at young heads are not always able to bear strange and unusual
assertions; and if some elder person possibly, or some book which
you have found, had not put it into your head, you would hardly have
discovered by your own reflection, that a frog or a toad was equal in
real loveliness to a frisking squirrel, or a pretty green lizard, as
you called it; not remembering that at this very time you gave the
lizard the name of pretty, and left it out to the frog--so liable we
all are to prejudices. But you went on with your story._]

These fancies, ladies, were not so very foolish or naughty perhaps,
but they may be forgiven in a child of six years old; but what I am
going to tell I shall be ashamed of, and repent, I hope, as long as
I live. It will teach me not to form rash judgements. Besides the
picture of the Ark, and many others which I have forgot, Stackhouse
contained one picture which made more impression upon my childish
understanding than all the rest. It was the picture of the raising
up of Samuel, which I used to call the Witch of Endor picture. I was
always very fond of picking up stories about witches. There was a book
called Glanvil on Witches, which used to lie about in this closet; it
was thumbed about, and shewed it had been much read in former times.
This was my treasure. Here I used to pick out the strangest stories.
My not being able to read them very well probably made them appear
more strange and out of the way to me. But I could collect enough to
understand that witches were old women who gave themselves up to do
mischief;--how, by the help of spirits as bad as themselves, they
lamed cattle, and made the corn not grow; and how they made images of
wax to stand for people that had done them any injury, or they thought
had done them injury; and how they burnt the images before a slow
fire, and stuck pins in them; and the persons which these waxen images
represented, however far distant, felt all the pains and torments in
good earnest, which were inflicted in show upon these images: and such
a horror I had of these wicked witches, that though I am now better
instructed, and look upon all these stories as mere idle tales, and
invented to fill people's heads with nonsense, yet I cannot recall to
mind the horrors which I then felt, without shuddering and feeling
something of the old fit return.

[_Here, my dear miss Howe, you may remember, that miss M----, the
youngest of our party, shewing some more curiosity