Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 19.djvu/43

 UMPQUA ACADEMY 33 perience of some of the hallowe'en pranks "pulled off" around there sometimes would 1 have dispelled this illusion. When Dr. Miller found his gates off the hinges, his pigs turned out of the pen, and F. R. Hill had a new wagon dis- sected, one wheel hung up in the top of a tree over the road to the academy, and the other wheels and gears scattered to the four winds and several other breezes of heaven, or sunk in the "old swimmin' hole," and when neighbor Clinkinbeard, who had his wagon loaded with wheat, ready to go to mill, found it next morning sitting astride the "comb" of his barn, all loaded up, just as he had left it the evening before, and his forty-foot well rope tied in the top of a tall oak, it looked as if there had been something doing around there. He might well have wished he had an Aladdin's lamp to rub, to summon the aid of genii to get his wagon down from its exalted posi- tion. At midnight, when the old Academy bell rang out a wild alarm by the spooks, through the medium of a long rope reaching from the bell to the neck of a wild calf on the campus, it was an indubitable proof of the operation of spirits, but the trustees interpreted it as the work of the devil in the boys. We have all read how persons in sleep, or the somnambulistic state, could lift or carry in the night a stone or other heavy object that they could not budge when awake in the day time. It was a matter of fact that four Academy boys could lift with ease, and carry an outhouse and set it up on Dr. Miller's or Flem Hill's porch that would have taken a team to move. The psychology of this is commended to the investigation of mental philosophers. This sort of proceedings received a heavy jolt, or at least John Clinkinbeard did, during a series of meetings held at the academy. There was no church building in the vicinity then, and church services were held in the academy. While the church people were holding a revival, his satanic majesty often stirred up a revival of his work among the boys. During one of these meetings the spirit of deviltry became rampant. One evening there was a large crowd in the chapel room above,