Page:History of Richland County, Ohio.djvu/636

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��HISTORY OF RICHLAND COUNTY

��weight — on a pair of scales — of ver}' indo- lent habits, but a more inoffensive, good- natured man there was not in the county of Richland. Wycoff and his confreres, on the occasion aboA-e alluded to, held a kind of " ex- perience meeting," in which each one is sup- posed to have told " what I know about witch- craft," and its probable cause and cure. The conclusion of their deliberations was that the witch should be shot, not in dramatis jyersono', but by proxy. So they very gravely went to work, and, with the aid and assistance of the female department of the house, took wheat- flour and created a dough image, made after the "similitude and likeness" of a sinful and erring old woman, whose presence was now in- voked with mysterious incantations. It was then placed on the corner of an outside, old- fashioned mud and stick chimney, at a con- venient angle, with a big forked cherry-tree, where an excellent marksman was placed, with a rifle loaded with a silver bullet which had been melted down from two or three old, smooth sixpences that had been previously well soaked in buttermilk from which no Initter would come. The nerve of the marksman was good, and his aim was true. No better nerve was ever exhibited by "Fitz James or Roderick Dhu," considering the conditions. 8ir Walter Scott's heroes pale before him. The silver bul- let was true to its magic charm and '' accom- plished the end whereunto they sent it." At all events, the poor innocent image was bored through and through ; and it was not three days till there was a report circulated all

��through the neighborhood that there was a cor- responding wound in poor old Mrs. Holstein's side or bosom. It is a veritable fact, however, that Mrs. Holstein died shortly after these ridic- ulous transactions, which served to strengthen some in the faith. The writer hereof was pres- ent the year after these things took place, when a witch-doctor was sent for, who lived two miles north of Mansfield, who claimed to have power to exorcise evil spirits. He went out to the sugar-camp and muttered something over the sugar-kettles, to make the sugar ''grain" good. He appeared to be an honest Pennsylvania Dutchman, talked liroken English, charged a small fee for his services, stayed all night with the family, and, early in the morning, left them with his blessing. This was about the winding up of the era of witchcraft.

Absurd and ridiculous as these things were, they had their counterpart in the spiritual rap- ping period, a quarter of a century later. Not more than a mile from this same locality, on the farm owned at that time by Henry New- man, and rented b}' a man named Heppard, some very extraordinary things took place, and the family was kept in a terrific state of alarm and excitement for weeks and months by simi- lar noises, thumping, rapping and tearing round the house in the night : and no satisfactory so- lution of the strange proceedings ever came to light. But these singular manifestations, like the former, have all passed away, and we look back upon them with mingled feelings of won- der and incredulity.

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