GHOSTS AND WITCHES.

“Save and defend us from our ghostly enemies.”—Common Prayer.

Is it not quite time—I appeal to the sensible reader—that such folly was expunged from our literature? What is a ghost? Who ever saw, heard, felt, tasted, or smelled one? Must a person possess some miraculous quality of perception beyond the five senses commonly allotted to man in order to become cognizant of a ghostly presence?

BELIEVERS IN GHOSTS.

What stupid folly is ghost belief! Yet there are very many individuals in this enlightened day and generation, who, from perverted spirituality, or great credulousness, will accept a ghost story, or a “spiritual revelation,” without wincing.

It would seem that many great men of the past, as Calvin, Bacon, Milton, Dante, Lords Byron and Nelson, Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, and others, believed in the existence of ghosts and spirits on this mundane sphere.

There are but two classes who believe in ghosts, viz., the ignorant as one class, and persons with large or perverted spirituality—phrenologically speaking—as the other. These are the believers in dreams, in ghosts, in spirits, and fortune-telling. These, too, are the religious (?) fanatics, etc.

The Origin of the word Ghost

is curious.

“The first significance of the word, as well as ‘spirit,’ is breath, or wind.” It is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is from gust, the wind. Hence, a gust of wind. The Irish word goath, wind, comes nearer to the modern English pronunciation, and shows how easily it could have been corrupted to ghost.

It is easy to imagine the good old Saxon ladies, sitting around the evening fireside, and just as one of them has finished some marvellous story of that superstitious age, they are startled by a sudden blast of wind, sweeping around the gabled cottage, and her listeners exclaim, in suppressed breath,—

“Hark! There’s a fearful gust!”

The transit from gust to ghost is easily done. The clothes spread upon the bushes without, or pinned to the lines, flapping in the night air, are seen through the shutterless windows, and they become the object of attraction. The effect supersedes the cause, and the clothes become the gust, goath, or ghost! The clothes, necessarily, must be white, or they could not be seen in the night time! Hence a ghost is always clothed in white. Therefore the wind (gust) is no longer the ghost, but any white object seen moving in the night air.

“HARK! THERE’S A FEARFUL GUST!”

“But I am a wandering ghost—
I am an idle breath,
That the sweets of the things now lost
Are haunting unto death.
Pity me out in the cold,
Never to rest any more,
Because of my share in the purple and gold,
Lost from the world’s great store.
“I whirl through empty space,
A hapless, hurried ghost;
For me there is no place—
I’m weary, wandering, lost.
Safe from the night and cold,
All else is sheltered—all,
From the sheep at rest in the fold,
To the black wasp on the wall.”

Moffat says that a tribe of Caffres formerly employed the word Morino to designate the Supreme Being; but as they sank into savagery, losing the idea of God, it came to mean only a fabulous ghost, of which they had great terror.

Having briefly shown the folly of the existence of the word in our vocabulary, I will proceed to explode a few of the best authenticated—so called—“ghost stories;” and if I leave anything unexplained in ghostology, let the reader attribute it to either my want of space in which to write so much, or the neglect of my early education in the dead languages.

The Ghost of the Camp.

I obtained the following story from one of the sentries:—

At Portsmouth, R. I., there was a camp established during the late war, 186-. There was a graveyard in one corner of the enclosed grounds, where several soldier-boys had been buried from the hospital, and here a guard was nightly stationed.

Of course there were many stories told around the campfires, of ghosts and spirits that flitted about the mounds at the dead hours of the night, circulated particularly to frighten those stationed at that point on picket duty.

The body of a soldier had recently been exhumed and placed in a new and more respectable coffin than the pine box coffin furnished by Uncle Sam, in which he had been buried, and the old one was left on the ground.

Partly to protect himself from the inclemency of the weather, and quite as much to show his utter disregard of all ghostly visitors, my informant secured the old pine coffin, “washed it out, though it was impossible to remove all the stains,” and, driving a stake firmly into the ground, he stood the coffin on one end, and, removing the lid, used to stand therein on rainy nights.

“When it did not rain, I turned it down, and my companion and myself used to sit on the bottom.

“One day a soldier-boy had died in the hospital, and his friends came to take the body home for Christian burial. It was necessary to remove him in a sheet to the place where they had an elegant casket, bought by his wealthy friends, to receive the remains.

“That very night I was on duty with my friend Charley S., when, near midnight, seated upon the empty coffin, with my gun resting against the side, and my head resting in the palms of my hands, I fell into a drowse.

A GRAVE SENTRY.

“Waking up suddenly, I saw something white through the darkness before me; for it was a fearfully dark night, I assure you. I rubbed my sleepy eyes to make sure of my sight, and took another look. I discerned a form, higher than a man, moving about over the mounds but a few yards distant. It had wide side-wings, but they did not seem to assist in the motion of the body part, which did not reach to the ground. I thought I must be asleep, and actually pinched my legs to awake myself before I took a final look at his ghostship. There he stood, stock still. I listened for my companion, without removing my eyes from the white object before me. Still I was not scared, but meant to see it out. I knew I could not see a man far through that impenetrable darkness, for there were no stars nor moon to reveal him. I would not call for help, for if it was a farce to scare me, I should become the laughing-stock of the whole camp.

A GHOST IN CAMP.“Just then I heard the grass crackle, and I knew Charley was approaching in the rear. Still there hung the apparition. I arose from the coffin, my eyes fixed on the object before me, picked up my musket, took deliberate aim at the centre of the thing, and just as I cocked my rifle, I heard Charley set back the hammer of his ‘death-dealer.’ He, too, had discovered the very remarkable appearance, whatever it was; and now the guns of two ‘unfailing shots’ covered the object. In another second it had suddenly disappeared! I then spoke, and we ran forward, but found nothing! Where had it gone so very suddenly? It had vanished without sight or sound. We gave up the search; but still I did not believe we had seen anything supernatural.

“There was no little discussion in camp on the following day on the subject. Charley said but little. I could not explain the remarkable phenomenon, and a splendid ghost story was about established, in spite of me, before the mystery became unravelled.

“A tall fellow, who worked about the hospital, and who assisted in taking away the corpse, was returning with the sheet, when he thought he would give the sentry a scare from his coffin by throwing the sheet over his head and stretching out his arms like wings. His clothes being black, his legs did not show; hence the appearance of a white object floating in the air. Hearing the guns cocked, he instantly jerked the sheet from his head; winding it up, he turned and ran away. This accounted for it becoming so instantaneously invisible.

“‘Yes,’ said the sentry, ‘and in a second more you would have been made a ghost!’”

Raising the Dead.

The Nagles Family.—The following remarkable and ridiculous affair transpired in a village where the writer once resided. The Nagleses were Irish. The family consisted of old Nagles, his wife,—who did washing for my mother,—John Tom and Tom John, besides Mary. The reason of having the boys named as above was, that in case either died, the sainted names would still be in the family. This was old Mrs. Nagles’ explanation of the matter.

The old man worked about the wharves, wheeled wood and carried coal, and did such like jobs during summer, and chopped wood in the winter. I well remember of hearing stories of his greenness when he first came to town. He was early employed to wheel wood on board a coaster lying at the dock. The captain told him to wheel a load down the plank, cry “Under!” to the men in the hold, and tip down the barrow of wood. All went well till old Nagles got to the stopping-place, over the hold, when he dumped down the load, and cried out, “Stand ferninst, there, down cellar!” to the imminent peril of breaking the heads of the wood-stevedores below.

OLD NAGLES.

I well remember also the first appearance of the two boys at the village school one winter.

“What is your name?” inquired the master of the eldest.

“Me name, is it? John Tom Nagles, sir, is me name, and who comes after is the same.”

He always was called by us boys “John Tom Nagles, sir,” thenceforward. He certainly was the rawest specimen I ever met.One day the old man was wheeling wood on board a vessel. It was at low water, and there was a distance of sixteen feet from the plank to the bottom of the vessel’s hold. The poor old fellow, by some mishap or neglect, let go the barrow, when he called, “Stand ferninst, there, below!” when wood, barrow, and old Mr. Nagles, all went down together. By the fall he broke his neck. I never shall forget the awful lamentation set up by the combined voices of the poor old woman, John Tom, Tom John, and Mary, as they followed the corpse, borne on a wagon, past our house, on the way from the vessel to the Nagles’ residence.

THE NAGLES BOYS.

On the following day great preparations were made to “wake” the old gentleman according to the most approved fashion in the old country. There were many Irish living—staying, at least—in that town, and large quantities of pipes, tobacco, and whiskey were bought up, and the whole town knew that a “powerful time” was anticipated by the Irish who were invited to old Nagles’ wake. It was an unusual occurrence, and several boys and young men of the village went to the locality of the Nagles’ house to get a look upon the scene when it got under full pressure. I certainly should have been there had not my parents forbidden me to go, and I regret the inability to give my personal testimony to the truth of the statement of what followed, as I do to what preceded, as related above.

CHIEF MOURNERS.

“When the wake was at its height, the room full of tobacco smoke, and the jovial mourners full of Irish whiskey,—strychnine and fusel oil,—there was an alarm of fire in the neighborhood. There was a grand rush from the room, as well as from the windows where stood the listeners, and only one old and drunken woman remained to watch the corpse. The door was left open, and some of the young men outside, thinking it a good opportunity to play a joke on the drunken party, ran into the room, and, seeing only the old woman, who was too drunk to offer any objections, they removed the body from the board, depositing it behind the boxes on which the board was laid, and one of their number took the place of the corpse, barely having time to draw the sheet over his face, when the ‘wakers’ returned.

“The candles burned dimly through the hazy atmosphere of the old room, and no one noticed the change. The pipes were relighted, the whiskey freely passed, and finally one fellow proposed to offer the corpse a lighted pipe and a glass of whiskey, ‘for company’s sake, through purgatory.’

“Suiting the action to the word, he approached, attempted to raise the head of the ‘lively corpse,’ and thrust the nasty pipe between his teeth.

“The young man ‘playing corpse’ was no smoker, and in infinite disgust he motioned the fellow away, who, too drunk to notice it, stuck the pipe in his face, saying, ‘Here, ould man, take a shmoke for your ghost’s sake.’

“‘Bah! Git away wid the div’lish nasty thing,’ exclaimed the young man, rising and sitting up in the coffin.

“There was an instantaneous stampede from the room of every waker who was capable of rising to his legs, followed by the fellow in the sheet, who, dropping the ghostly covering at the door, mingled with the rabble, and was not recognized. The priest and the doctor were speedily summoned. The former arrived, heard, outside the house, the wonderful story, and then proceeded to lay the spirit by sprinkling holy water on the door-stone, thence into the room. By this time the smoke had sufficiently subsided to allow a view of the room, when the stiff, frigid body of old Nagles was discovered on the floor, where ‘it had fallen,’ as they supposed, ‘in attempting to walk.’ Of course the doctor ridiculed the idea of a stark, cold body rising and speaking; but the Irish, to this day, believe old Nagles, for that once, refused a pipe and a glass of whiskey. The few young men dared not divulge the secret, and it never leaked out till the entire family of Nagles had gone to parts unknown.”

A CORPSE THAT WOULD NOT SMOKE.

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I find a great many ghost stories in books, which are not explained; but since the writer knows nothing of their authenticity, nor the persons with whom they were connected, they are unworthy of notice here.

The Ghost of CÆsar at Philippi.

Dr. Robert Macnish, of Glasgow, in his “Philosophy of Sleep,” says, “No doubt the apparition of CÆsar which appeared to Brutus, and declared it would meet him at Philippi, was either a dream or a spectral illusion—probably the latter. Brutus, in all likelihood, had some idea that the great battle which was to decide his fate would be fought at Philippi. Probably it was a good military position, which he had in his mind fixed upon as a fit place to make a final stand; and he had done enough to CÆsar to account for his mind being painfully and constantly engrossed with the image of the assassinated dictator. Hence the verification of this supposed warning; hence the easy explanation of a supposed supernatural event.”

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“The ghost of Byron” may help to verify the above. Sir Walter Scott was engaged in his study at Abbotsford, not long after the death of Lord Byron, at about the twilight hour, in reading a sketch of the deceased poet. The room was quiet, his thoughts were intensely centred upon the person of his departed friend, when, as he laid down the volume, as he could see to read no longer, and passed into the hall, he saw before him the eidolon of the deceased poet. He remained for some time impressed by the intensity of the illusion, which had thus created a phantom out of some clothes hanging on a screen at the farther end of the hall.

This is not the first time that Byron had appeared to his friends, as the following, from his own pen, will show:—

Byron wrote to his friend, Alexander Murray, less than two years before the death of the latter, as follows:—

“In 1811, my old schoolmate and form-fellow, Robert Peel, the Irish secretary, told me that he saw me in St. James Street. I was then in Turkey. A day or two afterwards, he pointed out to his brother a person across the street, and said, ‘There is the man I took for Byron.’ His brother answered, ‘Why, it is Byron, and no one else.’ I was at this time seen (by them?) to write my name in the Palace Book! I was then ill of a malaria fever. If I had died,” adds Byron, “here would have been a ghost story established.”

Dr. Johnson says, “An honest old printer named Edward Cave had seen a ghost at St. John’s Gate.” Of course, the old man succumbed to the apparition.

The Ghost of Conscience.

I have yet to find the record of a good man seeing what he believed to be a ghostly manifestation. It is only the guilty in conscience who conjure up “horrible shadows,” as pictured in Shakspeare’s ghost of Banquo, as it appeared to Macbeth. What deserving scorn, what scathing contempt, were conveyed in the language of Lady Macbeth to her cowardly, conscience-stricken lord, as she thus rebuked him!—

“O, proper stuff!
This is the very painting of your fear;
This is the air-drawn dagger which you said
Led you to Duncan! O, these flaws and starts
(Impostors to true fear) would well become
A woman’s story at a winter’s fire,[5]
Authorized by her grandam. Shame itself!
... When all’s done,
You look but on a stool!”

There is a great truth embodied in a portion of the king’s reply, that—

“If charnel-houses and our graves must send
Those that we bury, back, our monuments
Shall be the maws of kites.”

The gay and dissipated Thomas Lyttleton, son of Lord George Lyttleton, and his successor in the peerage, has been the subject of “a well-authenticated ghost story, which relates that he was warned of his death three days before it happened, in 1779, while he was in a state of perfect health, and only thirty-five years of age.” This is what says a biographer. Now let us present the truth of the matter.

He was a dissipated man. He was subject to fits. A gentleman present at the time of his seeing a vision, says “that he had been attacked several times by suffocative fits the month before.” Here, then, was a body diseased. The same authority says, “It happened that he dreamed, three days before his death, that he saw a fluttering bird; and afterwards, that he saw (dreamed) a woman in white apparel, who said to him, ‘Prepare to die; you will not exist three days.’

PREPARE TO DIE!

“His lordship was much alarmed, and called his servant, who slept in an adjoining closet, who found his master in a state of great agitation, and in a profuse perspiration.”

Fear blanches the cheek; perspiration is rather a symptom of bodily weakness, and the result of a laborious dream, or even a fit. He had no fear, for, on the third day, while his lordship was at breakfast with “the two Misses Amphlett, Lord Fortescue,” and the narrator, he said, lightly,—

“‘If I live over to-night, I shall have jockeyed the ghost, for this is the third day.’ That day he had another fit. He dined at five, and retired at eleven, when his servant was about to give him some prescribed rhubarb and mint-water, but his lordship, seeing him about to stir the mixture with a toothpick, exclaimed,—

“‘You slovenly dog, go and fetch a teaspoon.’

“On the servant’s return, he found his master in another fit, and, the pillow being high, his chin bore on his windpipe, when the servant, instead of relieving his lordship from his perilous position, ran away for help; but on his return, found his master dead.”

He had strangled. Is it anything strange that a dissipated, weakened man should die after having a score of suffocative fits? It had been more surprising if he had survived them. Then, as respecting the dream, it was the result of a “mind diseased.”

There was evidence that his lordship had seduced the Misses Amphlett, and prevailed upon them to leave their mother; and he is said to have admitted, before his death, that the woman seen in his dream was the mother of the unfortunate girls, and that she died of grief, through the disgrace and desertion of her children, about the time that the guilty seducer saw her in the vision. How could his dreams but have been disturbed, with the load of guilt and remorse that he ought to have had resting upon his conscience? The “fluttering bird” was the first form that the wretched mother assumed in his vision, as a bird might flutter about the prison bars that confined her darling offspring. The more natural form of the mother finally appeared to the guilty seducer, and to dream that he heard a voice is no unusual occurrence in the life of any person. The peculiar words amount to nothing. Lyttleton gave them no serious thoughts, and it was an accident of bodily position that caused his sudden death. The whole thing seems to be too flimsy for even a respectable “ghost story.”

The Bishop sees a Ghost!

An amusing as well as instructive ghost story is related by Horace Walpole, the indolent, luxurious satirist of fashionable and political contemporaries, whose twenty thousand a year enabled him to live at his ease, “coquetting haughtily with literature and literary men, at his tasty Gothic toy-house at Strawberry Hill.”

THE BISHOP’S GHOSTLY VISITOR.

He relates that the good old Bishop of Chichester was awakened in his palace at an early hour in the morning by his chamber door opening, when a female figure, clothed in white, softly entered the apartment, and quietly took a seat near him. The prelate, who, with “his household, was a disbeliever in ghosts” and spirits, said he was not at all frightened, but, rising in his bed, said, in a tone of authority,—

“Who are you?”

“The presence in the room” made no reply. The bishop repeated the question,—“Who are you?”

The ghost only heaved a deep sigh, and, while the bishop rang the bell, to call his slumbering servant, her ghostship quietly drew some old “papers from its ghost of a pocket,” and commenced reading them to herself.

After the bishop had kept on ringing for the stupid servant, the form arose, thrust the papers out of sight, and left as noiselessly and sedately as she had arrived.

“Well, what have you seen?” asked the bishop, when the servants were aroused.

“Seen, my lord?”

“Ay, seen! or who—what was the woman who has been here?”

“Woman, my lord?”

(It is said one of the fellows smiled, that a woman should have been in the aged bishop’s bed-chamber in the night.)

When the bishop had related what he had seen, the domestics apprehended that his lordship had been dreaming, against which the good man protested, and only told what his eyes had beheld. The story that the bishop had been visited by a ghost soon got well circulated, which greatly “diverted the ungodly, at the good prelate’s expense, till finally it reached the ears of the keeper of a mad-house in the diocese, who came and deposed that a female lunatic had escaped from his custody on that night” (in light apparel), who, finding the gates and doors of the palace open, had marched directly to his lordship’s chamber. The deponent further stated that the lunatic was always reading a bundle of papers.

“There are known,” says Walpole, “stories of ghosts, solemnly authenticated, less credible; and I hope you will believe this, attested by the father of our own church.”

Musical Ghosts.

We occasionally hear of this kind, but seldom, if ever, see them. An old lady of Adams, Mass., came to the writer in a state bordering on monomania. She stated that at about three o’clock in the night she would awake and distinctly hear bells ringing at a distance. She would awake her husband, and often compel him to arise and listen “till the poor man was almost out of patience with the annoyance;” not of the bells, for he heard none, but of being continually “wakened because of her whim,” as he stated. A brief medical treatment for the disease which caused the vibration of the tympanum dispelled the illusion of bells.

The Piano-forte Ghost.

A family residing, three years since, but a few miles out of Boston, used to occasionally, during summer only, hear a note or two of the piano strike at the dead hour of the night. A Catholic servant girl and an excellent cook left their situations in consequence of the ghostly music. In vain the family removed the instrument to another position in the room. The musical sounds would startle them from their midnight slumbers.

One thing very remarkable occurred after changing the piano: the sound, which only transpired occasionally, with no regularity as to time, would always begin with the high notes, and end with the lower. Finally, the family—I cannot say why—removed to the city, and the house was sold. The deed of conveyance did not include the ghost, but he remained with the premises, nevertheless. The writer has seen him!

“O, what a pretty cat!” exclaimed a child of the new occupant of the haunted house, on discovering the domestic animal which the late possessor had left.

“Yes; and she looks so very domestic and knowing, she may stay, if no one comes for her, and you’ll have her for a playfellow,” replied the mother.

A few nights after their settlement, the new family were startled by hearing the piano sound! No particular tune, but it was surely the piano notes that had been distinctly and repeatedly heard. A search revealed nothing. The piano was kept closed thereafter, and no further annoyance occurred, until one night when the company had lingered till nearly midnight, and the instrument had been left open, the sound again occurred. The gentleman quickly lighted a lamp, ran down stairs, and closing the door leading to the connecting room, he found the cat secreted beneath the piano. The instrument was purposely left open the following night, and a watch set, when, no sooner was all quiet, than the cat entered, and leaped upon the piano keys. After touching them a few times with her fore paws, she jumped down, and hid beneath the instrument. “The cat was out.” Only one thing remained for explanation, viz., why the change of sound occurred after removing the piano by the first occupants of the house. It occurred in summer. They removed the piano so that the cat, entering a side window, usually left a little raised, had necessarily jumped upon the high keys.

If anybody has got a good ghost, spirit, or witch about his premises, the writer would like to investigate it.

The following silly item is just going the rounds of the press:—

“A haunted House.

“The first floor of Mrs. Roundy’s house, at Lynn, in which the recent murder occurred, is occupied by an apparently intelligent family bearing the name of Conway, who assert that they have heard supernatural noises every night since the tragedy; and they are so sincere in their belief that they are preparing to vacate in favor of their ‘uncanny’ visitors.”

There’s nothing to it to investigate.

A few Words about Witches.

My colored boy, Dennis, assures me that an old woman in Norfolk, Va., having some spite against him, “did something to him that sort o’ bewitched him; got some animal into him, like.” The symptoms are those of ascarides, but I could not persuade him to take medicine therefor.

“’Tain’t no use, sir,” he replied, solemnly; “I knowed she done it; I feels it kinder workin’ in yer (placing his hand on his stomach); what med’cine neber’ll reach.”

Neither reason nor ridicule will “budge” him. He knows he’s bewitched!

THE MUSICAL PUSS.

A DARKEY BEWITCHED.

Witches in the Cream.

Through all the long, long winter’s day,
And half the dreary night,
We churned, and yet no butter came:
The cream looked thin and white.
Next morning, with our hopes renewed,
The task began again;
We churned, and churned, till back and arms
And head did ache with pain.
The cream rose up, then sulking fell,
Grew thick, and then grew thin;
It splashed and spattered in our eyes,
On clothes, and nose, and chin.
We churned it fast, and churned it slow,
And stirred it round and round;
Yet all the livelong, weary day,
Was heard the dasher’s sound.
The sun sank in the gloomy west,
The moon rose ghastly pale;
And still we churned, with courage low,
And hopes about to fail,—
When in walked Granny Dean, who heard,
With wonder and amaze,
Our troubles, as she crossed herself,
And in the fire did gaze.
“Lord, help us all!” she quickly said,
And covered up her face;
“Lord, help us all! for, as you live,
There’s witches in the place!
“There’s witches here within this churn,
That have possessed the cream.
Go, bring the horse-shoe that I saw
Hang on the cellar-beam.”
The shoe was brought, when, round and round,
She twirled it o’er her head;
“Go, drive the witches from that cream!”
In solemn voice she said;—
Then tossed it in the fire, till red
With heat it soon did turn,
And dropped among the witches dread,
That hid within the churn.
Once more the dasher’s sound was heard,—
Have patience with my rhyme,—
For, sure enough, the butter came
In twenty minutes’ time.
Some say the temperature was changed
With horse-shoe glowing red;
But when we ask old Granny Dean,
She only shakes her head.—Hearth and Home.

Horse-shoes.

One would suppose the folly of putting horse-shoes into cream, “fish-skins into coffee, to settle it,” and forcing filthy molasses and water down the throats of new-born babes, were amongst the follies of the past; but they are not yet, with many other superstitious, and even cruel and dangerous notions, done away with. For some prominent instances of this course of proceedings the reader may consult next chapter.

Riding through the rural districts of almost any portion of the Union, one will sometimes find the horse-shoe nailed over the stable, porch, or even house front door, to keep away the witches. As in Gay’s fable of “The Old Woman and her Cats:”—

“Straws laid across my path retard,
The horse-shoes nailed each threshold guard,”

In Aubrey’s time, he tells us that “most houses of the west end of London have the horse-shoe at the threshold.”

The nice little old gentleman who keeps the depot at Boylston Station is a dry joker, in his way. Over each door of the station he has an old horse-shoe nailed.

“What have you got these nailed up over the door for?” a stranger asks.

BOYLSTON STATION.

“To keep away witches. I sleep here nights,” solemnly replies the station-master; and one must be familiar with that ever agreeable face to detect the sly, enjoyable humor with which he is so often led to repeat this assertion.

In numerous towns within more than half of the states,—I state from personal inquiry,—there are at this day old women, who children, at least, are taught to believe have the power of bewitching! My first fright, when a little boy on my way to school, was from being told that an old woman, whose house we were passing, was a witch.These modern witches may not have arrived at the dignity of floating through the air on a broomstick, or crossing the water in a cockle-shell, as they were said to in ancient times; but the belief in their existence at this enlightened period of the world is more disgraceful than in the darker ages, and the frightening of children and the naturally superstitious is far more reprehensible.

There is no such thing as a ghost. There are no witches.

“The Bible teaches that there were witches,” has often been wrongly asserted. That “choice young man and goodly,” whose abilities his doting parent over-estimated when he sent him out in search of the three stray asses, and whose idleness prompted him to consult the seer Samuel, and by whose indolence and procrastination the asses got home first, was a very suitable personage to consult a “woman of a familiar spirit” (or any other woman, save his own wife), from which arose the great modern misnomer of the “Witch of Endor.”

“To the Jewish writers, trained to seek counsel only of Jehovah (not even from Christ), the ‘Woman of Endor’ was a dealer with spirits of evil. With us, who have imbibed truth through a thousand channels made turbid by prejudice and error, she is become a distorted being, allied to the hags of a wild and fatal delusion. We confound her with the (fabled) witches of Macbeth, the victims of Salem, and the modern Moll Pitchers.

“The Woman of Endor! That is a strange perversion of taste that would represent her in hideous aspect. To me she seemeth all that is genial and lovely in womanhood.”

“Hearken thou unto the voice of thine handmaid, and let me set a morsel of bread before thee, and eat, that thou mayest have strength when thou goest on thy way.”

Then she made and baked the bread, killed and cooked the meat,—all she had in the house,—and Saul did eat, and his servants.I see nought in this but an exhibition of rare domestic ability and commendable hospitality; in the previous act (revelation), nothing more than a manifestation of the power of mind over mind (possibly the power of God, manifested through her mind?), wherein she divined the object of Saul’s visit, and, through the same channel, surmised who he was that consulted her.

WEIGHING A WITCH BY BIBLE STANDARD.

Witches are said to be “light weight.” But a little above a hundred years ago, a woman was accused in Wingrove, England, by another, of “bewitching her spinning-wheel, so it would turn neither the one way nor the other.” To this she took oath, and the magistrate, with pomp and dignity, “followed by a great concourse of people, took the woman to the parish church, her husband also being present, and having stripped the accused to her nether garment, put her into the great scales brought for that purpose, with the Bible in the opposite balance, which was the lawful test of a witch, when, to the no small astonishment and mortification of her maligner, she actually outweighed the book, and was honorably acquitted of the charge!”

Just imagine the picture. In an enlightened age, a Christian people, in possession of the Bible, that gives no intimation of such things as witches, stripping and weighing a female in public, to ascertain if she really was heavier than a common Bible!

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