Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/813

 Is as you choose it; You make take The stake, Or you may lose it. Start in To win And keep straight in the way Unflagging to the end; Whatever it may be Is victory.

—, Success.

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WISDOM OF THE IGNORANT

It is related of the celebrated astronomer, Tycho Brahe, that one night, on leaving his observatory, he suddenly found himself surrounded by a tumultuous crowd which filled the public square. Upon inquiring the cause of so great a concourse, they pointed out to him, in the constellation of Cygnus, a brilliant star, which he, aided by the best telescopes, had never perceived. (Text.)

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Wisdom Rejected—See.

Wish, A Boy's—See.

Wishes—See.

Wishes Fulfilled—See.

Wit and Business—See.

Wit, Ready—See.

WITCHCRAFT

In two hundred years thirty thousand witches are said to have been destroyed in England; and as recently as 1716, when the town was enjoying the wit and satire of the "Queen Anne men," a woman and her child nine years of age were hanged at Huntingdon. Addison, with a mind that wavered between superstition and good sense, said he could not forbear believing "in such a commerce with evil spirits as that which we express by the name of witchcraft," while, at the same time, he could "give no credit to any particular modern instance of it." Scotland, which is regarded as an enlightened part of the empire, held with the utmost tenacity its faith in witchcraft. The Scotch, a vigorous people, put their hands to the work heartily. It was easy to find victims, since, as we have said already, they tortured until they confest. It is calculated that two thousand persons were burned in Scotland in the last forty years of the sixteenth century. A century later a witch epidemic broke out in the village of Mohra, in Sweden. A number of children were said to be bewitched, and familiar with the devil, who was described as wearing a gray coat, red and blue stockings, a red beard, and a high-crowned hat. The witches kept this exacting person supplied with children, and if they did not procure him a good many, "they had no peace or quiet for him." The poor wretches were doomed to have no more peace or quiet in this world. Seventy were condemned to death, and twenty-three were burnt in a single fire at Mohra. It is noteworthy that a belief in this frightful superstition which destroyed more innocent persons than the so-called holy office was held by men of great intellectual power—by Erasmus, Bacon, and the judicious Hooker; by Sir Edward Coke, Sir Thomas Browne, Baxter, and Sir Matthew Hale. And the old belief is not yet extinct in country districts. Only recently a man at Totnes accused his father of bewitching, or, as a "white witch" called it, "overlooking" his daughter, so that she suffered for months from a disease in the arms; and the people who live in remote villages may often hear of similar cases.—London Illustrated News.

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WITCHES, BELIEF IN

Dr. James B. McCord writes in Medical Missions:

The Zulu baby is born into the fear of witchcraft; in the fear of witchcraft he grows up, and when he sickens and is about to die, his one thought is that a spell has been cast upon him for which the charm can not be discovered. All his life long he dreads in lonely places to meet the inswela-*bova—an inhuman man, lacking only hair or fur to make him altogether a beast—a sort of beast in human form who rides backward on a baboon, ready to pounce upon and make medicine of the unwary traveler. In mature manhood he suspects his neighbor, his friend, his brother, and even his wife of having dealings with makers of charms and poisons. He walks with an uneasy feeling that an enemy may have put medicine in his path to harm him. From every possible source, from earth and from sky, from river and from forest, from friend and from foe, he is continually apprehensive of evil influence coming upon him and searching for a talisman to wear against it.

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