, and was a native of Cologne. Agrippa is said to have had a magic glass in which he showed to his customers such dead or absent persons as they might wish to see. Thus he would call up the beautiful Helen of Troy, or Cicero, in the midst of an oration, or to a pining lover, the figure of his absent lady, as she was employed at the moment, a dangerous exhibition. For who knows whether the consolation sought by the fair one will always be such as her lover will approve. Agrippa, they say, had an attendant devil in the form of a huge black dog whom on his deathbed the magician dismissed with curses. The dog ran away, plunged into the river Seon, and was seen no more. We are, of course, to suppose that his satanic majesty got possession of the conjurer's soul, however, as per agreement. There is a story about Agrippa which shows conclusively how a little learning may be a dangerous thing. When Agrippa was absent on a short journey his student in magic slipped into the study and began to read spells out of a great book. After a little there was a knock at the door, but the young man paid no attention to it. In another moment there was another louder one which startled him, but still he read on. In a moment the door opened and in came a fine large devil who angrily asked, What do you call me for? The frightened youth answered very much like those naughty boys who say, I didn't do nothing, but it will not do to fool with devils. The angry demon caught him by the throat and strangled him. Shortly when Agrippa returned, lo and behold a strong squad of evil spirits were kicking up their heels and playing tag all over the house and crowding his study particularly full. Like a schoolmaster among mischievous boys the great enchanter sent all the little fellows home, catechizing the big one and finding the situation unpleasant made him reanimate the corpse of the student and walk it about town all the afternoon. The malignant demon, however, was free at sunset and let the corpse drop dead in the middle of the marketplace. The people recognized it, found the claw-marks and traces of strangling, suspected the fact, and Agrippa had to abscond very suddenly. Another student of Agrippa's came very near an equally bad end. The magician was in the habit of enchanting a broomstick into a servant to do his housework and when it was done turning it back to a broomstick again and putting it behind the door. This young student had overheard the charm which made the servant and one day in his master's absence, wanting a pail of water, he said over the incantation and told the servant, Some water! The evil spirit promptly obeyed, flew to the river, brought a pail full and emptied it, instantly brought a second, instantly a third. And the student, startled, cried out, That's enough! But this was not the return charm and the ill-tempered demon rejoicing in doing mischief within the letter of his obligation, now flew backward and forward like lightning, so that he even began to flood the room about the rash student's feet. Desperate, he seized an axe and hewed this diabolical serving-man in two. Two serving-men jumped up with two water-pails, grinning in devilish glee, and both went to work harder than ever. The poor student gave himself up for lost when luckily the master came home, dismissed the over-efficient water-carrier with a word, and saved the student's life. How thoroughly false all these absurd fictions are, and yet how ingeniously based on some fact appears by the case of Agrippa's black dog. Wayaris, a writer of good authority and a personal friend of Agrippa's, reports that he knew very well all about the dog, that it was not a superhuman dog at all, but, if the term be admissible, a mere human dog, an animal which he, Wayaris, had often led about by a string and only a domestic pet of Agrippa. Another eminent magician of those days was Dr. Faustus, about whom Goethe wrote Faust. Bailey wrote Festus, and whose story, mangled of human love and of the devilish tricks of Mephistopheles, is known so very widely. The truth about Faust seems to be that he was simply a successful juggler of the 16th century. Yet the wonderful stories about him were very implicitly and extensively believed. It was the time of the Protestant Reformation, and even Melanchthon and Luther seem to have entirely believed that Faustus could make the forms of the dead appear, could carry people invisibly through the air, and play all the legendary tricks of the enchanters. So strong a hold does Humbug often obtain even upon the noblest and clearest and wisest minds. Faustus, according to the traditions, had a pretty keen eye for a joke. He once sold a splendid horse to a horse-jockey at a fair. The fellow shortly rode his fine horse to water. When he got into the water, lo and behold the horse vanished, and the Humbug jockey found himself sitting up to his neck in the river on a straw saddle. There is something quite satisfactory in the idea of playing such a trick on one of that sharp generation, and Faust felt so comfortable over it that he entered his hotel and went quietly to sleep, or pretended to. Shortly in came the angry jockey. He shouted and bawled, but could not awaken the doctor, and in his anger he seized his foot and gave it a good pull. Foot and leg came off in his hand. Faustus screamed out as if in horrible agony, and the terrified jockey ran away as fast as he could, and never troubled his very loose-jointed customer for the money. A magician named Zito, resident at the court of Wenceslas of Bohemia, AD 1368 to 1419, appears to great advantage in the annals of these humbugs. He was a homely, crooked creature with an immense mouth. He had a collision once in public on a question of skill with a brother conjurer, and becoming a little excited, opened his big mouth, and swallowed the other magician, all to his shoes, which, as he observed, were dirty. Then he stepped into a closet, got his rival out of him somehow, and calmly led him back to the company. A story is told about Zito and some hogs, just like that about Faust and the horse. In all these stories about magicians their powers derived from the Devil. It was long believed that the ancient University of Salamanca in Spain, founded AD 1240, was the chief school of magic, and had regular professors and classes in it. The Devil was supposed to be the special patron of this department, and he had a curious fee for his trouble, which he collected every commencement day. The last exercise of the graduating class on that day was to run across a certain cavern under the University. The Devil was always on hand at this time, and had the privilege of grabbing at the last man of the crowd. If he caught him, as he commonly did, the soul of the unhappy student became the property of his captor. Hence arose the phrase, Devil take the hindmost. Sometime it happened that some very brisk fellow was left last by some accident. If he were brisk enough to dodge the Devil's grab, that personage only caught his shadow. In this case it was well understood that this particular enchanter never had any shadow afterwards, and he always became very eminent in his art. The Humbugs of the World by P. T. Barnum Witchcraft New York Witches The Witchmania How Fast They Burned Them The Mode of Trial Witches Today in Europe Chapter 37 Witchcraft is one of the most baseless, absurd, disgusting and silly of all the humbugs, and it is not a dead humbug either. Visually exercised by naves and believed by fools all over the world. Witches and wizards operate and prosper among the hotentots and egros and barbarous Indians, among the Siberians and Kyrgyzs and laps, of course. Everybody knows that. They are poor, ignorant creatures. Yes. But are the French and Germans and English and Americans poor, ignorant creatures too? They are, if the belief and practice of witchcraft among them is any test. For in all those countries there are witches. I take up one of the New York City dailies of this very morning and find in it the advertisement of seven witches. In 1858 there were in full blast in New York and Brooklyn sixteen witches and two wizards. One of these wizards was a black man, a very proper style of person to deal with the black art. Witch means a woman who practices sorcery under an agreement with the devil who helps her. Before the Christian era the Jewish witch was a mere diviner or at most a razor of the dead and the Gentile witch was a poisoner, a maker of filters or love potions and a vulgar sort of magician. The devil part of the business did not begin until a good while after Christ. During the last century or so, again while witchcraft has been extensively believed in, the witch has degenerated into a very vulgar and poverty-stricken sort of conjuring woman. Take our New York City witches for instance. They live in cheap and dirty streets that smell bad. Their houses are in the same style, infected with a strong odor of cabbage, onions, washing day, old dinners and other merely sublunary smells. Their rooms are very ill furnished and often beset with wash tubs, swill pales, mops and soiled clothes. Their personal appearance is commonly unclean, homely, vulgar, coarse and ignorant and often rummy. Their fee is a quarter or half of a dollar, sometimes a dollar. Their divination is worked by cutting and dealing cards or studying the palm of your hand and the things which they tell you are the most silly and shallow babble in the world, a mess of phrases worn out over and over again. Here is a specimen, as garbled to a customer of a pack of cards laid out on the table. Anybody can do the like. You face a misfortune. I think it will come upon you within three weeks, but it may not. A dark complexion man faces your life card. He is plotting against you and you must beware of him. Your marriage card faces two young women, one fair and the other dark. One you will have and the other you will not. I think you will have the fair one. She favours the dark complexion man, which means trouble. You face money, but you must earn it. There is a good deal, but you may not get much of it, etc., etc. These words are exactly the sort of stuff that is sold by the witches of today. But the greatest witch-humbug of all the witchcraft of history is that of Christendom, for about three hundred years, beginning about the time of the discovery of America. To that period belonged the Salem witchcraft of New England, the witch finding of Matthew Hopkins in Old England, the Scotch witch trials and the Swedish and German and French witch mania. The peculiar traits of the witchcraft of this period are among the most mysterious of all humbugs. The most usual points in a case of witchcraft were that the witch had sold herself to the devil for all eternity in order to get the power, during a few years of earthly life, to inflict a few pains on the persons of those she disliked or to cause them to lose part of their property. This was almost always the whole story. Except the mere details of which baptism and which Sabbath parodies on the ceremonies of the Christian religion. And the mystery is how anybody could believe that to accomplish such very small results, seldom equal even to the death of an enemy, one would agree to accept eternal damnation in the next world, almost certain poverty, misery, persecution and torment in this, besides having, for an amusement, performances more dirty, obscene and vulgar than I can even hint at. But such a belief was universal, and hundreds of the witches themselves confessed as much as I have described and more, with numerous details, and they were burnt alive for their trouble. The extent of wholesale murdering perpetrated under forms of law on charges of witchcraft is astonishing. A magistrate named Remigius published a book in which he told how much he thought of himself for having condemned and burned nine hundred witches in sixteen years in Lorraine, and the one thing that he blamed himself for was this, that out of regard for the wishes of a colleague, he had only caused certain children to be whipped naked three times round the marketplace where their parents had been burned instead of burning them. At Bamberg, six hundred persons were burned in five years. At Wersberg, nine hundred in two years. Sprenger, a German inquisitor general, and author of a celebrated book on detecting and punishing witchcraft called Malleus Maleficarum, or the Mallet of Malefactors, burned more than five hundred in one year. In Geneva, five hundred persons were burned during fifteen, fifteen and fifteen, sixteen. In the district of Como in Italy, a thousand persons were burned as witches in the single year fifteen, twenty-four, besides over a hundred a year for several years afterwards. Seventeen thousand persons were executed for witchcraft in Scotland during thirty-nine years, ending with sixteen, oh, three. Forty thousand were executed in England from sixteen hundred to sixteen, eighty. Boudinus, another of the witch-killing judges, gravely announced that there were undoubtedly not less than three hundred thousand witches in France. The way in which the witch-murderers reasoned and their modes of conducting trials and procuring confessions were truly infernal. The chief rule was that witchcraft, being an exceptional crime, no regard need be had to the ordinary forms of justice. All manner of tortures were freely applied to force confessions. In Scotland the boot was used, being an iron case in which the legs are locked up to the knee, and an iron wedge then driven in until sometimes the bones were crushed and the marrow spouted out. Pin sticking, drowning, starving, the rack, were too common to need details. Sometimes the prisoner was hung up by the thumbs and whipped by one person, while another held lighted candles to the feet and other parts of the body. At Arras, while the prisoners were being torn on the rack, the executioner stood by, sword in hand, promising to cut off at once the heads of those who did not confess. At Offenberg, when the prisoners had been tortured until beyond the power of speaking allowed, they silently assented to abominable confessions read to them out of a book. Many were cheated into confession by the promise of pardon and release, and then burned. A poor woman in Germany was tricked by the hangman, who dressed himself up as a devil and went into her cell. Overpowered by pain, fear and superstition, she begged him to help her out. Her besieging was taken for confession. She was burned, and a ballad which treated the trick as a jolly and comical device was long popular in the country. Several of the judges, in which cases, tell us how victims, utterly weary of their tormented lives, confessed whatever was required merely as the shortest way to death and an escape out of their misery. All who dared to argue against the current of popular and judicial delusion were instantly refuted very effectively by being attacked for witchcraft themselves, and once accused there was little hope of escape. The Jesuit Del Rio in a book published in 1599 states the witch-killers side of the discussion very neatly indeed, for in one and the same chapter he defies any opponents to disprove the existence of witchcraft and then shows that a denial of witchcraft is the worst of all heresies and must be punished with death. Quite a number of excellent and sensible people were actually burned on just this principle. I do not undertake to give details of any witch trials. This sketch of the way in which they operated is all I can make room for and sufficiently delineates this cruel and bloody humbug. I have already referred to the fact that we have right here among us in the city a very fair supply of a vulgar, dowdy kind of witchcraft. Other countries are favoured in like manner. I have not just now the most recent information, but in the year 1857 and 1858 for instance, mobbing and prosecutions growing out of a popular belief in witchcraft were quite plentiful enough in various parts of Europe. No less than eight cases of the kind in England alone were reported during those two years. Among them was the actual murder of a woman as a witch by a mob in Shropshire, and an attack by another mob in Essex upon a perfectly inoffensive person on suspicion of having bewitched a scolding ill-conditioned girl from which attack the mob was diverted with much difficulty and thinking itself very unjustly treated. Some others of those cases show a singular quantity of credulity among people of respectability. While therefore some of us may perhaps be justly thankful for safety from such horrible follies as these, still we cannot properly feel very proud of the progress of humanity since after not less than six thousand years of existence and eighteen hundred of revelation, so many believers in witchcraft still exist among the most civilised nations.