Across the Zodiac

"Thoughts he sends to each planet,
Uranus, Venus, and Mars;
Soars to the Centre to span it,
Numbers the infinite Stars."

Courthope's Paradise of Birds

Once only, in the occasional travelling of thirty years, did I lose
any important article of luggage; and that loss occurred, not under
the haphazard, devil-take-the-hindmost confusion of English, or the
elaborate misrule of Continental journeys, but through the absolute
perfection and democratic despotism of the American system. I had to
give up a visit to the scenery of Cooper's best Indian novels—no
slight sacrifice—and hasten at once to New York to repair the loss.
This incident brought me, on an evening near the middle of September
1874, on board a river steamboat starting from Albany, the capital of
the State, for the Empire City. The banks of the lower Hudson are as
well worth seeing as those of the Rhine itself, but even America has
not yet devised means of lighting them up at night, and consequently I
had no amusement but such as I could find in the conversation of my
fellow-travellers. With one of these, whose abstinence from personal
questions led me to take him for an Englishman, I spoke of my visit to
Niagara—the one wonder of the world that answers its warranty—and to
Montreal. As I spoke of the strong and general Canadian feeling of
loyalty to the English Crown and connection, a Yankee bystander
observed—

"Wal, stranger, I reckon we could take 'em if we wanted tu!"

"Yes," I replied, "if you think them worth the price. But if you do,
you rate them even more highly than they rate themselves; and English
colonists are not much behind the citizens of the model Republic in
honest self-esteem."

"Wal," he said, "how much du yew calc'late we shall hev to pay?"

"Not more, perhaps, than you can afford; only California, and every
Atlantic seaport from Portland to Galveston."

"Reckon yew may be about right, stranger," he said, falling back with
tolerable good-humour; and, to do them justice, the bystanders seemed
to think the retort no worse than the provocation deserved.

"I am sorry," said my friend, "you should have fallen in with so
unpleasant a specimen of the character your countrymen ascribe with
too much reason to Americans. I have been long in England, and never
met with such discourtesy from any one who recognised me as an
American."

After this our conversation became less reserved; and I found that I
was conversing with one of the most renowned officers of irregular
cavalry in the late Confederate service—a service which, in the
efficiency, brilliancy, and daring of that especial arm, has never
been surpassed since Maharbal's African Light Horse were recognised by
friends and foes as the finest corps in the small splendid army of
Hannibal.

Colonel A— (the reader will learn why I give neither his name nor
real rank) spoke with some bitterness of the inquisitiveness which
rendered it impossible, he said, to trust an American with a secret,
and very difficult to keep one without lying. We were presently joined
by Major B—, who had been employed during the war in the conduct of
many critical communications, and had shown great ingenuity in
devising and unravelling ciphers. On this subject a somewhat
protracted discussion arose. I inclined to the doctrine of Poe, that
no cipher can be devised which cannot be detected by an experienced
hand; my friends indicated simple methods of defeating the processes
on which decipherers rely.

"Poe's theory," said the Major, "depends upon the frequent recurrence
of certain letters, syllables, and brief words in any given language;
for instance, of
e
's and
t
's,
tion
and
ed
,
a
,
and
, and
the
in English. Now it is perfectly easy to introduce abbreviations
for each of the common short words and terminations, and equally easy
to baffle the decipherer's reliance thereon by inserting meaningless
symbols to separate the words; by employing two signs for a common
letter, or so arranging your cipher that no one shall without extreme
difficulty know which marks stand for single and which for several
combined letters, where one letter ends and another begins."

After some debate, Colonel A— wrote down and handed me two lines in
a cipher whose character at once struck me as very remarkable.

"I grant," said I, "that these hieroglyphics might well puzzle a more
practised decipherer than myself. Still, I can point out even here a
clue which might help detection. There occur, even in these two lines,
three or four symbols which, from their size and complication, are
evidently abbreviations. Again, the distinct forms are very few, and
have obviously been made to serve for different letters by some slight
alterations devised upon a fixed rule. In a word, the cipher has been
constructed upon a general principle; and though it may take a long
time to find out what that principle is, it affords a clue which,
carefully followed out, will probably lead to detection."

"You have perceived," said Colonel A—, "a fact which it took me
very long to discover. I have not deciphered all the more difficult
passages of the manuscript from which I took this example; but I have
ascertained the meaning of all its simple characters, and your
inference is certainly correct."

Here he stopped abruptly, as if he thought he had said too much, and
the subject dropped.

We reached New York early in the morning and separated, having
arranged to visit that afternoon a celebrated "spiritual" medium who
was then giving
séances
in the Empire City, and of whom my friend
had heard and repeated to me several more or less marvellous stories.
Our visit, however, was unsatisfactory; and as we came away Colonel
A— said—

"Well, I suppose this experience confirms you in your disbelief?"

"No," said I. "My first visits have generally been failures, and I
have more than once been told that my own temperament is most
unfavourable to the success of a seance. Nevertheless, I have in some
cases witnessed marvels perfectly inexplicable by known natural laws;
and I have heard and read of others attested by evidence I certainly
cannot consider inferior to my own."

"Why," he said, "I thought from your conversation last night you were
a complete disbeliever."

"I believe," answered I, "in very little of what I have seen. But that
little is quite sufficient to dispose of the theory of pure imposture.
On the other hand, there is nothing spiritual and nothing very human
in the pranks played by or in the presence of the mediums. They remind
one more of the feats of traditionary goblins; mischievous, noisy,
untrustworthy; insensible to ridicule, apparently delighting to make
fools of men, and perfectly indifferent to having the tables turned
upon themselves."

"But do you believe in goblins?"

"No," I replied; "no more than in table-turning ghosts, and less than
in apparitions. I am not bound to find either sceptics or
spiritualists in plausible explanations. But when they insist on an
alternative to their respective theories, I suggest Puck as at least
equally credible with Satan, Shakespeare, or the parrot-cry of
imposture. It is the very extravagance of illogical temper to call on
me to furnish an explanation
because
I say 'we know far too little
of the thing itself to guess at its causes;' but of the current
guesses, imposture seems inconsistent with the evidence, and
'spiritual agency' with the character of the phenomena."

"That," replied Colonel A—, "sounds common sense, and sounds even
more commonplace. And yet, no one seems really to draw a strong, clear
line between non-belief and disbelief. And you are the first and only
man I ever met who hesitates to affirm the impossibility of that which
seems to him wildly improbable, contrary at once to received opinion
and to his own experience, and contrary, moreover, to all known
natural laws, and all inferences hitherto drawn from them. Your men of
science dogmatise like divines, not only on things they have not seen,
but on things they refuse to see; and your divines are half of them
afraid of Satan, and the other half of science."

"The men of science have," I replied, "like every other class, their
especial bias, their peculiar professional temptation. The
anti-religious bigotry of Positivists is quite as bitter and
irrational as the theological bigotry of religious fanatics. At
present the two powers countervail and balance each other. But, as
three hundred years ago I should certainly have been burnt for a
heretic, so fifty or a hundred years hence, could I live so long, I
should be in equal apprehension of being burnt by some successor of
Mr. Congreve, Mr. Harrison, or Professor Huxley, for presuming to
believe in Providential government."

"The intolerance of incredulity," returned Colonel A—, "is a sore
subject with me. I once witnessed a phenomenon which was to me quite
as extraordinary as any of the 'spiritual' performances. I have at
this moment in my possession apparently irresistible evidence of the
reality of what then took place; and I am sure that there exists at a
point on the earth's surface, which unluckily I cannot define, strong
corroborative proof of my story. Nevertheless, the first persons who
heard it utterly ridiculed it, and were disposed to treat me either as
a madman, or at best as an audacious trespasser on that privilege of
lying which belonged to them as mariners. I told it afterwards to
three gentlemen of station, character, and intelligence, every one of
whom had known me as soldier, and I hope as gentleman, for years; and
in each case the result was a duel, which has silenced those who
imputed to me an unworthy and purposeless falsehood, but has left a
heavy burden on my conscience, and has prevented me ever since from
repeating what I know to be true and believe to be of greater
interest, and in some sense of greater importance, than any scientific
discovery of the last century. Since the last occasion on which I told
it seven years have elapsed, and I never have met any one but yourself
to whom I have thought it possible to disclose it."