njoyment would open before their mischief-loving minds. Entering on a
career of mystification, they would find the road made easy by the
gullibility of those about them; and the chances are that had they been
caught _in flagrante delicto_ they would have put in the plea that
fraudulent mediums so frequently offer to-day--"An evil spirit took
possession of me." As it was, the superstition of the times--and
doubtless the rats and shaky timbers of Mompesson House did their
part--was their constant and unfailing support. Everything that happened
would be magnified and distorted by the witnesses, either at the moment
or in retrospect, until in the end the Rev. Mr. Glanvill, recording
honestly enough what he himself had seen, could find material for a
history of the most marvelous marvels.

In short, the more closely one examines the details of the Tedworth
mystery, the more will he find himself in agreement with George
Cruikshank's brutally frank opinion:

"All this seems very strange, about this drummer and his drum;
But for myself I really think this drumming ghost was all a hum."

FOOTNOTES:

[B] Glanvill's "Sadducismus Triumphatus," a most instructive and
entertaining contribution to the literature of witchcraft. Contemporary
opinion of Glanvill is well expressed in Anthony a Wood's statement that
"he was a person of more than ordinary parts, of a quick, warm, spruce,
and gay fancy, and was more lucky, at least in his own judgment, in his
first hints and thoughts of things, than in his after notions, examined
and digested by longer and more mature deliberation. He had a very
tenacious memory, and was a great master of the English language,
expressing himself therein with easy fluency, and in a manly, yet withal
a clear style." Glanvill died in 1680 at the early age of forty-four.

[C] Used here in the sense of "always."

[D] The Italics are mine.

III

THE HAUNTING OF THE WESLEYS

The Rev. Samuel Wesley is chiefly known to posterity as the father of
the famous John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, and of the hardly less
famous Charles Wesley. But the Rev. Samuel has further claims to
remembrance. If he gave to the world John and Charles Wesley, he was
also the sire of seventeen other Wesleys, eight of whom, like their
celebrated brothers, grew to maturity and attained varying degrees of
distinction.

He was himself a man of distinction as preacher, poet, and
controversialist. His sermons w