“Yes,” said the candidate, “I’m going out among the farmers to-day—to a pumpkin show, or jackass show, or something of that sort. Not that I care for pumpkins or jackasses, but I want to show the people that I am one of them.”
(728)
DEMONOLOGY
St. Thomas Aquinas used to hold that angels and devils made the atmosphere their battle-ground—the angels that live in the calm upper spheres, the devils that fill the immensity of space; and thus he accounted for the injurious changes of weather to be experienced in certain countries. For the mortification and the rout of these demons bells were consecrated and hung in the church-spires, usually inscribed, “Vivos voco, mortuos plango, fulgura frango” (I summon the living, I mourn the dead, I scatter the thunder-storm); and their ringing was thenceforth considered to be one of the potent means of dispelling evil influences and of abating tempests. These evil powers, according to medieval legend and belief, were able to produce hail, thunder, and storms at their will, and those among them called witches took aerial voyages exactly as the witches of much later days were held to do, altho more particular detail is given of their operations, as it is known that they smeared their broomsticks with witch-salve, after which mounting them, they could sail where they would through so much of this atmosphere as was within their jurisdiction. “The air,” says Rydberg, speaking of those days of the Dark Ages, “was saturated with demoniacal vapors,” and specters, ghosts, and vampires multitudinous added their horrors to the fertile imaginations of the people.—Harper’s Bazar.
(729)
In the Kongo district insane people are treated by the native doctors in the following manner: The patient’s hands are secured by stout cords, and he is led to the doctor with a fowl and a lighted firebrand balanced on his head. The doctor takes five twigs from five different trees and strikes the patient with each in turn, bidding the evil spirit depart from him. The lighted stick is then plunged into some water, and as the fire is quenched the evil spirit is supposed to leave the man’s body. He may reenter it, however, so the fowl is killed and placed on a stick at a cross-roads for an offering to the deposited spirit. Then the man’s bands are loosened and he is free to go as he chooses; but if he shows signs of the demon appearing in him again, any one may kill him if his relatives do not object.
(730)
DEMONSTRATION
John W. Gates, the “Wire King,” is described as “an extreme type of the American ‘hustler.’” The Texas cattlemen had never seen barbed wire before, and they ridiculed it.