nswer, as he supposed, to prayer and a
long-cherished desire to benefit his afflicted fellow-creatures,
received, as he believed, a special gift of healing. For several years
applicants from nearly all parts of New England visited him with the
story of their sufferings and praying for a relief, which, it is
averred, was in many instances really obtained. Letters from the sick
who were unable to visit him, describing their diseases, were sent him;
and many are yet living who believe that they were restored miraculously
at the precise period of time when Austin was engaged in reading their
letters. One of my uncles was commissioned to convey to him a large
number of letters from sick persons in his neighborhood. He found the
old man sitting in his plain parlor in the simplest garb of his sect,--
grave, thoughtful, venerable,--a drab-coated Prince Hohenlohe. He
received the letters in silence, read them slowly, casting them one
after another upon a large pile of similar epistles in a corner of the
apartment.

Half a century ago nearly every neighborhood in New England was favored
with one or more reputed dealers in magic. Twenty years later there
were two poor old sisters who used to frighten school urchins and
"children of a larger growth" as they rode down from New Hampshire on
their gaunt skeleton horses, strung over with baskets for the
Newburyport market. They were aware of the popular notion concerning
them, and not unfrequently took advantage of it to levy a sort of black
mail upon their credulous neighbors. An attendant at the funeral of one
of these sisters, who when living was about as unsubstantial as Ossian's
ghost, through which the stars were visible, told me that her coffin was
so heavy that four stout men could barely lift it.

One, of my earliest recollections is that of an old woman, residing
about two miles from the place of my nativity, who for many years had
borne the unenviable reputation of a witch. She certainly had the look
of one,--a combination of form, voice, and features which would have
made the fortune of an English witch finder in the days of Matthew Paris
or the Sir John Podgers of Dickens, and insured her speedy conviction in
King James's High Court of Justiciary. She was accused of divers ill-
doings,--such as preventing the cream in her neighbor's churn from
becoming butter, and snuffing out candles at huskings and quilting-
parties.

"She roamed the country fa