Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
One morning as I ranged along the bank of Schuylkill, I encountered a person,
by name Ludloe, of whom I had some previous knowledge. He was from Ireland;
was a man of some rank and apparently rich: I had met with him before, but in
mixed companies, where little direct intercourse had taken place between us. Our
last meeting was in the arbour where Ariel was so unexpectedly introduced.
Our acquaintance merely justied a transient salutation; but he did not
content himself with noticing me as I passed, but joined me in my walk and
entered into conversation. It was easy to advert to the occasion on which we had
last met, and to the mysterious incident which then occurred. I was solicitous to
dive into his thoughts upon this head and put some questions which tended to
the point that I wished.
I was somewhat startled when he expressed his belief, that the performer of
this mystic strain was one of the company then present, who exerted, for this end,
a faculty not commonly possessed. Who this person was he did not venture to
guess, and could not discover, by the tokens which he suered to appear, that his
suspicions glanced at me. He expatiated with great profoundness and fertility of
ideas, on the uses to which a faculty like this might be employed. No more powerful
engine, he said, could be conceived, by which the ignorant and credulous might be
moulded to our purposes; managed by a man of ordinary talents, it would open for
him the straightest and surest avenues to wealth and power.
His remarks excited in my mind a new strain of thoughts. I had not hitherto
considered the subject in this light, though vague ideas of the importance of this art
could not fail to be occasionally suggested: I ventured to inquire into his ideas of
the mode, in which an art like this could be employed, so as to eect the purposes
he mentioned.
He dealt chiey in general representations. Men, he said, believed in the
existence and energy of invisible powers, and in the duty of discovering and
conforming to their will. This will was supposed to be sometimes made known to
them through the medium of their senses. A voice coming from a quarter where no
attendant form could be seen would, in most cases, be ascribed to supernal agency,
and a command imposed on them, in this manner, would be obeyed with religious
scrupulousness. Thus men might be imperiously directed in the disposal of their
industry, their property, and even of their lives. Men, actuated by a mistaken
sense of duty, might, under this inuence, be led to the commission of the most
agitious, as well as the most heroic acts: If it were his desire to accumulate wealth,
or institute a new sect, he should need no other instrument.
I listened to this kind of discourse with great avidity, and regretted when he
thought proper to introduce new topics. He ended by requesting me to visit him,
which I eagerly consented to do. When left alone, my imagination was lled with
the images suggested by this conversation. The hopelessness of better fortune,
which I had lately harboured, now gave place to cheering condence. Those
motives of rectitude which should deter me from this species of imposture, had
never been vivid or stable, and were still more weakened by the artices of which
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