return for his kindness. Mr. Duché replied, "You are very good, Mr. Penn, and the offer might prove advantageous, but the money would suit me better." "Blockhead!" (rejoined the proprietor, provoked at his overlooking the intended benefit,) "Well, well, thou shalt have thy money, but canst thou not see that this will be a very great city in a very short time?" "So I was paid," said Duché, who told this story, "and have ever since repented my own folly!" The above anecdote was told by Charles Thomson, Esq. to Mrs. D. Logan, and to her brother, J. P. Norris, at different times, saying he had received it from the son of Duché. During the whole time of the carrying trade in the Revolutionary war of France, our city and landed property near it constantly rose in value-as men got rich in trade and desired to invest funds in buildings, &c. In this state of things John Kearney, a taylor, contracted with Mr. Lyle to buy the estate called Hamilton's wharf and stores, near the Drawbridge, for 50,000 dollars. He gave 30,000 dollars in part payment, built 11000 dollars additional buildings thereon, and after all chose to forfeit the whole rather than pay the remaining 20,000 dollars! This was indeed an extraordinary case; but it shows the great reduction of value after the peace. The same James Lyle, as agent, sold the Bush-hill estate of 200 acres to General Cadwallader and associates, for the laying out of a town. They were to give a perpetual ground-rent of nearly 100 dollars daily-say 36,000 dollars per annum, and after actually paying in 200,000 dollars they surrendered back the whole! SUPERSTITIONS AND POPULAR CREDULITY. "Well attested, and as well believ'd, Heard solemn, goes the goblin-story round, OUR forefathers (the ruder part) brought with them much of the superstition of their "father-land," and here it found much to cherish and sustain it, in the credulity of the Dutch and Swedes, nor less from the Indians, who always abounded in marvellous relations, much incited by their conjurers and pow-vows. Dean Swift calls "superstition the spleen of the soul." Facts which have come down to our more enlightened times, can now no longer terrify ; but may often amuse, as Cowper says, "There's something in that ancient superstition, From the provincial executive minutes, preserved at Harrisburg, we learn the curious fact of an actual trial for witchcraft. On the 27th of 12 mo. 1683, Margaret Mattson and Yeshro Hendrickson, (Swedish women) who had been accused as witches on the 7th instant, were cited to their trial; on which occasion there were present, as their Judges, Governor William Penn and his council, James Harrison, William Biles, Lasse Cock, William Haigne, C. Taylor, William Clayton and Thomas Holmes. The Governor having given the Grand Jury their charge, they found the bill! The testimony of the witnesses before the Petit Jury is recorded. Such of the Jury as were absent were fined forty shillings each. Margaret Mattson being arraigned," she pleads not guilty, and will be tried by the country." Sundry witnesses were sworn, and many vague stories told-as that she bewitched calves, geese, &c. &c.-that oxen were rather above her malignant powers, but which reached all other cattle. The daughter of Margaret Mattson was said to have expressed her convictions of her mother being a witch. And the reported say-so's of the daughter were given in evidence, The dame Mattsondenieth Charles Ashcom's attestation at her soul, and saith where is my daughter? let her come and say so,"-"the prisoner denieth all things and saith that the witness speaks only by hearsay." Governor Penn finally charged the Jury, who brought in a verdict sufficiently ambiguous and ineffective for such a dubious offence, saying they find her "guilty of having the common fame of a witch, but not guilty in the manner and form as she stands indicted." They, however, take care to defend the good people from their future mal faisance by exacting from each of them security for good behaviour for six months. A decision infinitely more wise than hanging or drowning! They had each of them husbands, and Lasse Cock served as interpreter for Mrs. Mattson. The whole of this trial may be seen in detail in my MS. Annals, page 506, in the Historical Society. By this judicious verdict we as Pennsylvanians have probably escaped the odium of Salem. It is not, however, to be concealed that we had a law standing against witches; and it may possibly exonerate us in part, and give some plea for the trial itself, to say it was from a precedent by statute of king James I. That act, was held to be part of our law by an act of our provincial Assembly, entitled "an act against conjuration, witchcraft and dealing with evil and wicked spirits. It says therein that the act of king, James I. shall be put in execution in this province, and be of like force and effect as if the same were here repeated and enacted !" So solemnly and gravely sanctioned as was that act of the king what could we as colonists do! Our act as above was confirmed in all its parts, by the dignified council of George II. in the next year after its passage here, in the presence of eighteen Peers, including the great Duke of Malborough himself!* The superstition, such as it was, may have been deemed the common sin of the day, the enlightened Judge Hale himself fell into its belief. Our sister city, New York, had also her troubles with her witches. Soon after the English began to rule there, in 1664, a man and wife were arraigned as such, and a verdict found by the Jury against one of them, and in 1672, the people of West Chester complained to the British Governor, of a witch among them. A similar complaint, made next year to the Dutch Governor, Colve, was dismissed as groundless. The Virginians too, lax as we may have deemed them then in religious sentiments, had also their trial of Grace Sherwood in Princess Ann county-as the records still there may show. The populace also seconded the court, by subjecting her to the trial of water, and the place at Walks' farm, near the ferry, is still called "witch duck!" The Bible, it must be conceded, always countenanced these credences; but now, "a genera-, tion more refined" think it their boast to say "we have no hoofs nor horns in our religion!" *Nor was the dread of witchcraft an English failing only. We may find enough of it in France also; for six hundred persons were executed there for that alleged crime in 1609! In 1634, Grandiere, a priest of Loudun, was burnt for bewitching a whole convent of nuns ! In 1654, twenty women were executed in Bretagne for their witcheries! An old record of the province, of 1695, states the case of Robert Reman, presented at Chester for practising geomanty, and divining by a stick. The Grand Jury also presented the following books as vicious, to wit: Hidson's Temple of Wisdom, which teaches geomanty. Stott's Discovery of Witchcraft, and Cornelius Agrippa's Teaching Negromancy-another name probably for necromancy. The latter latinized name forcibly reminds one of those curious similar books of great value, (even of fifty thousand pieces of silver,) destroyed before Paul at Ephesus-"multi autum curiosa agentium, conferentes libros combusserunt coram omnibus.” Superstition has been called the "seminal principle of religion," because it undoubtedly has its origin in the dread of a spiritual world of which God is the supreme. The more vague and undefined our thoughts about these metaphysical mysteries, the more our minds are disposed to the legends of the nursery. As the man who walks in the dark, not seeing nor knowing his way, must feel increase of fear at possible dangers he cannot define; so he who goes abroad in the broad light of day proceeds fearlessly, because he sees and knows as harmless all the objects which surround him. Wherefore we infer, that if we have less terror of imagination now it is ascribable to our superior light and general diffusion of intelligence, thereby setting the mind at rest in many of these things. In the mean time there is a class, who will cherish their own distresses. They intend religious dread, but from misconceptions of its real beneficence and "good will to men," they, "Draw a wrong copy of the Christian face Without the smile, the sweetness, or the grace." We suppose some such views possessed the mind of the discriminating Burke, when he incidentally gave in his suffrage in their favour, saying, “Superstition is the religion of feeble minds, and they must be tolerated in an intermixture of it in some shape or other, else you deprive weak minds of a resource, found necessary to the strongest." Doctor Christopher Witt, born in England in 1675, came to this country in 1704, and died at Germantown in 1765 at the age of 90. He was a skilful physician and a learned religious man. He was reputed a magus or diviner, or in grosser terms, a conjurer. He was a student and a believer in all the learned absurdities and marvellous pretensions of the Rosie Crucian philosophy. The Germans of that day and many of the English practised the casting of nativities. As this required mathematical and astronomical learning, it often followed that such a competent scholar was called a "fortuneteller." Doctor Witt cast nativities for reward, and was called a conjurer, whilst his friend Christopher Lehman, who could do the same, and actually cast the nativities of his own children, (which I have seen) was called a scholar and a gentleman. Germantown was certainly very fruitful in credulity, and gave support to some three regular professors in the mysterious arts of hocus pocus and divination. Besides the Doctor before named, there was his disciple and once his inmate, Mr. Fraily-sometimes dub'd doctor also, though not possessed of learning. He was, however, pretty skilful in several diseases. When the cows and horses, and even persons, got strange diseases, such as baffled ordinary medicines, it was often a dernier resort to consult either of these persons for relief, and their prescriptions, without seeing the patients, were also given under the idea of witchcraft somehow, and the cure was effected! "Old Shrunk," as he was called, lived to the age of 80 and was also a great conjurer. Numerous persons from Philadelphia and elsewhere, some even from Jersey, went often to him to find out stolen goods and to get their fortunes told. They used to consult him, to learn where to go and dig for money. Several persons, whose names I suppress, used to go and dig for hidden treasures of nights. On such occasions if any one "spoke" while digging, or ran from terror without " the magic ring," previously made with incantation round the place, the whole influence of the spell was lost. An idea was once very prevalent, especially near to the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, that the pirates of Blackbeard's day had deposited treasure in the earth. The conceit was, that sometimes they killed a prisoner, and interred him with it, to make his ghost keep his vigils there as a guard “walking his weary round.” Hence it was not rare to hear of persons having seen a shpook or ghost, or of having dreamed of it a plurality of times; thus creating a sufficient incentive to dig on the spot. 66 -Dream after dream ensues; And still they dream that they shall still succeed, And still are disappointed!" To procure the aid of a professor in the black art was called hexing; and Shrunk in particular had great fame therein. He affected to use a diviner's rod, (a hazel switch) with a peculiar angle in it, which was to be self-turned while held in the two hands when approached to any sub-terrene minerals. Some still use the same kind of hazel rods to feel for hidden waters, so as thereby to dig in right places for wells. Colonel Thomas Forrest, who died in 1828 at the age of 85, had been in his early days a youth of much frolic and fun, always well disposed to give time and application to forward a joke. He found much to amuse himself in the credulity of some of the German families. I have heard him relate some of his anecdotes of the prestigeous kind with much humour. When he was about 21 years of age, a taylor who was measuring him for a suit of clothes happened to say, "now Thomas, if you and I could only find some of the money of the sea-robbers, (the pirates) we might drive our |