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Dunstan, so the story goes, Once pulled the devil by the nose, With red hot tongs, which made him roar That he was heard three miles or more!" The same story is told of St. Eloi, and probably of most of the mediæval artistic spirits who were unfortunate enough to be human in their temperaments and at the same time pious and struggling. He was greatly troubled by visitations such as persecuted St.
Down by Bernward's grave there is a spring which is said to cure cripples and rheumatics. Peasants visit Hildesheim on saints' days in order to drink of it, and frequently, after one of these visitations, crutches are found abandoned near by. Saxony was famous for its bronze founders, and work was sent forth, from this country, in the twelfth century, all over Europe.
Poets who come to recite their verses and reformers who come to explain their projects are among the most formidable of earthly visitations. Emerson accepted his martyrdom with meek submission; it was a martyrdom in detail, but collectively its petty tortures might have satisfied a reasonable inquisitor as the punishment of a moderate heresy.
The breaking up of the ice had once carried away her entire mansion, and every thing connected with it, of which place she had made too much account. Also, in some visitations of her husband, death, and others before. In her last child-bed, she became lame or weak in both of her sides, so that she had to walk with two canes or crutches.
Between 1119 and 1340, Italy alone had no less than sixteen such visitations. Smallpox and leprosy were also common. The public mind was morbidly sensitive to signs and portents and saturated to an almost incredible degree with superstition.
And there is, in justice, something more to be said when we speak of these dire visitations.
But whether there is less or more danger, the best way to do, as the world is now situated, is, to inure ourselves, gradually, to disease. There are in New York and Philadelphia, many very aged persons, who have been employed as professional attendants of the sick during all the visitations of those cities with yellow fever and cholera, who have yet never taken either of those diseases.
How could you endure the visitations of that long spectre, time after time, without crying out, telling everybody, and rousing the whole house and neighbourhood? "Oh, and how did you like the nun as a bed-fellow? I dressed her up: didn't I do it well? Did you shriek when you saw her: I should have gone mad; but then you have such nerves! real iron and bend- leather! I believe you feel nothing.
Thus, much from the old transmitted tales regarding evil visitations and struggles with demons has appeared true to me in the light of new experience. Here I must warn you against a very strange and important peculiarity of our dream-body and our dream-nature.
The mere sight of it brought back one of those visitations of which I have told you, and which I thought I had done with for ever, I was convulsed by an agony of fear, thrown into a state approximating to a paralysis both of mind and body. 'But why? 'I cannot tell you.
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