we wonder at anything which it might please those servants of the
devil, the witches, to do, when even a spirit--a disembodied ghost--a mere
appearance--a spectre--an apparition--could audibly box a lad's ears
before a whole room full of spectators, and at last box them so soundly as
to break his neck, and kill him? Baxter's "World of Spirits" gives this
story as happening to a barber's apprentice in Cambridge, in the year
1662. The spectre who killed the boy was in the garb and appearance of a
gentlewoman; and at about the same hour, as near as they could guess, when
it boxed the boy's ears and broke his neck at Cambridge, while the father
was sitting at dinner with the boy's master at Ely, "the appearance of a
Gentlewoman comes in, looking very angrily, taking a Turn or two,
disappeared." It seems that the spectre had that night been endeavouring
to persuade the boy to leave his apprenticeship and return home to Ely,
where she and he were very free and had long been wont to disport
together, even while company was in the room, and while the father, a
minister named Franklin, was sitting there. After some treaty the boy
resolutely said he would not go home, whereupon the spirit gave him a
sounding box on the ear, which made him very ill; but he rose as usual
when the morning came, though unfit for work or even play. When the master
heard the story, he rode over to Ely to see Mr. Franklin, and confer with
him respecting the uncomfortable and inconvenient desires of the spirit;
and in the forenoon of the day, the boy sitting by the kitchen fire, his
mistress being by, suddenly cried out, "O, mistress, look: there's the
gentlewoman!" The mistress looked, but saw nothing, yet soon after heard a
noise as of a great box on the ears, and turning round saw the boy bending
down his neck: and presently he died. This is the story gravely told by
Baxter, in the fullest faith that all was as he narrated, and that there
was no natural explanation possible to a circumstance which derived its
only importance from its supernaturalism.

Another spirit, a few years later--in 1667--took to haunting a man's house
at Kinton, six miles from Worcester; and boxed his ears as he sat by the
fire over against the maid. At which the man cried out, and went away to
his son's in the town, not caring to continue where a ghost could make
itself equal to a living body with bones and muscles, and give him
undeniable proofs of the same. A minister of the p