r her violent temper, which sometimes
made her religious profession doubtful. She was equally ready to exhort
in school-house prayer-meetings and dance in a Washington ball-room,
while her father was a member of Congress. She early embraced the
doctrine of the Second Advent, and felt it her duty to proclaim the
Lord's speedy coming. With this message she crossed the Atlantic and
spent the greater part of a long life in travelling over Europe and
Asia. She lived some time with Lady Hester Stanhope, a woman as
fantastic and mentally strained as herself, on the slope of Mt. Lebanon,
but finally quarrelled with her in regard to two white horses with red
marks on their backs which suggested the idea of saddles, on which her
titled hostess expected to ride into Jerusalem with the Lord. A friend
of mine found her, when quite an old woman, wandering in Syria with a
tribe of Arabs, who with the Oriental notion that madness is
inspiration, accepted her as their prophetess and leader. At the time
referred to in Snow-Bound she was boarding at the Rocks Village about
two miles from us.

In my boyhood, in our lonely farm-house, we had scanty sources of
information; few books and only a small weekly newspaper. Our only
annual was the Almanac. Under such circumstances story-telling was a
necessary resource in the long winter evenings. My father when a young
man had traversed the wilderness to Canada, and could tell us of his
adventures with Indians and wild beasts, and of his sojourn in the
French villages. My uncle was ready with his record of hunting and
fishing and, it must be confessed, with stories which he at least half
believed, of witchcraft and apparitions. My mother, who was born in the
Indian-haunted region of Somersworth, New Hampshire, between Dover and
Portsmouth, told us of the inroads of the savages, and the narrow escape
of her ancestors. She described strange people who lived on the
Piscataqua and Cocheco, among whom was Bantam the sorcerer. I have in my
possession the wizard's "conjuring book," which he solemnly opened when
consulted. It is a copy of Cornelius Agrippa's Magic printed in 1651,
dedicated to Dr. Robert Child, who, like Michael Scott, had learned "the
art of glammorie In Padua beyond the sea," and who is famous in the
annals of Massachusetts, where he was at one time a resident, as the
first man who dared petition the General Court for liberty of
conscience. The full title of the book is Three Books of O