the people going out found the gate wrung off the hinges, and stones flying and falling thick about them, and striking of them seemingly with a great force, but really affecting ’em no more than if a soft touch were given them.  The glass windows were broken by the stones that came not from without, but from within; and other instruments were in a like manner hurled about.  Nine of the stones they took up, whereof some were as hot as if they came out of the fire; and marking them they laid them on the table; but in a little while they found some of them again flying about.  The spit was carried up the chimney, and coming down with the point forward, stuck in the back log, from whence one of the company removing it, it was by an invisible hand thrown out at the window.  This disturbance continued from day to day; and sometimes a dismal hollow whistling would be heard, and sometimes the trotting and snorting of a horse, but nothing to be seen.  The man went up the Great Bay in a boat on to a farm which he had there; but the stones found him out, and carrying from the house to the boat a stirrup iron the iron came jingling after him through the woods as far as his house; and at last went away and was heard no more.  The anchor leaped overboard several times and stopt the boat.  A cheese was taken out of the press, and crumbled all over the floor; a piece of iron stuck into the wall, and a kettle hung thereon.  Several cocks of hay, mow’d near the house, were taken up and hung upon the trees, and others made into small whisps, and scattered about the house.  A man was much hurt by some of the stones.  He was a Quaker, and suspected that a woman, who charged him with injustice in detaining some land from here, did, by witchcraft, occasion these preternatural occurrences.  However, at last they came to an end.”

Now I have done with thee, O credulous and sour Cotton Mather! so get thee back again to thy tomb in the old burying-ground on Copp’s Hill, where, unless thy nature is radically changed, thou makest it uncomfortable for those about thee.

Nearly a hundred years afterwards, Portsmouth had another witch—­a tangible witch in this instance—­one Molly Bridget, who cast her malign spell on the eleemosynary pigs at the Almshouse, where she chanced to reside at the moment.  The pigs were manifestly bewitched, and Mr. Clement March, the superintendent of the institution, saw only one remedy at hand, and that was to cut off and burn the tips of their tales.  But when the tips were cut off they disappeared, and it was in consequence quite impracticable to burn them.  Mr. March, who was a gentleman of expedients, ordered that all the chips and underbrush in the yard should be made into heaps and consumed, hoping thus to catch and do away with the mysterious and provoking extremities.  The fires were no sooner lighted than Molly Bridget rushed from room to room in a state of frenzy.  With the dying flames her own vitality subsided, and she was dead before the ash-piles were cool.  I say it seriously when I say that these are facts of which there is authentic proof.