andrew jackson davis.

334 Pages·2012·27.28 MB·English

IN THREE PARTS.
OOMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME.
BY
~
ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS.
"Trnth is stranger tba11 Fletlon.''
SECOND THOUSAND.
BOSTON:
WILLIAM WHITE & COMPANY,
llAN~"ER OF LIGIIT OFFICE,
158 W ABlliNGTO:N .STREET.
NEW YORK AGENTS-AMERICAN 1'-.TEWS COMPANY.
1869.
Entered according to Act or Congress, In the year 1869, by
ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS,.
In the Clerk's Office ot the District Conrt of tbo United State., tor tho
District or New Jersey.
MCCREA & MILL1!R1 STEREOTYPERS,
50 Greene Street, N. Y.
PNE.
f'AR.,_T
PLANTING THE SEEDS OF CRIME.
f'"'I\! Jwo.
TREES OF CRIME IN FULL BLOOM.
f' AR.,_T JHR.,_EE.
REAPING THE FRUITS OF CRIME.
I
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1211697
INTRODUCTORY.
TrrE following Reries of Rtrange and startling and
tragical events, which I am now called upon to make
public for the first time, are, even to the minutest details,
founded upon facts, with only a thin veil between the
reader and the real characters whose temperaments, cir
cumstances, temptations, virtues, vices, and crimes, are
herein truthfully recorded.
The principal facts concerning the manifold causes
which devefoped the "1\Iysterious Association of Crimi
nals" in N cw York and vicinity, came to my knowledge
about twenty-five years ago. The investigating reader,
who is curious to know more on this interesting point,
is referred to a volume by the author, entitled " The
Present Age and Inner Life," pJl. 259-265. The strange
incident therein narrated will repay perusal.
It is believed that so long as mothers and daughters
shall exist, such disclosures as are made in this volume
can not but be productive of the best results. Not less
. arc these fearful scenes important to fathers and sons.
Because, if to be fore-warned is to be fore-armed, the~e
horrible and truthful pictures of the causes of crime,
and these faithful delineations of the ways of profession
al criminals, will serve as beacon lights and guideb oards
by which maidenhood and manhood can avoid the eYil
and choose the good.
A. J.D.
NEw YonK, April20, 1860.
PART I.
'TALE OF A PHYSICIAN.·
CHAPTER I.
"Tho heart knoweth its own bittemess."--Blble.
Fon ages the office of the regularly graduated physician
has been regarded with a profound degree of respect. In
European couut1·ies, and in tqe olden time, his wisdom
and Iris public function were regarded with reverence,
which was freely accorded. He is furnished with a
diploma of " doctor of medicine," and is thus dignified
and empowered by a law of the land to practice his pro
fession. He is supposed to be deeply versed in the laws
of nature; to comprehend all the secret causes of human
suffering; to be a perfect master in natural philosophy;
:mel to judge correctly of the physical condition, and even
of the characters, of individuals, by examination and
observation of ·their pulsations, tongues, countenances,
gestures, and other external peculiarities.
This unquestioning confidence, reposed in the office and
wisdom of the medical man of science, is manifested in
many ways.
TALE OF A PIIYSICIAN.
_ One hundred years ago, the diplomatizocl and estab
' lished physician frequently took precedence of tho vener
ated priest in the confidence of the family. Confessions
-of sins and sufferings to the minister were almost uni
formly of a negative character. In pious moments
especially, when the soul is overwhelmed with a sense of
its total and eternal dependence upon God, not un
mingled with a deep realization of its vanities and
unworthiness, the female heart, less worldly-minded and
less vainglorious than man's, confesseth freely and fully
to negative sins; such as repining thoughts, want of
watchfulness, proud feelings, unforgiving temper, foolish
imaginations, secret neglect of holy duties, hasty expres
sion of envious words, coldness in the affections toward
heavenly things, and so on through the whole catalogue
of spiritual infirmities and concomitants with which our
nature is said to abound.
But in the privacy of the sick-chamber, when. tho
stricken patient fears that the tide of life is fast ebbing
away, tho physician often becomes the recipient of con
fessions of vices, crimes, aud misery, which tho ear of the
revered priest has never been permitted to hear. Freely,
fully, and without so much as the shadow of the fear of
betrayal, the prostrated sufferer takes tho first convenient
opportunity of revealing in detail the corrupt workings
of that society, in which diseases more painful than any
bodily affiiction continually assail mankind.
It is manifestly tho first duty of tho physician to study
his patient's malady, and administer such· remedial agents
as will deaden and destroy suffering, and sustain the vital
principle, without diminishing the constitutional systolic
and diastolic movements of the heart.
The author of the famous practice called mesmerism
taught his proselytes to overcome disease by manipulation
and the exercise of will. Instead of administering the
PLANTING THE SEEDS OF CRIME. 7
usual remedies, the physician who saved the life of the
patient (whose name and condition will hereafter be
disclosed) employed the so-called potent influence of mag
netism, by which her broken heart was empowered to
continue its pulsations, thus gradually restoring her
beautiful person to perfect health and its blessings, and
eventually resulting in a wonderful career.
It was during the slow process of a rccnperative c.on
valescence that the physician deeply investigated the
secret causes of certain crimes, which come forth, disap
pear, and again reappear in families. He was led to
observe how sudden mental emotions of the mother,
ere her child had seen the light, either increased or
diminished the molecular formation and development of
the several portions of the cerebral structures in her
offspring. He demonstrated, to his own· satisfaction at
least, that the tendency of the vital forces to the bruin,
or to other parts of the organic structure, was determined
by the motqcr during the critical period of gestation;
and, furthermore, that such determination was accom
plished far more through the potent instrumentality of her
thoughts and feelings than by any peculiar condition or
abnormal predilections of tl1e nerve-forces in her physical
system.
l\Iorcover, finally, and in short : he found that, by
this mysterious and immutable law of phreno-eleetrotyp
ing, so to call it, which is outwrought on the sensitive
surfaces of, and by the means of the psycho-dynamical
forces at work within the unborn brain, the offspring
could, and absolutely docs, mentally inherit a predisposi
tion to particular vices and crimes, as easily as to be born
with cross-eyes, red-hair, far-sightedness, stammering,
deafness and dumbness, cutaneous diseases, scrofula, and
consumption. On this principle he traced out the causes
why some children are born with finely molded limbs
8 TALE OF A PHYSICIAN.
and attractive personal manners, while others come "into
this breathing world" replete with every imaginable
physical imperfection. ·
And these observations and conclusions, combined
with the earnest and inspiring solicitations of his es
teemed professional friends, have determined him to write
out the following tale-which is far more wonderful than
fiction-illustrating (1.) the origin of the seeds of crime,
(2.) the blossoming of crime's tree, and·(3.) the harvest
of whirlwinds which come as the fruits of crime.
CHAPTER II.
"All before us lies the way; give the past unto the wind."-Old
Play.
< -
CAPTAIN JACQUES DEL AnAGONI was of a noblefaruily,
and had displayed great skill and courage in warfare.
But he experienced exquisite pleasure in pursuing
genealogical studies. At least this was his profession.
He said he delighted more particularly in tracing out the
parental and maternal links in the chain of his own
origin.
·with great apparent satisfaction he found himself
maternally related to a distinguished, fearless Spanish
officer-the special favorite of Fernando Cortez-one
Bernal Castillo, who accompanied the great chieftain's
expedition to South America in the sixteenth century;
and his enthusiasm was not less when he found that his
blood was paternally derived from the noble families of
which the latest distinguished member was Baron De
Carondelet, who, some ten years before the transfer of
Louisiana to the United States, had made his mark by
PLANTING THE SEEDS OF CRIME. 9
multiplying improvements in the Crescent City, by which
commerce and general prosperity acquired a new im
petus. Carondelet's administration was an unfailing
topic of eloquent and vehement discourse with Captain
Aragoni; and he never lost an opportunity of impressing
all listeners with the clear and important fact that he
was a near relative of that distinguished governor.
'Vhether all this was true or not the writer does not
know.
Although pardonably vain of his maternally Spanish
and paternally French origin, on which relationship he
based all his claims to promotion in the' army, still Cap
tain Aragoni was, on his own merits, a gentleman of more
than ordinary personal beauty, intelligence, and military
courage. 'Vhile he was by mental inheritance jealous,
irritable; impulsive, and even cruelly revengeful when
under sufficient temptation; yet on the other side-that
part of his character which he scrupulously presented to
his associates-he displayed the most agreeable gener
osity, and the most attractive deportment. One thing
must not be overlooked. He was uniformly popular with
citizens, with companions of equal rank, and with even
his most inferior subordinates in the army.
He could easily condescend to fellowship with persons
far below him in every walk of life. This was more
remarked than any other trait in his character. Indeed
this distinguishing peculiarity had been in former years a
source of deep concern to the better class of his acquaint
ances.
Although proud, even to vanity, of his ancestry, and
although reserved and dignified when commanding in
the field, still at other times, and under different circum
stances and inducements, he would seek the society of
disreputable men, gamblers, and sailors; but notwith
standing the multifarious temptations which surrounded
1*
10 T.A.LE OF A. PHYSICIAN.
and beset him like demons whenever associated with
such characters, he was never known (though he was
often suspected) to depart into the forbidden regions
of profanity, intemperance, sensuality, or other vices imd
crimes peculiar to that class of individuals.
His friends and admirers, therefore, at length some
what yielded th~ir natural and justifiable solicitude for
his morals. But they could not resist feelings of morti
fication when, in violation of the laws of his professed
noble blood, and contrary to all the proprieties of his
social standing, he would spend day after day, and night
after night, in the company of known desperate game
sters and undisguised villains.
No one ever attempted to account for this conspicuous
and alarming paradox in the character of Captain Ara
goni. Any educated physician, however, who comprc.
bonded somewhat of the philosophy of hereditary im
pressment, through the ante-natal feelings and thoughts
of the niother, as already suggested, could have cleared
up the mystery. He would have detected a certain hor
rible and wretched event in his mother's biography, and
connected it with the subsequent development of this
ala_rming inconsistency in the mental organization of the
otherwise unexceptionable, dignified, and distinguished
descendant of Castillo 'and Carondelet.
CHAPTER III.
"Grnce was in all her steps, heaven in her eyes;
In every gesture dignity and love."-MiUon.
IN 1820, Captain Aragoni was married to the very
young and beautiful grand-daughter of the tourist and