John Quincy Adams Digital Diary

361

22. V. Sunday.

Macomb Alexander Mrs Frye

Morning service at the Presbyterian Church. Heard Mr Fowler, from Isaiah 25.1. “O Lord thou art my God; I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name: for thou hast done wonderful things; thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth.”— The latter part of the verse Dr Laurie was in the pulpit, and old Mr and Mrs Nourse, in my pew— After Church I had a visit from my neighbour General Macomb— After dinner at St. John’s church Mr Hawley read the service for the 22d. Sunday after Trinity, and preached from Deuteronomy 32.9. “For the Lord’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance— 10. He found him in a desert Land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye— 11. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings, 12. So the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange God with him”— The text was full of matter, but the Sermon was empty— Mrs Frye came home and sat some time with me; and I walked with her to Mrs Smith’s— I returned home early in the Evening, and continued writing out my Speech of Saturday the 14th. I read a pamphlet Letter, from William L. Stone to Dr Amariah Brigham, relating his visit to Providence Rhode-Island, where he witnessed the operations of animal magnetism, performed by Dr George Capron, upon Miss Loraina Brackett, a young woman from Dudley, Massachusetts— The account is as marvelous as the stories of the Cock-lane Ghost, the Miracles at the tomb of the Abbé Paris, or the Salem witcheries of the 17th. Century. The substance of the story is, that by the effect of certain cabalistic motions of a magnetiser, the patient, a person labouring under nervous disease, is lulled into profound sleep, and in that condition, is by the power of imagination 362imagination, endowed with miraculous powers of loco-motion, and especially of vision— Dr Capron magnetized this young Lady into a profound sleep, in nine minutes of time; first making her walk in sleep about the house, and look at pictures with the back of her head turned to them— He next put her into a state of Clairvoyance, and then delivered her over to Mr Stone, who sat down by her side took her hands in his, and by agreement with her transported her through the air, to New-York, where they visited sundry places among which was Mr Stone’s own house. She saw every thing that was to be seen, and among them rarities never seen by any one else— Mr Stone’s narrative is much interspersed with argument to prove that he could not have been deceived or imposed upon— There is an appendix of additional evidence of the wonders of animal magnetism, which within a few months past has been exciting a degree of public attention somewhat alarming— I am apprehensive that there is danger of some great imposture’s being imposed upon the public credulity, and I cannot but meditate upon the fact, that the existence of this mysterious power of animal magnetism, has maintained itself in the minds of multitudes, more than have a century since its fallacy was detected by the Commission from the French Academy of Sciences in 1783. It is among the remarkable hallucinations of the human mind; and one of those in which the natural progress is from weakness to frailty—from frailty to vice—from Vice to Crime, and from crime to public calamity— Stone’s pamphlet is portentous— My morning and evening labours overply my faculties, and I had a restless and uneasy Night.