“Last week, one belonging to Ipswich came to Boston and related that some time since he was at Canso in Nova Scotia, and that on a certain day there appeared to him an apparition in blood and wounds, and told him that at such a time and place, mentioning both, he was barbarously murdered by one, who was at Rhode Island, and desired him to go to the said person and charge him with the said murder, and prosecute him therefor, naming several circumstances relating to the murder; and that since his arrival from Canso to Ipswich the said apparition had appeared to him again, and urged him immediately to prosecute the said affair. The abovesaid person having related the matter was advised and encouraged to go to Rhode Island and engage therein, and he accordingly set out for that place on Thursday last.”[22] Dr. Timothy Dwight, in his “Travels,” records, with approval, the following singular superstition relative to the barberry, which is so common in New England. “This bush,” he remarks, “is, in New England, generally believed to blast both wheat and rye. Its blossoms, which are very numerous, and continue a considerable time, emit very copiously a pungent effluvium believed to be so acrimonious as to injure essentially both these kinds of grain. “In Southborough, a township in the county of Worcester, a Mr. Johnson sowed with rye a field of new ground. At the south end of this field also grew a single barberry bush. The grain was blasted throughout the whole length of the field, on a narrow tract commencing at the bush and proceeding directly in the course, and to the extent, to which the blossoms were diffused by the wind.” Certes, that was a most extraordinary belief held by the simple country folk in a certain quiet corner of New England, that candles made of the tallow obtained from a dead body, would, when lighted, render the person carrying them invisible; and furthermore that a lighted candle of this description, if placed within a bedroom, would effectually prevent a sleeping person from waking until it should be extinguished. This I had from the lips of a most intelligent and estimable lady, who knew whereof she spoke. I confess that on hearing this statement I realized that I had now found more than I was looking for. But incredible as it may seem at first, all doubts were set at rest by the following article found among some fragments of old superstition in a certain treatise on that subject. Here is the article verbatim:-- “The Hand of Glory is a piece of foreign superstition common in France, Germany, and Spain; and is a charm used by housebreakers and assassins. It is the hand of a hanged man, holding a candle made of the fat of a hanged man, virgin wax, and siasme of Lapland. It stupefies those to whom it is presented, and renders them motionless, insomuch that they could not stir, any more than if they were dead.”