Page:The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893.djvu/390

324 He would have commanded her to hide herself and fast for many days, at the same time keeping her thoughts, not on her deprivation, but on the great glories that would be hers when she attained high rank; he would have commanded her at other times to fast and go cheerfully among people as if she fasted not; he would have commanded her yet again to eat to satiety of pleasant food and then to eat of offal, of filth, of live catfish, of any substance loathsome to the eye or palate; he would have commanded her to go sleepless, to go cold and weary, to burn and cut and bruise and lash herself and think not at all that she suffered, to drink awful potations of whisky or blood, or that which may not be named, and to swallow tobacco smoke; he would have commanded her to walk in cemeteries, in dense woods, beside bean-hills, through lonely streets, at night when the moon was on the wane and ghosts were strongest and most threatening;—in short, he would have commanded her to try her courage by every test that precedent or imagination could supply, and he would have had her dance till her feet were bleeding and her brain frenzied, at the dances of the Snake, the Fire, the Moon.

If she had faithfully and successfully executed these commands for weeks or months or even years, until she had stifled every womanish, or, if you please, every human qualm, then he or one of a score of his under-teachers would have said to her that now she was ready to conquer others as she had conquered herself, and the final advice would have been, "Never obey any one, never know any will but your own except when you are helping another Voodoo against a common enemy, make every one give in to you. Never change your purpose once it is fixed; if you do, you will form a habit of scattering power, and will bring against yourself Old Grand-father Rattlesnake, who never changes, never forgets."

From that time she would have met the Circle, not as a pupil, but either as an assistant or a rival, as circumstances demanded.

The "Circle"?

The Circle is a society for the dissemination of knowledge, and the trial of strength. The knowledge is principally biographical, with a fine flavor of autobiographical boastfulness. The members meet when the moon is dark, or when