ad the Greek Testament in the original; that she was from her
earliest youth emotional and sentimental; that despite her intellectual
tastes and attainments she gave her hand to an illiterate journeyman
plumber and glazier; and that when the fruit of this union lay dying by
her side she insisted on dictating to her husband a poem afterward
published under the moving caption of "A Mother's Address to Her Dying
Infant." Another of her poems, by the way, is significantly entitled,
"The Lucid Interval."

There can, then, be little question that Hetty Wesley was precisely the
type of girl to derive amusement by working on the superstitious fears
of those about her. We find, too, in the evidence itself certain
fugitive references directly pointing to her as the creator of Old
Jeffrey. It seems that she had a practice of sitting up and moving about
the house long after all the other inmates, except her father, had
retired for the night. The ghost was especially noisy and malevolent
when in her vicinity, knocking boisterously on the bed in which she
slept, and even knocking under her feet. And what is most suggestive,
two witnesses, her father and her sister Susannah, testify that on some
occasions the noises failed to wake her, but caused her "to tremble
exceedingly in her sleep." It must, indeed, have been a difficult matter
to restrain laughter at the spectacle of the night-gowned, night-capped,
much bewildered parson, candle in one hand and pistol in the other,
peering under and about the bed in quest of the invisible ghost.

To be sure, it is impossible to adduce positive proof that Hetty Wesley
and Old Jeffrey were one and the same. But the evidence supports this
view of the case as it supports no other, and, taken in conjunction with
the facts of her earlier and later life, leaves little doubt that had
the Rev. Samuel paid closer attention to the comings and goings of this
particular daughter the ghost that so sorely tried him would have taken
its flight much sooner than it did. Her motive for the deception must be
left to conjecture. In all probability it was only the desire to amaze
and terrorize, a desire as was said before, not infrequently operative
along similar lines in the case of young people of a lively disposition
and morbid imagination.

IV

THE VISIONS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG

In mid April of the memorable year 1745, two men, hastening through a
busy London thoroughfare, paused for a moment to fol