parents, and
servants their masters, to amuse themselves at the dances of those
possessed, and greedily imbibed the poison of mental infection. Above a
hundred unmarried women were seen raving about in consecrated and
unconsecrated places, and the consequences were soon perceived. Gangs of
idle vagabonds, who understood how to imitate to the life the gestures
and convulsions of those really affected, roved from place to place
seeking maintenance and adventures, and thus, wherever they went,
spreading this disgusting spasmodic disease like a plague; for in
maladies of this kind the susceptible are infected as easily by the
appearance as by the reality. At last it was found necessary to drive
away these mischievous guests, who were equally inaccessible to the
exorcisms of the priests and the remedies of the physicians. It was not,
however, until after four months that the Rhenish cities were able to
suppress these impostures, which had so alarmingly increased the
original evil. In the meantime, when once called into existence, the
plague crept on and found abundant food in the tone of thought which
prevailed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and even, though in
a minor degree, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth, causing a
permanent disorder of the mind, and exhibiting, in those cities to whose
inhabitants it was a novelty, scenes as strange as they were detestable.

B. THE CROWD

1. The "Animal" Crowd

_a. The Flock_[300]

Understand that a flock is not the same thing as a number of sheep. On
the stark, wild headlands of the White Mountains, as many as thirty
Bighorn are known to run in loose, fluctuating hordes; in fenced
pastures, two to three hundred; close-herded on the range, two to three
thousand; but however artificially augmented, the flock is always a
conscious adjustment. There are always leaders, middlers, and tailers,
each insisting on its own place in the order of going. Should the flock
be rounded up suddenly in alarm it mills within itself until these have
come to their own places.

There is much debate between herders as to the advantage of goats over
sheep as leaders. In any case there are always a few goats in a flock,
and most American owners prefer them; but the Frenchmen choose
bell-wethers. Goats lead naturally by reason of a quicker instinct,
forage more freely, and can find water on their own account. But
wethers, if trained with care, learn what goats abhor, to take broke