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CHAPTER IV

THE GREY WITCH

s late as the eighteen-fifties the wraiths of Indian braves still haunted the forests of the Ohio region. Weird stories were told to little boys when they were naughty, of the great chief, Wanamaka, whose ghost glided in and out among the trees, seizing upon little boys who had offended their fathers, their mothers, their elder brothers and their sisters and, above all, their teachers, changing these little boys into Indians and carrying them away into the Far West to fight the battles of the red man. When I had reached the ripe age of seven years I began to discount these stories as the invention of grown-ups to frighten little boys into an irrational obedience, and such an obedience was then and always has been abhorrent to my conscience.

In spite of these ghostly tales, or rather because of them, these forests were my daily attraction; when I could I would slip away from the open spaces of civilization and wander hour after hour in their Druidic shades, hoping against hope that Wanamaka would come and change me into an Indian brave and carry me away to the Far West to fight the battles of the red man, that so I might escape the tyranny of grown-ups and the weariness of school. vain my mother whipped me; my father warned and my teachers kept me in; the ghost of Wanamaka still lured me to my fate.

In

Sometimes my brother Thomas was my fellow wanderer, and our errancy once brought us to the edge of destruction. But for this evil Wanamaka was not to blame. Our ignorance was our enemy. Though there be no wraiths of

Indian braves haunting its shades, yet the forest is a treacherous place; poisonous snakes glide through its grasses and poisonous berries grow on its bushes; it was the berries that were nearly the death of us. We saw them hanging

in tempting clusters and we plucked them and did eat, and by and by, feeling griping pains, we hurried home and a frightened mother sent in haste for the doctor, who gave us emetics and so saved our souls alive. My mother's interpretation of this mishap was that we should keep out of the woods; my interpretation was that we should not eat berries. But alas for the valour of youth! what an Indian chief could not do was easily accomplished by a harmless old woman. One evening, just as the sun was going down, my mother called me and said, “Allie, run up to Mrs. Gunther and ask her to come down tomorrow and help me with the washing." I went upon this errand with a glad heart, for of all the hours of the day in the woods this was to me the magic hour; the deepening shadows, the falling winds, the twittering of the birds in their nests, the passing of the glory of the day into the mystery of the night combined to make this hour sacred to my soul.

Mrs. Gunther lived up on the hill-side, in the thick of the forest, about a mile from our house. As I lingered along my way I heard the trees and the underbrush rustling with life, as bird and beast hurried to nest and hole. Far down below, the monastery bell was ringing vespers, and the whistles of the factories were releasing the worker from his toil. Everywhere was peace, and God was giving His beloved sleep.

As I approached the home of Mrs. Gunther I was assailed by the sickening smell of rotting apples. As I drew near the Gunther house this smell was overpowering; it was then quite dark. The Gunther house, built as it was in the side hill, had its cellar even with the ground; the cellar door was open and it was from this cellar that this

smell of rotting apples came out. When I came to this open door, there rose up from the midst of the decaying fruit a gaunt, grey creature, which for all the world was just like the scarecrow in our cornfield. This horrid witch, for so it seemed to my frightened soul, came toward me, its hands dripping with rotten apple juice; its scant dress flapping about its bare legs; its grey hair hanging in wild disorder over its eyes; its voice screeching an outlandish gibberish, frightening my soul out of my body, so that I turned and ran down the hill for dear life. I did not stop running until I came up against our fence. I seized hold of the fence and vomited the contents of my stomach, down to the bitter bile, out upon the ground and fell down into a dead faint. I lay unconscious for some time, until the growing coolness of the night brought me to myself. I rose up, crept under the fence and made my way to our house. When I came in my mother began to scold me for being gone so long. At this I broke out into wild hysterical crying. I cried and cried until my frightened mother took me in her arms and carried me to bed. When I could speak I told her how the scarecrow from our cornfield had followed me up the hill and had hidden in Mrs. Gunther's cellar and had tried to catch me and carry me away. My mother took me in her arms and soothed me, telling me that it was not the scarecrow that had frightened me; it was only Grandma Gunther.

Be that as it may, for many years thereafter Grandma Gunther, in the guise of a grey witch, would come to my bed, when I was in my early sleep, sit upon my stomach and drop the juice of rotting apples in my eyes. At this I would awaken with a scream and it would take a long time to soothe me to sleep again. This grey witch robbed me of at least three inches of my growth and sent me forth upon my life's journey with shattered nerves. I did not get rid of her until I left my home in Cincinnati.

CHAPTER V

THE GREY MAN

HE emigrants who came from the old world to the new brought with them their several religions. So it came to pass that in the city of Cincinnati, rigid puritanism existed side by side with devout Catholicism. The Irish and the Germans made of my native land a Catholic stronghold. The whole of the region known as "over the Rhine" was given up to this form of religion. Catholic churches and institutions sprang up on every side. Catholic priests in their cassocks, Sisters of Mercy in their habits, were as familiar to my youth as the emigrant wagon and the wandering pedlar. Convents and monasteries followed in the wake of the churches. The influence of the Catholic element was powerful in the political, social, industrial and business life of the community. It was the Irish Catholic labourer with his pick and shovel who made our roads, dug our cellars and carried in his hod the bricks and the mortar that built our houses.

The German Catholics cleared our lands, cultivated our gardens, planted our vineyards and our orchards, raised for. us our cattle and our pigs, and in the course of twenty-five years made Cincinnati the Queen City of the West. It was the German element, largely Catholic, that gave to us our system of free schools and made our city an intellectual and artistic centre; so that for a time Cincinnati was for the West what Boston was to the East: the home of the thinker and the scholar. In the month of November, 1843, there was laid in Cincinnati, largely because of the German

element, Catholic and Protestant, the foundation of the first astronomical observatory ever erected in America. This occasion was made for ever famous by the oration of John Quincy Adams, pronounced after an exhausting journey from Boston, at the risk of his life.

A lad could not grow up in such an atmosphere as this without breathing it in with his own breath. When I left my native city I carried away from it a deep feeling for natural beauty, a reverence for devout religion in any form, and a veneration for sound learning, natural science and sincere art.

It was part of the benefit of my environment that I came to my manhood without serious religious prejudice. Archbishop Purcell, who presided over the Catholic Church, was venerated as a good man and a useful citizen by men and women of all religions and of no religion. When financial disaster came upon him he was rescued by the common charity of the whole people, without regard to religious differences.

But far beyond this I learned to love the Catholic Church because of its appeal to my sense of beauty and my sense of mystery. The call of the monastery bell to prayers from matins to compline reminded one every hour of the life beyond life. The friars reading their offices as they walked between the graves of their dead filled the soul with a reverence for holy men and holy things that was never lost. I am sure I owed my own future calling to the ministry of the church to the impressions made upon my soul by these devout friars.

One day as I was lingering by the monastic gate, one of the friars laid his hand upon my head and blessed me, and I came away weeping with an unknown joy.

For a long time after this, if I were walking alone in the woods, I would see a grey man walking before me. I would follow him, but could never come up to him; when