Page:History of Richland County, Ohio.djvu/265

 HISTORY OF RICHLAND COUNTY.

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��a brood of downy young chicks in their chests, and piles of sprawling kittens under the half- liushel ; and they overheard deep, cavernous voices, and fine piping ones, in conclave at mid- night up in the air and the treetops, and under the dead leaves, and beside the chimney, and tracks, with a cloven hoof in among them, were discernable. Think of the misery of a poor creature reputed to be a wntch. met in her own lowlv cabin b}' a weeping mother beseeching her to remove the spell of incantation that her sick child might recover ! No denial of the absurd charge could avail her ; no sympathy offered was accepted ; and the foolish mother could do no more than return home, burn some woolen rags to impregnate the out-door air ; stand the child on its head while she could coiint fifty backward : grease its spine with the oil of some wild animal ; cut the tip hairs off the tail of a black cat, and bind them on the forehead of the persecuted one, while she re- peated a certain sentence in the Lord's Pra3'er. Then, in her own language, •' If the child died, it died ; and if it lived, it lived. "

One verj' singular old man, a soldier of the Revolution, known to all the early settlers of the county, was remarkal)le for his peculiarities, his drolleries, and his fund of big stories. One of his little boys was a very good child, and he accounted for it from the ftict that the pros- pective mother had read a book of sermons, and the i-esult had made a favorable impression upon the mind of the boy. Relating this to a neighbor, he said : ■• h. he's the piousest little cuss you ^ver saw I"

Hauling logs out in the clearing one day with his hired man. the two sat down to rest, and make plans for lirush and log heaps. In an idle way the man said he would be satisfied if he had as mucli money as he wanted — sa^', a wagon loaded with needles, and ever}' needle worn out with making bags to hold his mone}'.

" Poh ! " said the soldier ; '• now, I wish I had a pile so big, that your pile wouldn't be enough

��to pa}' the interest on mine so long as you could hold a red-hot knitting needle in your ear ! "

He used to say to his nephew, in his strange, w'eird way, '• After I'm dead, I mean to come back, an' set round on the stumps, an' watch you, an' see how you're gittin' along. I'll set in the holler yonder, in the gTay o' the evenin', an' obsarve you; see "f I don't." And, though a half-century has elapsed since the old man was gathered to his fathers, the pioneer or his children never pass the - holler," a round, scooped-out basin in an old roadside field, without thinking of the words of the old man ; and involuntarily they turn their gaze upon the few gray stumps remaining, and the}' seem to see him sitting there with his queer, baggy breeches fastened b}' a wide waistband, his shirt collar open, and his long white locks tossed by the dallying breezes from the south.

Another superstitious old man used to divine secrets, tell fortunes, foretell events, find the places where money Was buried, cure wens by words, blow the fire out of burns, mumlile over felons and catarrhs, remove warts, and, with his mineral ball, search out where stolen goods w-ere hidden. The '■ mineral ball '" to which the superstitious ascribed such marvelous power, was no less than one of those hairy calculi found in the stomachs of cattle, a ball formed compactly of the hair which collects on the tongue of the animal while licking itself This man, one of that class whose taint infects every neighborhood, could not from any considera- tion be prevailed upon to leave a grave3'ard first of all. •• Why, drat it! " he would say, •'it's sure and sartin death; ncA'cr knowed a fellow to leave the graveyard fust but what he'd be the next 'un planted there! " ' When an old neighbor of his died suddenly, this man said, with his thumbs hooked into his trousers' pockets restfully: "■Wy, drat him, he might a knowed niore'n to leave the graveyard fust man! As soon as I seed him do it. I says to m^'self says I. "Dan. you're a goner; j'oure

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