eption, upon your
neighbors, and upon the public, and that in order to carry out that
fraudulent deception and to preserve yourselves from detection you were
willing to risk the life of that child. The life of that child has been
lost in that wicked experiment which you tried. Therefore, the sentence
that I shall inflict on you, Evan Jacob, is, that you be imprisoned and
kept at hard labor for twelve calendar months; and that upon you, Hannah
Jacob, will be more lenient in consideration of the recommendation of
the jury, and it is, that you be imprisoned and kept to hard labor for
the period of six calendar months."

Thus ended one of the most remarkable and interesting histories of human
folly, credulity, and criminality which the present day has produced.
Comment upon its teaching is scarcely necessary; but the thoughtful
reader will not fail to perceive how important a bearing it has upon the
whole subject of belief without full and free inquiry, and that how all
the facts which science has gathered during ages of painful labor, go
for naught, even with educated persons, when brought face to face with
the false assertions of a hysterical girl, and of two ignorant and
deceitful peasants. If there is any one thing we know, it is that there
can be no force without the metamorphosis of matter of some kind. Here
was a girl maintaining her weight--actually growing--her animal heat
kept at its due standard, her mind active, her heart beating, her lungs
respiring, her skin exhaling, her limbs moving whenever she wished them
to move, and all, as very many persons supposed, without the ingestion
of the material by which alone such things could be. And yet such is the
tendency of the average human mind to be deceived, that it would be
perfectly possible to re-enact in the city of New York the whole tragedy
of Sarah Jacob, should ever a hysterical girl take it into head to do
so; and there would not be wanting, even from among those who might read
this history, individuals who would credit any monstrous declarations
she might make. Even now in a little town in Belgium, an ecstatic girl
is going through the same performance with extraordinary additions, and
books are written by learned physicians and theologians, with the object
of establishing the truth of her pretensions. To this most remarkable
instance, and one other of similar though perhaps even more remarkable
characteristic, the attention of the reader will presently be in