| Show PEOPLE ARE STILL AT Lucky days of the lucky lucky or evil omens and forerunners are only milder forms of witch- and some people still cling to such superstition The following letter in the N. J. Messenger shows that we do not have to go back to for evidences of Witchcraft Near Written for the Messenger by Joseph H. of Hamilton Very likely a little of the belief still It would not be right or honorable to attempt to hold up to ridicule anyone who once did or who still may have a lingering belief in for laws' used to recognize and the belief was once and not so long ago Not all who hang up old horse shoes think that there is anything in but it used to be held that a witch could not pass Old and eccentric persons who lived in seclusion were apt to gain the title of witches or and occurrences that are now explained away used to be attributed to the power of the working through human If the butter would Hot the imprint of a horse burned into the bottom of would generally The burying alive of a rooster or a black hen used to be thought a remedy for caused by Not more than twenty-one years two black hens were buried alive in Hamilton A few years before hot horse shoes were used to force the evil spirit from a well of drinking water in the same the tells the In a small house at the top of the hill near Lowry's in Hamilton liver Peter Corn-well and his They were natives of New York State and good They had the old family bible in which was recorded the births of many genera of the Both died some twenty odd years One day Peter told Hart that there was something the matter with the Avater in the Said notice a squirrel frequently in the trees near the and he chatters and runs and I believe that the water is bewitched and that the squirrel has something to do with Hart smiled and don't you shoot fix said put some hot horse shoes in the Later he told Hart that he had fixed Said threw a lot of hot horse shoes into the and I heard the sizzling and gurgling going on down f and I think I have settled Later he threw a lot more Long after Peter had passed when the well was being the horse shoes were and the find was explained by Old Charley who died at the Soldier's Home a few years was well known around Along in the he or disabled with rheumatism or something that prevented him from working for a few He told me that he had been and firmly believed When I laughed at he when you have lived as long as I you will believe it After there was no more absurdity about these beliefs than there is in the claims of so-called fortune tellers of who scoop in the dollars of silly young |
