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- by the slab, I was carrying it before me, one cobwebbed hoof thrust out,
which weird object at a turn of the stairs suddenly touched my girl, as
she was ascending; whereupon, turning, and seeing no living
creature--for I was quite hidden behind my shield--seeing nothing
indeed, but the apparition of the Evil One’s foot, as it seemed, she
cried out, and there is no knowing what might have followed, had I not
immediately spoken.
From the impression thus produced, my poor girl, of a very nervous
temperament, was long recovering. Superstitiously grieved at my
violating the forbidden solitude above, she associated in her mind the
cloven-footed table with the reputed goblins there. She besought me to
give up the idea of domesticating the table. Nor did her sister fail to
add her entreaties. Between my girls there was a constitutional
sympathy. But my matter-of-fact wife had now declared in the table’s
favour. She was not wanting in firmness and energy. To her, the
prejudices of Julia and Anna were simply ridiculous. It was her maternal
duty, she thought, to drive such weakness away. By degrees, the girls,
at breakfast and tea, were induced to sit down with us at the table.
Continual proximity was not without effect. By and by, they would sit
pretty tranquilly, though Julia, as much as possible, avoided glancing
at the hoofed feet, and, when at this I smiled, she would look at me
seriously--as much as to say, Ah, papa, you, too, may yet do the same.
She prophesied that, in connection with the table, something strange
would yet happen. But I would only smile the more, while my wife
indignantly chided.
Meantime, I took particular satisfaction in my table, as a night
reading-table. At a ladies’ fair, I bought me a beautifully worked
reading-cushion, and, with elbow leaning thereon, and hand shading my
eyes from the light, spent many a long hour--nobody by, but the queer
old book I had brought down from the garret.
All went well, till the incident now about to be given--an incident, be
it remembered, which, like every other in this narration, happened long
before the time of the ‘Fox Girls.’
It was late on a Saturday night in December. In the little old
cedar-parlour, before the little old apple-tree table, I was sitting up,
as usual, alone. I had made more than one effort to get up and go to
bed; but I could not. I was, in fact, under a sort of fascination.
Somehow, too, certain reasonable opinions of mine, seemed not so
reasonable as before. I felt nervous. The truth was, that though, in my
previous night-readings, Cotton Mather had but amused me, upon this
particular night he terrified me. A thousand times I had laughed at such
stories. Old wives’ fables, I thought, however entertaining. But now,
how different. They began to put on the aspect of reality. Now, for the
first time it struck me that this was no romantic Mrs. Radcliffe, who
had written the _Magnalia_; but a practical, hard-working, earnest,
upright man, a learned doctor, too, as well as a good Christian and
orthodox clergyman. What possible motive could such a man have to
deceive? His style had all the plainness and unpoetic boldness of truth.
In the most straightforward way, he laid before me detailed accounts of
New England witchcraft, each important item corroborated by respectable
townsfolk, and, of not a few of the most surprising, he himself had been
eye-witness. Cotton Mather testified himself whereof he had seen. But is
it possible? I asked myself. Then I remembered that Dr. Johnson, the
matter-of-fact compiler of a dictionary, had been a believer in ghosts,
besides many other sound, worthy men. Yielding to the fascination, I
read deeper and deeper into the night. At last, I found myself starting
at the least chance sound, and yet wishing that it were not so very
still.
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