These fancies, ladies, were not so very foolish or naughty perhaps, but they may be forgiven in a child of six years old; but what I am going to tell I shall be ashamed of, and repent, I hope, as long as I live.  It will teach me not to form rash judgements.  Besides the picture of the Ark, and many others which I have forgot, Stackhouse contained one picture which made more impression upon my childish understanding than all the rest.  It was the picture of the raising up of Samuel, which I used to call the Witch of Endor picture.  I was always very fond of picking up stories about witches.  There was a book called Glanvil on Witches, which used to lie about in this closet; it was thumbed about, and shewed it had been much read in former times.  This was my treasure.  Here I used to pick out the strangest stories.  My not being able to read them very well probably made them appear more strange and out of the way to me.  But I could collect enough to understand that witches were old women who gave themselves up to do mischief;—­how, by the help of spirits as bad as themselves, they lamed cattle, and made the corn not grow; and how they made images of wax to stand for people that had done them any injury, or they thought had done them injury; and how they burnt the images before a slow fire, and stuck pins in them; and the persons which these waxen images represented, however far distant, felt all the pains and torments in good earnest, which were inflicted in show upon these images:  and such a horror I had of these wicked witches, that though I am now better instructed, and look upon all these stories as mere idle tales, and invented to fill people’s heads with nonsense, yet I cannot recall to mind the horrors which I then felt, without shuddering and feeling something of the old fit return.

[Here, my dear miss Howe, you may remember, that miss M——­, the youngest of our party, shewing some more curiosity than usual, I winked upon you to hasten to your story, lest the terrors which you were describing should make too much impression upon a young head, and you kindly understood my sign, and said less upon the subject of your fears, than I fancy you first intended.]

This foolish book of witch stories had no pictures in it, but I made up for them out of my own fancy, and out of the great picture of the raising up of Samuel in Stackhouse.  I was not old enough to understand the difference there was between these silly improbable tales which imputed such powers to poor old women, who are the most helpless things in the creation, and the narrative in the Bible, which does not say, that the witch or pretended witch, raised up the dead body of Samuel by her own power, but as it clearly appears, he was permitted by the divine will to appear, to confound the presumption of Saul; and that the witch herself was really as much frightened and confounded at the miracle as Saul himself, not expecting a real appearance; but probably having prepared some juggling, slight-of-hand tricks and sham appearance, to deceive the eyes of Saul:  whereas she, nor any one living, had ever the power to raise the dead to life, but only He who made them from the first.  These reasons I might have read in Stackhouse itself, if I had been old enough, and have read them in that very book since I was older, but at that time I looked at little beyond the picture.