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MAGUS

83 fancy to rotate, with various degrees of swiftness, upon the tables and then, as if smitten with the same idea of self-martyrdom, shot off at a tangent, ending sharply and forever their symmetrical usefulness upon the floor. Coats, which formerly hung with all the staidness and propriety upon their respective pins, now shivered and flattered, as if seized with an ague, and again expanded in all their proportions as if each were enveloping an invisible Falstaff or an aspiring Claimant. Hats too unto themselves wings and bodily flew away. In sooth [sic], the natural order of affairs in the house were completely deranged and the more agitated became the inanimate articles, the more excited became, naturally enough, the members of the family. Every conceivable project that could be devised for elucidating these mysteries failed utterly in pointing out a cause which could be understood. Even the potatoes boiling in a pot on the fire became mashed and leaped behind the fire. And when ten or twelve were entered for boiling, a tot up in a few minutes revealed the startling fact that several had altogether and accountably disappeared, though many pairs of straining eyes were watching with almost painful eagerness, every motion of the immovable pot. Latterly also, large stones, weighing on average about three pounds or three pounds and a half, have rolled slowly down the stairs, bobbing with leisurely ease from step to step. These have been sometimes damp and wet with clay, as if just removed from a ditch or roadway, and that other times, dry and clean as if preserved from the weather for a considerable space of time. No persons have been in the upper portion of the house where such events have happened and not the vaguest shadow upon which to found a belief in the collusion or complicity of any parties in the causing of them has been at all afforded. These manifestations will show the cruel and persistent manner in which Mr Allen and his family have been afflicted, though they are far from exhausting the minor details of a system of persecution as vexatious and hard to be borne as it is strange and unexplainable both in cause and result. The family consist of Mr and Mrs Allen, two sons and a daughter. One of the two male branches, a young man of twenty-two or thereabouts, resides constantly with his father and is said to be an apt student of the art of legerdemain. Rumour will insist on mixing him up with the occurrences, but they have been known to take place when he was away working on the farm. Mr Allen has ceased to accept or even to listen to any interpretation or explanation of the facts. He is not, by any means, a nervous man not superstitious in his way of thinking; but having seen these things occur, and being utterly unable to assert a reason for them, he would at the present moment, be an easily manipulated disciple of the most ardent spiritualist. The whole affair in its recital might seem quite a ludicrous matter, were it not for the very great pain suffered by those most concerned. That the people of the town are much excited by it and anxiously awaiting the denouement is

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