My readers may indeed be incredulous as to the influence conveyed by flowers; but I shall satisfy them on that score before completing my Confessions. While the Fox girls were annoyed by these mysterious knockings, and were beginning to draw on them the attention of the curious and the credulous, and while Andrew Jackson Davis, as yet only a somnambulist, was dictating his wonderful revelations, and learned doctors were disputing whether he received them from a white or a black spirit, whether he really saw what he professed to see in his clairvoyant state, or only reported to the scribe the lesson which some cunning scamps had previously taught him, and made him commit to memory; my old friend Mr. Cotton was made to suffer a severe penalty for the slighting manner in which he had spoken of Priscilla. Contrary to her usual custom, Priscilla went one Sunday evening to his evening service. On leaving the meeting-house, she mingled in the crowd, and so contrived it as to rub against a granddaughter of Mr. Cotton, an interesting child of some twelve or thirteen years of age, and without anybody observing it. She then turned a little aside, got into her carriage, which was waiting, and drove home. The next day, the young girl, Clara Starkweather, was singularly affected. Every thing she touched seemed to stick fast to her fingers. All the dresses, cloaks, shawls, in the house seemed to have an irresistible propensity to fly to her, and arrange themselves on her back. She went into the kitchen; the poker, shovel, and tongs, pots, kettles, pails, basins, all set to dancing towards and around her, and the frying-pan fastened itself on her head as a cap. Her mother scolded her, and she, poor thing, began to cry, and declared that she did not do it, but that it was done by a strange woman, very beautiful, but very wicked, whom she did not know. The family were all in consternation. Mr. Cotton was called upon to interpose. He concluded that it was a case of witchcraft, or of diabolical obsession. He summoned all the inmates of his family to his study. He was a brave man, and nothing at all loath to come to hand-grip with the devil, for whom, with his orthodoxy, he fancied himself more than a match. “We must,” he said, “resist the evil one; we must wrestle in prayer.” With that he seated himself before his table, on which lay a splendid edition of the Bible. He opened the book, intending to read a chapter, before making his prayer. But he had hardly opened it before it was violently closed, and rising, seemingly of itself, hit him a heavy blow in his face, which knocked him from his chair, and nearly stunned him, and then rested itself on the top of Clara’s head. Mr. Cotton soon recovered from the blow, and stood up, after the manner of his sect, to pray. He had hardly opened his mouth, before there was heard such a knocking behind the walls, against the doors, and under the floor, that every word he attempted to utter was completely drowned.