The Second Sight

I am not superstitious; understand that before I begin. When a man’s life, inner and outer, has been choked down for thirty-five years into the dog-eared leaves of a law book, you will find few grains of credulity or fancy in his nature. Beside, I don’t think there ever were any in mine. Only the highest and lowest orders of intellect dare confess a belief in truths that underlie a science of common sense, and I belong to the massed middle mind of the world, to whom common sense is the highest natural good. Yet I have observed that almost every man, if you catch him in the right humor, has some old experience to relate which trenches on the supernatural. He sneers at it, as he tells you, yet secretly believes it. You bring up a parallel case, and he flouts it with an easy explanation. “Stuff! pah! Do you think he credits such old women’s tales? That little matter he just spoke of was a mere nothing, of course; yet it was curious, eh?” More; I do confess that among the civil suits and criminal cases that have made up the dull routine of my own life, there have been one or two such odd incidents for which no natural hypothesis will account. I propose to give you the facts of one of them, assuring you that they are facts. Whatever may seem to you incredible in the story is the most true. I offer no explanation of the mystery; never explained it to myself; all that I know is that it actually occurred just as I tell it to you. The names are necessarily altered.

In 1820, I employed about my office in Richmond, a boy named Tom Sanders; an ugly, short, Dutch built fellow, whose only recommendation as to looks was a certain straight-forward honesty in his face. I liked Tom; kept him as errand boy for two or three years; his steady, solid-going habit gained trust and respect insensibly; whatever he had to do, whether it was to sort the papers, or eat his dinner, was… Read More