back
again to the same, in a way that natural causes could not account
for. There was another proof that there must be some magic in this
business which was that if a pasteboard with red spots fell into a
hand which wanted a black one, the person changed color, his eyes
flashed fire, and he discovered other symptoms of madness, which
showed there was some witchcraft in the case. These clean little
pasteboards, as harmless as they looked, had the wonderful power of
pulling down the highest piles in less time than all the other
causes put together. I observed that many small piles were given in
exchange for an enchanted liquor which when the purchaser had drank
to a little excess, he lost the power of managing the rest of his
heap without losing the love of it; and thus the excess of
indulgence, by making him a beggar, deprived him of that very
gratification on which his heart was set.

Now I find it was the opinion of sober pilgrims, that either
hoarding the clay, or trucking it for any such purposes as the
above, was thought exactly the same offense in the eyes of the lord;
and it was expected that when they should come under his more
immediate jurisdiction in the _far country_, the penalty annexed to
hoarding and squandering would be nearly the same. While I examined
the countenances of the owners of the heaps, I observed that those
who I well knew never intended to make any use at all of their heap,
were far more terrified at the thought of losing it, or of being
torn from it, than those were who were employing it in the most
useful manner. Those who best knew what to do with it, set their
hearts least upon it, and were always most willing to leave it. But
such riddles were common in this odd country. It was indeed a very
land of paradoxes.

Now I wondered why these pilgrims, who were naturally made erect
with an eye formed to look up to _the things above_, yet had their
eyes almost constantly bent in the other direction, riveted to the
earth, and fastened _on things below_, just like those animals who
walk on all fours. I was told they had not always been subject to
this weakness of sight, and proneness to earth; that they had
originally been upright and beautiful, having been created after the
image of the lord, who was himself the perfection of beauty; that he
had, at first, placed them in a far superior situation, which he had
given them in perpetuity; but that their first ancestors fell from
it through pride