under maladies created by such
influence were accustomed to do. They stiffened their necks so hard at
one time that the joints could not be moved; at another time their necks
were so flexible and supple that it seemed the bone was dissolved. They
had violent convulsions, in which their jaws snapped with the force of a
spring-trap set for vermin. Their limbs were curiously contorted, and to
those who had a taste for the marvellous, seemed entirely dislocated and
displaced. Amid these distortions, they cried out against the poor old
woman, whose name was Glover, alleging that she was in presence with
them adding to their torments. The miserable Irishwoman, who hardly
could speak the English language, repeated her Pater Noster and Ave
Maria like a good Catholic; but there were some words which she had
forgotten. She was therefore supposed to be unable to pronounce the
whole consistently and correctly, and condemned and executed
accordingly.

But the children of Goodwin found the trade they were engaged in to be
too profitable to be laid aside, and the eldest in particular continued
all the external signs of witchcraft and possession. Some of these were
excellently calculated to flatter the self-opinion and prejudices of the
Calvinist ministers by whom she was attended, and accordingly bear in
their very front the character of studied and voluntary imposture. The
young woman, acting, as was supposed, under the influence of the devil,
read a Quaker treatise with ease and apparent satisfaction; but a book
written against the poor inoffensive Friends the devil would not allow
his victim to touch, She could look on a Church of England Prayer-book,
and read the portions of Scripture which it contains without difficulty
or impediment; but the spirit which possessed her threw her into fits if
she attempted to read the same Scriptures from the Bible, as if the awe
which it is supposed the fiends entertain for Holy Writ depended, not on
the meaning of the words, but the arrangement of the page, and the type
in which they were printed. This singular species of flattery was
designed to captivate the clergyman through his professional opinions;
others were more strictly personal. The afflicted damsel seems to have
been somewhat of the humour of the Inamorata of Messrs. Smack, Pluck,
Catch, and Company, and had, like her, merry as well as melancholy fits.
She often imagined that her attendant spirits brought her a handsome
pony to ride