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MAGUS

88 ventured to remark that I saw by the papers their lamp had been broken but that I was cautious in believing all I saw in them, owing to the tendency reporters had of exaggerating. “You may well say that”, he rejoined. “There’s reporters and there’s scoffers and as long as I able to keep them out, they’ll not get in her; for you, mem, it’s a pleasure to talk to you and I’ll just call my wife down, she will be proud to you”. I made my acknowledgements to all this civility and trusted I was not trespassing on their time. As I took the surroundings, they were submitting the broken lamp for my inspection and [illegible] busy repeating what he called the marvellous events that had transpired. She asked would I look at the lace curtains. I looked at them and observed that the holes were the same as scissors would make at any time. “Yes, mem”, she hastened to say, “that was the very part that surprised me”. “It was yourself that put the potatoes in the pot the time there were some missed?” “Oh, yes, with my own hands and it was me that tied the lid down with a string all round the pot; and when I went for to open the lid, says I, now I’ll just see if they’re all there and when I looked what would have uv it but uv my eleven pratus not one had I but six, that was five tuk. James there see’d me out them in”. James corroborates this statement. She then goes on to tell “that pratus had been often tuk and put at the back uv the fire and that, when somebody said they would do the fowl, they were afterwards conveyed to the field”[sic]. He now tells how one evening they were at worship and a copy of Kitte’s Bible was pulled down with a tug and threw on the floor. “ I looked at her”, he says, “not to mind for she was always nervous when they begun”. After showing me the mutilated boots and hat, the broken delf, windows [?], he drew from his pocket a most voluminous correspondence from sympathising and enlightened spiritualists. One gentleman had pointed out the similarity between Wesley’s visitations and his, Wesley’s family being frequently disturbed at worship in the same way, and he seems flattered by the comparison. He was also strong in mediums, papers of “Daybreak” and “Moonshine” &c. and I thought, as he quieted the “marvellous” from them, what a most miserable cause that requires to be propped with such results as I had before me. In alluding to the reports connected with their son, the father admitted he was not all they would wish him to be, but none but scoffers, he declared, would impute some marvellous events to him; while his mother cried out there was no such a book as the “Black Art” in the house, and her son had never read “Cornelius Agrippa” in his life. I thoroughly believed her. I asked them why they never tried the simple plan of putting anyone in charge of the house while they retired from it for a while. He declared he would rather let Providence settle al for him. In the next sentence, however, he told of two men, strong in mysterious lore, whose aid he had

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