ng evil. The
witches were all burnt, banished, or panic-stuck, and in a little while
there was not an ugly old woman to be found throughout New England; which
is doubtless one reason why all the young women there are so handsome.
Those honest folk who had suffered from their incantations gradually
recovered, excepting such as had been afflicted with twitches and aches,
which, however, assumed the less alarming aspects of rheumatism, ciatics,
and lumbagos; and the good people of New England, abandoning the study of
the occult sciences, turned their attention to the more profitable hocus
pocus of trade, and soon became expert in the legerdemain art of turning a
penny. Still, however, a tinge of the old leaven is discernible, even unto
this day, in their characters; witches occasionally start up among them in
different disguises, as physicians, civilians and divines. The people at
large show a keenness, a cleverness and a profundity of wisdom, that
savors strongly of witchcraft; and it has been remarked, that whenever any
stones fall from the moon, the greater part of them is sure to tumble into
New England.

FOOTNOTES:

[43] Hazard's State Papers.

[44] New Plymouth Record.

[45] Mather's Hist. New Eng. b. vi. ch. 7.

CHAPTER IX.

When treating of these tempestuous times, the unknown writer of the
Stuyvesant manuscript breaks out into an apostrophe in praise of the good
St. Nicholas, to whose protecting care he ascribes the dissensions which
broke out in the council of the league, and the direful witchcraft which
filled all Yankee land as with Egyptian darkness.

A portentous gloom, says he, hung lowering over the fair valleys of the
east; the pleasant banks of the Connecticut no longer echoed to the sounds
of rustic gayety; grisly phantoms glided about each wild brook and silent
glen; fearful apparitions were seen in the air; strange voices were heard
in solitary places, and the border towns were so occupied in detecting and
punishing losel witches, that for a time all talk of war was suspended,
and New Amsterdam and its inhabitants seemed to be totally forgotten.

I must not conceal the fact, that at one time there was some danger of
this plague of witchcraft extending into the New Netherlands; and certain
witches, mounted on broomsticks, are said to have been seen whisking in
the air over some of the Dutch villages near the borders; but the worthy
Nederlanders took the precaution to nail horse