The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 35, September, 1860

Now I did feel a strong desire to lay hands on this very Riley and pull out his snub nose for him; but I forbore to say so, and simply shook my head despondently.

"I know, that, if you would come to our Dispensaries and join in our exercises, you would be sensible of a softening," he observed.

"Yes, in the brain," thought I; but I still remained silent.

"You should meditate upon the value of manifestations, unknown tongues, the laying on of hands, visions, ecstasies, and such like matters," he continued.

"So I have," said I.

"And with no result?"

"Nothing that particularly astonishes me. I think that I hate humbug more than I did."

"That's a good sign," he replied, after a brief, sharp glance of inquiry at me. "This vain world is a humbug, as you phrase it. Dead Orthodoxy is a humbug. Human reason is a humbug. We are all humbugs, unless we are made true by Dispensation. This age will be a humbug, unless it can be wrought into an age of miracles. If you could be brought to hate earnestly all these things, it would be a hopeful sign."

I was on the point of disputing the hypothesis, but prudently checked myself. Suddenly he removed my hat and put his broad, hard palm upon my organs with an impudent dexterity which made me doubt whether he had not been a pickpocket or a phrenological lecturer.

"I lay my hand upon your head and desire you to note the effect," said he. "Can no life come into these dry bones? Shall they not live? Yea, they shall live! Do you feel no irrepressible emotion, Sir,—no shaking?"

"Not a shake," replied I,—"unless it be from the bad grading."

"Evil is mighty, but the good must eventually prevail," he observed, impertinently cocking his snub nose toward heaven.

"I believe you are quite right in both propositions," I admitted.

"Cardinal points of mine. But excuse me, Sir, if you could spare my hat, I should like to put it on my head."

I had lost patience with the man, partly because it irks me to have strangers take liberties with my person, and also because I had reached the conclusion that he was simply a shallow dissembler and rascal. In a minute more I had cause to reconsider my charge of hypocrisy, and to question whether he might not lay claim to the nobler distinction of lunacy. The conductor came down the car, picking out Troubletonians with his undeceivable eye, and leaned toward us with outstretched fingers. Mr. Riley rose to his whole gaunt height at a jerk, and laid his hand on the official's arm with a fierce, bony gripe, which seemed to startle him as if it were the clutch of a skeleton.

"There is my ticket," said he. "Where is yours? Have you one for the Holy City? None? Then you are lost, lost, lost!"

The last words rose to a high, clear shriek, which pierced the heavy rumble of the train and rang throughout the car. The conductor, in spite of the coolness which becomes second nature to men of his profession, turned slightly pale and shrank back before this wild apostrophe, with a thrill of spiritual horror at the solemn meaning of the words, (I thought,) and not because he considered the man a maniac. The fanaticism of Troubleton had already flown far and cast a vague shadow of dread over a large community.

Turning abruptly from the conductor, my companion flung out his long arms toward the staring passengers, and continued in his strident, startling tenor:—"I have warned him. I call you all to witness that I have warned this man of his fearful peril. His blood be on his own head! The blood of your souls will be upon your heads, unless you turn to Dispensationism. I have said it. Amen!"

Before he had sat down again I was in the alley on my way to another car, not anxious to become known as the intimate of this extraordinary apostle. I found an empty seat by the Doctor, dropped into it, and told my story.

"My dear friend, give the fellow up," I concluded. "He's as mad as he can possibly be."

"So Festus thought of Paul," returned my poor comrade, with hopeless fatuity.

"Festus be d–d!" said I, losing my temper, and swearing for the first time since I graduated.

"I fear he was so," remarked the Doctor, severely. "Let me urge you to take warning from his fate."

"I beg your pardon, and that of Festus," I apologized. "But when I see you losing your reason, I can't keep my patience, and don't wish to."

"You will wonder at these feelings before many hours," he responded gently. "To-morrow you will be a believer."

"That makes no difference with me now," said I. "I am just as skeptical as if I hadn't a chance of conversion. Why, Doctor,—well, come now,—I'll argue the case with you. In the first place, all Church history is against you. There isn't a respectable author who upholds the doctrine of modern miracles."

"Mistake!" he exclaimed. "I wish I had you in my library. I could face you with writer on writer, fact on fact, all supporting my views. I can prove that miracles have not ceased for eighteen centuries; that they appeared abundantly in the days of the venerable Catholic fathers; that a stream of prophecies and healings and tongues ran clear through the Dark Ages down to the Reformation; that the superhuman influence flamed in the dreams of Huss, the ecstasies of Xavier, and the marvels of Fox and Usher. Look at the French Prophets, or Tremblers of the Cevennes, who had prophesyings and healings and discoverings of spirits and tongues and interpretations. Look at the ecstatic Jansenists, or Convulsionists of St. Médard, who were blessed with the same holy gifts. Look at the Quakers, from Fox downward, who have held it as a constant principle to expect powers, revelations, discernings of spirits, and instantaneous healings of diseases. Why, here we are in our own days; here we are with our chain of miracles still unbroken; here we are in the midst of this geological and unbelieving nineteenth century."

"Yes, here we are," said I; "and we must make the best of it. It's a bad affair, of course, to live in scientific times; and it's a great pity that we were not born in the Dark Ages; but it is too late to try to help it."

"Ah! you answer with a sneer; you are materialistic and infidel."

"Stop, Doctor! Let me make a bargain with you. If you won't call me names, I won't call you names. You are not in the pulpit now, and you have no right to domineer over me."

"But what do you say to all these signs and wonders which I have mentioned?"

"What do you say to the Rochester knockings and the Stratford mysteries and the Mormon miracles?"

"All deceptions, or works of the Devil," affirmed the Doctor, without a moment's hesitation.

"Excuse me for smiling," I replied "It is pleasant to observe what a quick spirit you have for discerning the true wonders from the false."

"You will see, you will see," he answered, and relapsed into a grave silence.

We reached New Haven and took rooms at the New Haven Hotel. I had anticipated a little nap before going out on our expedition; but I had not made allowance for the proselyting zeal of Dispensationists. My poor bewildered friend Potter uttered something which he sincerely meant to be a prayer, but which sounded to me painfully like blasphemy. Next they sang a queer hymn of theirs in discordant chorus. After that, Mr. Riley rolled up his sleeves and his eyes, flung his arms about, wept and shrieked unknown tongues for twenty minutes. Then the butcher, the baker, and candlestick-maker had a combined convulsion on the floor, rolling over each other and upsetting furniture. By this time the hotel was roused and the landlord made us a call.

"What the Old Harry are you about?" he demanded, angrily. "Don't you know it's after midnight?"

"We are holding a Dispensary," said Mr. Riley, solemnly.

"Well, I'll dispense with your company, if you don't stop it," returned mine host. "There's a nervous lady in the next room, and you've worried her into fits."

"Let me see her," cried the Doctor, eagerly. "It may be that the power of our faith is upon her. Which is her door?"

"You're drunk, Sir," returned the landlord, severely. "Keep quiet now, or I'll have you put to bed by the porters."

So saying, he shut the door and went muttering down-stairs. This untoward incident put an end to our exercises. A whispered palaver on Dispensationism followed, during which I tilted my chair back against the wall and stole a pleasant little nap.

It was about half past one when the Doctor shook me up and said, "It is time." We slipped down-stairs in our stockinged feet, got the front-door open without awakening the porter, shut it carefully after us, and put on our boots outside. Mr. Riley immediately started up College Street, which, as all the world is aware, runs northerly to the Canal Railroad, where it changes to Prospect Street and goes off in a half-wild state up country. At the end of College Street we left the city behind us, struck the rail-track, forsook that presently for a desert sort of road known as Canal Street, and kept on in a northwesterly direction for half a mile farther. It was a dark, cool, and blustering night, such as the New Englanders are very apt to have on the second of April. The wind blew violently down the open country, shaking the scattered trees as if it meant to wake them instantly out of their winter's slumber, and screeching in the murky distances like a tomcat of the housetops, or rather like a continent of tomcats. The Doctor lost his hat, chased it a few rods, and then gave it up, lest he should miss his burglars. Once I halted and watched, thinking that I saw two or three dark shapes dogging us not far behind, but concluded that I had been deceived by the black-art of magical Night, and hastened on after my crazy comrades. Presently Riley stopped, pointed to a dark mass on our right which seemed about large enough to be a story-and-a-half cottage, and whispered, "Here we are, brethren."

"No doubt about that," said I. "But what the mischief is to come of it?"

"Oh! let's go back and call the police," urged the baker, in a tremulous gurgle.

"Too late!" returned Riley. "It is given to me to see the burglars. They are inside. They are taking the silver out of the closet. There will be murder in five minutes."

"If there must be murder, why, of course we ought to have a hand in it,"

I suggested. "Our motives at least will be good."

"Right!" said Riley. "Come on, brethren! We must prove our faith by our works."

But the baker hung back in a most dough-faced fashion, while the butcher and the candlestick-maker encouraged him in his cowardice. At last it was agreed that this unheroic trio should wait in the yard as a reserve, while Riley, the Doctor, and I went in to worry the burglars. Leaving the weaker brethren in a clump of evergreen shrubbery, we, the forlorn-hope, stole around the house to get at a back-door which Prophet Riley had plainly seen in his dream, and which he foretold us we should find unlocked. I was not much amazed to discover a back-door, inasmuch as most houses have one, but I really was surprised to learn that it was unfastened. My astonishment at this circumstance, however, was over- balanced by my alarm at finding that the Doctor still persisted in his intention of entering; for I had hoped that at the last moment his faith would give way, and let him slide down from the elevation of his ridiculous and reckless purpose.