“I can’t exactly explain,” he replied. “They see things that the natural eye can’t see, and hear, and touch, and taste, with inward senses. As for me, I never had any kind of gifts, but a contented mind, and submission to those in authority, and I don’t see at all into this new mystery. It makes me of a tremble when I think of it. I’ll tell you how it acts. Last summer I was among our brethren in York State, and when I was coming away, I went down into the garden to take leave of a young brother there. He asked me if I would carry something for him to Vesta. Vesta is a young sister, famous for her spiritual gifts, whirling, &c.” I could have added, for I had seen Vesta—for the other less questionable gifts in the world’s estimation—a light graceful figure, graceful even in the Shaker straight jacket, and a face like a young Sibyl’s. “Well,” continued brother Wilcox, “he put his hand in his pocket, as if to take out something, and then stretching it to me, he said, ‘I want you to give this white pear to Vesta.’ I felt to take something, though I saw nothing, and a sort of trickling heat ran through me; and even now, when I think of it, I have the same feeling, fainter, but the same. When I got home, I asked Vesta if she knew that younger brother. ‘Yea,’ she said, I put my hand in my pocket and took it out again, to all earthly seeming as empty as it went in, and stretched it out to her. ‘Oh, a white pear!’ she said. As I hope for salvation, every word that I tell you is true,” concluded the old man.
It was evident he believed every word of it to be true. The incredulous may imagine that there was some clandestine intercourse between the “young brother” and “young sister,” and that simple old brother Wilcox was merely made the medium of a fact or sentiment, symbolized by the white pear. However that may be, it is certain that animal magnetism has penetrated into the cold and dark recesses of the Shakers.
