Autobiographical Sketches eBook

between them publishes the forgiveness that is sealed forever.  As one who recovers a brother whom he had accounted dead, the officer sprang forward, threw his arms around the neck of the soldier, and kissed him, as if he were some martyr glorified by that shadow of death from which he was returning; whilst, on his part, the soldier, stepping back, and carrying his open hand through the beautiful motions of the military salute to a superior, makes this immortal answer—­that answer which shut up forever the memory of the indignity offered to him, even whilst for the last time alluding to it:  “Sir,” he said, “I told you before that I would make you repent it.”

FOOTNOTES

[1] “Echo augury.”—­The daughter of a voice meant an echo, the original sound being viewed as the mother, and the reverberation, or secondary sound, as the daughter.  Analogically, therefore, the direct and original meaning of any word, or sentence, or counsel, was the mother meaning but the secondary, or mystical meaning, created by the peculiar circumstances for one separate and peculiar ear, the daughter meaning, or echo meaning.  This mode of augury, through secondary interpretations of chance words, is not, as some readers may fancy, an old, obsolete, or merely Jewish form of seeking the divine pleasure.  About a century ago, a man so famous, and by repute so unsuperstitious, as Dr.

Doddridge, was guided in a primary act of choice, influencing his whole after life, by a few chance words from a child reading aloud to his mother.  With the other mode of augury viz., that noticed by Herbert, where not the ear but the eye presides, catching at some word that chance has thrown upon the eye in some book left open by negligence, or opened at random by one’s self, Cowper, the poet, and his friend Newton, with scores of others that could be mentioned, were made acquainted through practical results and personal experiences that in their belief were memorably important.

[2] “Sortes Virgilianae.”—­Upon what principle could it have been that Virgil was adopted as the oracular fountain in such a case?  An author so limited even as to bulk, and much more limited as regards compass of thought and variety or situation or character, was about the worst that pagan literature offered.  But I myself once threw out a suggestion, which (if it is sound) exposes a motive in behalf of such a choice that would be likely to overrule the strong motives against it.  That motive was, unless my whole speculation is groundless, the very same which led Dante, in an age of ignorance, to select Virgil as his guide in Hades.  The seventh son of a seventh son has always traditionally been honored as the depositary of magical and other supernatural gifts.  And the same traditional privilege attached to any man whose maternal grandfather was a sorcerer.  Now, it happened that Virgil’s maternal grandfather