company. A story is told about
Ziito and some hogs, just like that about Faust and the horse.

In all these stories about magicians, their power is derived from the
devil. It was long believed that the ancient university of Salamanca in
Spain, founded A. D. 1240, was the chief school of magic, and had
regular professors and classes in it. The devil was supposed to be the
special patron of this department, and he had a curious fee for his
trouble, which he collected every commencement day. The last exercise of
the graduating class on that day was, to run across a certain cavern
under the University. The devil was always on hand at this time, and had
the privilege of grabbing at the last man of the crowd. If he caught
him, as he commonly did, the soul of the unhappy student became the
property of his captor. Hence arose the phrase "Devil take the
hindmost." Sometime it happened that some very brisk fellow was left
last by some accident. If he were brisk enough to dodge the devil's
grab, that personage only caught his shadow. In this case it was well
understood that this particular enchanter never had any shadow
afterwards, and he always became very eminent in his art.

CHAPTER. XXXVII.

WITCHCRAFT.--NEW YORK WITCHES.--THE WITCH MANIA.--HOW FAST THEY BURNED
THEM.--THE MODE OF TRIAL.--WITCHES TO DAY IN EUROPE.

Witchcraft is one of the most baseless, absurd, disgusting and silly of
all the humbugs. And it is not a dead humbug either; it is alive, busily
exercised by knaves and believed by fools all over the world. Witches
and wizards operate and prosper among the Hottentots and negroes and
barbarous Indians, among the Siberians and Kirgishes and Lapps, of
course. Everybody knows _that_--they are poor ignorant creatures! Yes:
but are the French and Germans and English and Americans poor ignorant
creatures too? They are, if the belief and practice of witchcraft among
them is any test; for in all those countries there are witches. I take
up one of the New York City dailies of this very morning, and find in it
the advertisements of seven Witches. In 1858, there were in full blast
in New York and Brooklyn sixteen witches and two wizards. One of these
wizards was a black man; a very proper style of person to deal with the
black art.

Witch means, a woman who practices sorcery under an agreement with the
devil, who helps her. Before the Christian era, the Jewish witch was a
mere diviner or at most a raiser of the dead