Page:Haiti- Her History and Her Detractors.djvu/399

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Superstitions in the United States
363

"the invalid to draw blood from her mouth. He concluded to put this remedy to the test, and he went to Rothenburg's house while Catherine's husband was away and found the alleged witch sitting in a chair holding her child in her lap. He laid hands on her unceremoniously, and beat and chopped her until the mouth ran red with blood, and she was bereft of her senses." Roberts proved by doctors' sworn statements that since the maltreatment of the mysterious woman he had recovered his normal health, and had begun to improve the moment the deed was done.

Twelve men and women recounted the uncanny doings of the Jewess. Sickness had come to one family because she had sprinkled earth from a murderer's grave in their water barrel; a certain man who had declined to give her $5 had become a cripple; she had been seen prowling at midnight in a cemetery near the grave of a gentleman whose departure from this life at the end of a rope had given him distinction among the shades; her eyes had been observed to shoot fire.

Had Spenser St. John known these facts he would not have failed to ascribe them to Haiti, and his book would have had one more sensational chapter.

The following account of a religious meeting which took place at Beal's Island, which is a part of Jonesport, Maine, is still more extraordinary:

"Scenes during the meetings were weird, spectacular and horrible," says the New York Herald of March 13, 1904. "Elder Buber preached a hell-fire doctrine with a vivid and impassioned eloquence. He pictured to the awe-stricken villagers awful torments which are to be theirs if they did not speedily believe and repent. He told them that they must purify themselves, body and soul; that they must sever all earthly ties, must give all their money, houses, lands, cattle, and even clothing to the preachers. His listeners, terrified by the awful fate in store for them and quaking before the awe-inspiring gaze of Allaby, assented.

"The exhorter worked himself into a frenzy. He shouted that the mouth of hell was eagerly yawning