Читать книгу The Missing Link in Modern Spiritualism - A. Leah Underhill - Страница 25

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A party consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Emerson, Mr. Cook—an English gentleman and a partner and intimate friend of Mr. Emerson—mother, her sister Catharine, Ann Emerson and myself (we were little girls at that time), drove to the “Sand Hill burying-ground” to visit the graves of our loved ones. Mr. Cook and my aunt rode in his carriage, while the rest of us rode in the family carriage. They arrived a little before we did, and walked to Mr. E’s. plot, where stooping he pulled up a flower and, tossing it at my beautiful Aunt Catharine, said, “I wonder who will lie here next?” After remaining a while we drove home, in Clinton Street, Rochester, where the nurse was standing with the babe Georgie in her arms. (George was an uncommonly lovely boy, named after Mr. Cook.) When taking the child in his arms Mr. Cook said, “O thou angel boy! I must not neglect to will thee thy dower.” He remained with us through the evening and bade us good-night. His house was nearly a mile away. I retired with mother and her sister. I slept in a trundle-bed drawn from under their large bed. Our family was then boarding there, father being absent from home much of the time. It was my habit to study my lessons in bed before going to sleep, in which way I was sure to remember them in the morning; and as there was to be a school exhibition next day, it was late before I put out the candle, when mother gave a fearful scream which brought every one to inquire the cause. At first she declined to say anything about it—feeling very sure it must have been Mr. Cook she had seen; and she disliked to say anything more. She however insisted upon having seen a man, and described him as resting upon his hands on the bed, bending over her sister Catharine, and looking her in the face; she recognized the man to be Mr. Cook. They tried to impress her with the belief that it was a dream, but she knew she had not slept.

Early next morning a messenger woke up the household, and announced that Mr. Cook had dropped dead in the mill at 6 A.M. He and Mr. Emerson were the wealthy owners of the principal flouring mills on the Genesee River, at Rochester.

Mr. Cook’s body was buried at the spot from which he had plucked the flower.

Mr. Cook was no doubt sleeping quietly at the time they were searching the house to find the apparition just before the midnight hour, as he said to his foreman on entering the mill, in reply to his morning salutation, “I am well, and I think I slept too well, as I intended to be here at five o’clock.” He walked a moment longer and fell, to rise no more.