New York Tribune

A HUMAN MULBERRY TREE:

From The Philadelphia Press.

In the private cemetery adjoining the Academy of Natural Sciences, almost hidden by the tall green grass and covered with moss, there stands the stump of what was once a flourishing mulberry tree. If this stump could speak it would unfold most wonderful tale of transmigration, not of the spiritual, but of the physical, kind. For the tree, of which the stump is a melancholy relic, found its birth in a human death, and flourished and grew like the famous tree that sprang from the grave of Roger Williams. Linked with the history of this stump there is another history, equally curious, which concerns two churches, one long since torn down and forgotten, the other now standing in a fashionable quarter of the city. Away back in the beginning of the present century, before steamships were even thought of, Mrs. Agnes Duncan, a Scotch dame of noble birth, set sail in a stout ship for the infant Republic. When in mid-ocean the elements set up a terrible hubbub, the rain came down in torrents, the waves rolled mountain high, and the superstitious Scotch dame, falling upon her knees, prayed for delivery, vowing in return for this boon from merciful Providence to build and endow a church when she should reach dry land.

She arrived in Philadelphia, and, by her direction, a frame church was built on Thirteenth-st., on the west side, half-way between Market and Filbert. The first pastor was the Rev. Isaac McInniss, also a Scotchman. The church grew and prospered. Mrs. Duncan removed to Baltimore and a number of the congregation, for their own convenience, established a private cemetery-the one now adjoining the Academy of Natural Sciences at Twelfth and Walnut sts., presided over in a spiritual sense by one Rev. Blackwell, and 'after-ward by John Palmer, who will be remembered by many. Blackwell gave his name to the little church on Thirteenth-st. In the meantime the Rev. Mr. McInniss, who had grown to be a stout old gentleman, with white hair, fell sick and died of typhus fever. He was covered with a winding sheet, laid in a coffin of fine black walnut, and carefully deposited in his own plot of ground in the private cemetery.

The years went by and the memory of Pastor McInniss faded from the memory of all but a few. One fine day in spring a mulberry sapling pushed its way up through the grass near the head of the grave. Warm air and sunshine favored its growth, and it soon developed into a healthy tree, bearing an abundance of blood-red mulberries, which the children in the neighborhood monopolized as a fruit created especially for the delectation of their tender palates. Persons remarked that the position of the mulberry tree was a strange one, but to this day the peculiar cause of its presence would probably not be known had it not been for a quarrel which arose in the Blackwell Church, and which finally culminated in the trustees claiming, as the property of the church, the little graveyard. They were ousted and in revenge ordered the bones of their ancient pastor, McInniss, to be dug up and removed. Forthwith to the grave proceeded the trustees. The grave digger drove his spade in the ground and scattered the damp dirt around. Deeper and deeper into the ground went the spade. The pile of earth by his side grew in size. Still there was no sign of the coffin. Dismay was depicted in the countenances of the trustees. The spade became entangled in the roots of the mulberry tree. When more dirt was removed it was found that the roots had completely filled that portion of the grave occupied by the coffin, of which not so much as a fragment was left-only two of the metal mountings of the lid and a few nails. Not a bone could be found. The mulberry tree had absorbed everything. Not even a trace of a bone or of the shroud was there, although a long time was spent in the search. So nothing was there to be done but to scrape up a few handfuls of dirt and cast them in the pine box which the trustees had brought. The box was closed and taken to Mount Moriah Cemetery, and there it now lies, no more the bones of old Pastor McInniss than any hill of dirt which can be picked up on Chestnut-st. And the mulberry tree: It gradually decayed and was at last cut down, and now stands a moss-covered stump, a cannibal without a stomach, a ghoul without a ghoul's instinct, memory of a remarkable physical resurrection.