After Dark [pp. 132-138]

2AFTER DARK.
AFTER DARK.
E had been speaking-the Cap tain, Don Mateo, and I -of the
recent manifestations at Stockton, which
Elder Knapp with pious credulity attributed to the direct agency, to the immediate personal presence, in fact of his
old enemy, the devil. The Donfwho is
not a Don by birth like Don Quixote or
Don Juan, nor by christening like General Don Carlos Buell or Don Piatt, but
by courtesy from long residence among
the South American Spaniards, insisted
that this theory of demonology was the
worst that could be offered for the solution
of a mystery that neither our faith nor
our happiness requires us to solve at all.
The idea of a corporeal devil on earth,
not in human flesh, was as repugnant
to him as the inspiration of disordered
nerves, the evolving of a new religion by
hypnotism, or the communion of disembodied spirits through dancing tables or
pirouetting Planchettes. "If," he concluded, "the enemy of souls can thrust
us from our stools, and take his seat at
our feasts and firesides, an unbidden
guest, our monuments may be indeed
the maws of kites- the sooner the better."
I suggested that nothirng could be more
natural than the explanation offered for
the particular fact in hand. The devil,
after brooding for nearly four hundred
years over the insult he received when
Luther threw his inkstand at him, returned to earth, retorted the indignity by
throwing a spittoon at one of the cloth,
and that his debt being acquitted, he
would doubtless be content to remain
hereafter within the bounds of his own
parish.
"Your remark savors of impiety," said
the Don.
"And is disrespectful to the devil,"
added the Captain. "One' must not calumniate even the devil or the inquisition,' you know. Think of the imperial
Satan of Milton, the accomplished Mephistopheles of Goethe, playing fantastic
tricks in the nineteenth century that
would have disgraced the temple of St.
Anthony in the third. Bunyan was literal enough, but Apollyon never would
have tried to keep Christian from the
celestial city by throwing a spittoon at
his head."
The Don looked at his watch-he always does, as if to time himself, when
about to claim the conversational floor
wiped his glasses his invariable prelude
to a pathetic strain, as though he would
dry the prophetic moisture of a tear unshed- and without interruption, said:
"I admit that this is the most gross and
sensuous sign of the outlying world that
ever was given to a wicked and perverse
generation, but we must not go too far
and take our seats among the scoffers.
These are mysteries which it is alike irreverent to question and irrational to
deny-shadows of objects unseen that
cross the domain of sense, but do not
belong to it, and are not amenable to its
laws. The dry light of intellect illumines
but a narrow circle of reason, and his
life is close walled in who has no apprehensions beyond it. There are few so
unhappy as to be free from superstition,
and they are alike destitute of faith and
spiritual sight. That existence is barren indeed which has no experiences that
do not transcend the inductive philosophy. With your permission I will relate an experience of my own, which I
have never before mentioned, except to
the few parties who will appear in and
[XUGUST,
132