up, whereof some were as hot as if they
came out of the fire; and marking them they laid them on the table; but
in a little while they found some of them again flying about. The spit
was carried up the chimney, and coming down with the point forward,
stuck in the back log, from whence one of the company removing it, it
was by an invisible hand thrown out at the window. This disturbance
continued from day to day; and sometimes a dismal hollow whistling
would be heard, and sometimes the trotting and snorting of a horse, but
nothing to be seen. The man went up the Great Bay in a boat on to a farm
which he had there; but the stones found him out, and carrying from
the house to the boat a stirrup iron the iron came jingling after him
through the woods as far as his house; and at last went away and was
heard no more. The anchor leaped overboard several times and stopt the
boat. A cheese was taken out of the press, and crumbled all over the
floor; a piece of iron stuck into the wall, and a kettle hung thereon.
Several cocks of hay, mow'd near the house, were taken up and hung upon
the trees, and others made into small whisps, and scattered about the
house. A man was much hurt by some of the stones. He was a Quaker, and
suspected that a woman, who charged him with injustice in detaining
some land from here, did, by witchcraft, occasion these preternatural
occurrences. However, at last they came to an end."

Now I have done with thee, O credulous and sour Cotton Mather! so get
thee back again to thy tomb in the old burying-ground on Copp's
Hill, where, unless thy nature is radically changed, thou makest it
uncomfortable for those about thee.

Nearly a hundred years afterwards, Portsmouth had another witch--a
tangible witch in this instance--one Molly Bridget, who cast her malign
spell on the eleemosynary pigs at the Almshouse, where she chanced
to reside at the moment. The pigs were manifestly bewitched, and Mr.
Clement March, the superintendent of the institution, saw only one
remedy at hand, and that was to cut off and burn the tips of their
tales. But when the tips were cut off they disappeared, and it was
in consequence quite impracticable to burn them. Mr. March, who was a
gentleman of expedients, ordered that all the chips and underbrush in
the yard should be made into heaps and consumed, hoping thus to catch
and do away with the mysterious and provoking extremities. The fires
were no sooner lighted than Molly Bridget ru