The Redemption of David Corson | Page 3

was
buried deep in the rich, alluvial soil, and a ribbon of earth rolled from
its blade like a petrified sea billow, crested with a cluster of daisies
white as the foam of a wave.
Between the handles of the plow and leaning on the crossbar, his back
to the horses, stood a young Quaker. His broad-brimmed hat, set
carelessly on the back of his head, disclosed a wide, high forehead; his
flannel shirt, open at the throat, exposed a strong, columnar neck, and a
deep, broad chest; his sunburned and muscular arms were folded across
his breast; figure and posture revealed the perfect concord of body and
soul with the beauty of the world; his great blue eyes were fixed upon
the notch in the hills where the sun had just disappeared; he gazed
without seeing and felt without thinking.
The boy approached this statuesque figure with a stealthy tread, and
plucking a long spear of grass tickled the bronzed neck. The hand of
the plowman moved automatically upward as if to brush away a fly,
and at this unconscious action the child, seized by a convulsion of
laughter and fearing lest it explode, stuffed his fists into his mouth. In
the opinion of this irreverent young skeptic his Uncle Dave was in a
"tantrum" instead of a "trance," and he thought such a disease
demanded heroic treatment.
For several years this Quaker youth had been the subject of remarkable
emotional experiences, in explanation of which the rude wits of the
village declared that he had been moon-struck; the young girls who
adored his beauty thought he was in love, and the venerable fathers and
mothers of this religious community believed that in him the scriptural
prophecy, "Your young men shall see visions," had been literally
fulfilled. David Corson himself accepted the last explanation with
unquestioning faith. He no more doubted the existence of a spiritual
than of a material universe. He did not even conceive of their having
well-defined boundaries, but seemed to himself to pass from one to the
other as easily as across the lines of adjoining farms. In this respect he
resembled many a normal youth, except that this impression had

lingered with him a little longer than was usual; for faith is always
instinctive, while skepticism is the result of experience and reflection.
Having as yet only wandered around the edges of the sacred groves of
wisdom where these pitiless teachers break the sweet shackles of their
pupils, he still thought the thoughts of childhood and instinctively
obeyed the injunction of Emerson, to "reverence the dreams of our
youth," and the admonition of Richter, that "when we cease to do so,
then dies the man in us." Whatever might have been the real nature of
these emotional experiences, no one doubted that they possessed a
genuine reality of some kind or other, for it was a matter of history in
this little community that David Corson had often exercised prophetic,
mesmeric and therapeutic powers.
The life of this young man had been pure and uneventful. Existence in
this frontier region, once full of the tragedy of Indian warfare, had been
gradually softened by peace and religion. The passions slowly kindling
in the struggle over slavery had not yet burst into flame, and this
particular valley was even more quiet than others because it had been
settled by a colony of Quakers. Into it the rude noises of the great
outside world floated only in softened echoes, and what knowledge
young Corson had acquired of that vague and shadowy realm had come
mainly through traveling preachers, and this, because of their simplicity
and unworldliness, was not unlike hearing the crash of arms through
silken portieres or seeing the flash of lightning through the
stained-glass windows of a cathedral. In such a sequestered region
books and papers were scarce, and he had access only to a few volumes
written by quietists and mystics, and to that great mine of sacred
literature, the Holy Bible. The seeds of knowledge sown by these books
in the rich soil of this young heart were fertilized by the society of
noble men, virtuous women, and natural surroundings of exquisite
beauty.
But however limited his knowledge of men and affairs, the young
mystic had acquired an extraordinary familiarity with the operations of
the divine life which animates the universe. He seemed to have found
the pass-key to nature's mysteries, and to have acquired a language by
which he could communicate with all her creatures. He knew where the

rabbits burrowed, where the partridges nested, and where the wild bees
stored their honey. He could foretell storms by a thousand signs,
possessed the homing instinct of the pigeons, knew where the first
violets were to be found, and where the last golden-rod would bloom.