gaslight.mtroyal.ab.ca/gaslight/PetrRugg.htm
HERMAN KRAUFF SIR, -- Agreeably to my promise, I now relate to you all the particulars of the lost man and child which I have been able to collect. It is entirely owing to the humane interest you seemed to take in the report, that I have pursued the inquiry to the following result. You may remember that business called me to Boston in the summer of 1820. I sailed in the packet to Providence, and when I arrived there I learned that every seat in the stage was engaged. I was thus obliged either to wait a few hours or accept a seat with the driver, who civilly offered me that accommodation. Accordingly, I took my seat by his side, and soon found him intelligent and communicative. When we had travelled about ten miles, the horses suddenly threw their ears on their necks, as flat as a hare's. He seemed to grasp the reins of his horse with firmness, and appeared to anticipate his speed. He seemed dejected, and looked anxiously at the passengers particularly at the stage-driver and myself. In a moment after he passed us, the horses' ears were up, and bent themselves forward so that they nearly met. I have met him more than a hundred times, and have been so often asked the way to Boston by that man, even when he was travelling directly from that town, that of late I have refused any communication with him; The little black cloud came on rolling over the turnpike, and doubled and trebled itself in all directions. The appearance of this cloud attracted the notice of all the passengers, for after it had spread itself to a great bulk it suddenly became more limited in circumference, grew more compact, dark, and consolidated. And now the successive flashes of chain lightning caused the whole cloud to appear like a sort of irregular network, and displayed a thousand fantastic images. The driver bespoke my attention to a remarkable configuration in the cloud. He said every flash of lightning near its centre discovered to him, distinctly, the form of a man sitting in an open carriage drawn by a black horse. It is a very common thing for the imagination to paint for the senses, both in the visible and invisible world. In the meantime the distant thunder gave notice of a shower at hand; It was soon over, the cloud passing in the direction the turnpike toward Providence. In a few moments after, a respectable-looking man in a chaise stopped at the door. The man and child in the chair having excited some little sympathy among the passengers, the gentleman was asked if he had observed them. But that which excited his surprise most was the strange conduct of his horse, for long before he could distinguish the man in the chair his own horse stood still in the road, and flung back his ears. He is a famous traveller, held in light esteem by all innholders, for he never stops to eat, drink, or sleep. I saw the same man more than three years since, near Providence, and I heard a strange story about him. I have heard it asserted that Heaven sometimes sets a mark on a man, either for judgment or a trial. The last time Rugg spoke to me he inquired how far it was to Boston. Boston shifts with the wind, and plays all around the compass. One man tells me it is to the east, another to the west; The clouds are gathering in the south, and we shall have a rainy night. I had now, as I thought, discovered a clue to the history of Peter Rugg; Soon after, I was enabled to collect the following particulars from Mrs. Croft, an aged lady in Middle Street, who has resided in Boston during the last twenty years. Her narration is this: Just at twilight last summer a person stopped at the door of the late Mrs. Croft on coming to the door perceived a stranger, with a child by his side, in an old weather-beaten carriage, with a black horse. Rugg had died at a good old age, more than twenty years before that time. The streets are all changed, the people are all changed, the town seems changed, and what is strangest of all, Catherine Rugg has deserted her husband and child. Pray," continued the stranger, "has John Foy come home from sea? If I could see him, he could give me some account of Mrs. However, madam, you see I am wet and weary, I must find a resting-place. I recollect now, I came over a bridge instead of a ferry. If I were in Boston my horse would carry me directly to my own door. But my horse shows by his impatience that he is in a strange place. Absurd, that I should have mistaken this place for the old town of Boston! The stranger seemed a little bewildered, and said, "No home tonight"; It was evident that the generation to which Peter Rugg belonged had passed away. This was all the account of Peter Rugg I could obtain from Mrs. James Felt, who lived near her, and who had kept a record of the principal occurrences for the last fifty years. Felt told me he had known Rugg in his youth, and that his disappearance had caused some surprise; Felt, "sundry stories grew out of Rugg's affair, whether true or false I cannot tell; I have lately seen Peter Rugg and his child, horse, and chair; Why, sir, Jenny Rugg, if living, must be more than sixty years of age. That Peter Rugg is living, is highly probable, as he was only ten years older than myself, and I was only eighty last March; Felt was in his dotage, and I despaired of gaining any intelligence from him on which I could depend. Croft, and proceeded to my lodgings at the Marlborough Hotel. He was a man in comfortable circumstances, had a wife and one daughter, and was generally esteemed for his sober life and manners. But unhappily, his temper, at times, was altogether ungovernable, and then his language was terrible. In these fits of passion, if a door stood in his way, he would never do less than kick a panel through. He would sometimes throw his heels over his head, and come down on his feet, uttering oaths in a circle; While these fits were on him, Rugg had no respect for heaven or earth. Except this infirmity, all agreed that Rugg was a good sort of a man; At dark he stopped in Menotomy, now West Cambridge, at the door of a Mr. Cutter, a friend of his, who urged him to tarry the night. But Peter Rugg did not reach home that night, nor the next; The neighbours, too, heard the same noises, and some said they knew it was Rugg's horse; This occurred so repeatedly that at length the neighbours watched lanterns, and saw the real Peter Rugg, with his own horse and chair and the child sitting beside him, pass directly before his own door, his head turned towards his house, and himself making every effort to stop his horse, but in vain. No one, after Rugg, had passed his own door, could give any account of him, though it was asserted by some that the clatter of Rugg's horse and carriage over the pavements shook the houses on both sides of the streets. And this is credible, if indeed Rugg's horse and carriage did pass on that night; Some of them treated it all as a delusion, and thought no more of it. Others of a different opinion shook their heads and said nothing. This gave occasion to Rugg's friends to make further inquiry; If they heard of Rug one day in Connecticut, the next they heard of him winding round the hills in New Hampshire; The toll-gatherer asserted that sometimes, on the darkest and most stormy nights, when no object could be discerned, about the time Rugg was missing, a horse and wheel-carriage, with a noise equal to a troop, would at midnight, in utter contempt of the rates of toll, pass over the bridge. This occurred so frequently that the toll-gatherer resolved to attempt a discovery. Soon after, at the usual time, apparently the same horse and carriage approached the bridge from Charlestown Square. The toll-gatherer, prepared, took his stand as near the middle of the bridge as he dared, with a large three-legged stool in his hand; The toll-gatherer on the next day asserted that the stool went directly through the body of the horse, and he persisted in that belief ever after. Whether Rugg, or whoever the person was, ever passed the bridge again, the toll-gatherer would never tell; FURTHER ACCOUNT OF PETER RUGG By Jonathan Dunwell IN the autumn of 1825 I attended the races at Richmond in Virginia. As two new hors...
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