"
"Yes, know dat; but muss go. Injin too plenty here, soon. Yes, muss
go. Bourdon, why you can't ask bee, now, what bess t'ing for you to
do, eh? Good time, now, ask bee to tell what he know."
The bee-hunter made no reply, but his pretty wife raised her hand,
involuntarily, as if to implore the Indian to forbear. Peter was a
little bewildered; for as yet, he did not understand that a belief
in necromancy was not exactly compatible with the notions of the
Christian Providence. In his ignorance, how much was he worse off
than the wisest of our race? Will any discreet man who has ever paid
close attention to the power of the somnambule, deny that there is a
mystery about such a person that exceeds all our means of
explanation? That there are degrees in the extent of this power--
that there are false, as well as true somnambules--all who have
attended to the subject must allow; but, a deriding disbeliever in
our own person once, we have since seen that which no laws, known to
us, can explain, and which we are certain is not the subject of
collusion, as we must have been a party to the fraud ourselves, were
any such practised. To deny the evidence of our senses is an act of
greater weakness than to believe that there are mysteries connected
with our moral and physical being that human sagacity has not yet
been able to penetrate; and we repudiate the want of manliness that
shrinks from giving its testimony when once convinced, through an
apprehension of being derided, as weaker than those who withhold
their belief.
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