There was no more disturbance that night. The next day, when the family were all at dinner, the table, with every thing on it, suddenly rose to the ceiling, and then suddenly dropped upon the floor with a noise that shook the whole house, but without any other injury, or any thing on it being displaced. In the evening, while they were all seated around the table, listening to a chapter which Mr. Cotton was reading from the Bible, terrible knockings were again heard all through the room, and Clara was seen to be raised as it were by some invisible hand towards the ceiling, and to be borne with great force through the room, and set down standing on her head. Then, after a moment, she rose again and hung suspended to the ceiling by her feet and her head downwards. After an hour the annoyances ceased, and the family were left quiet. The annoyances continued, varying in their character from day to day, for three weeks. Priscilla sent me an account of them, and I thought my old friend had been sufficiently punished. Moreover, I did not wish too much eclat to be given at that time to the fantastic tricks I was playing. Mr. Cotton was sure that it was the work of the devil, that it was witchcraft, and he did not hesitate to accuse Priscilla. He had tried to get the authorities to arrest her as a witch, but in this he had failed; for, although the laws of Pennsylvania, at that time, if not now, recognized witchcraft as a punishable offence, no magistrate in the city could be found who did not look upon witchcraft as imaginary, and suspect the good minister of being in need of physic and good regimen for entertaining a belief in its reality. I however did not wish Priscilla’s name to become associated in the gossip of the day with reported phenomena of the sort, and I sent her an order to discontinue the annoyances, and to restore every thing which had been injured to its previous condition. The night she received my order, the noises ceased, Clara rested quietly, and the family were undisturbed. On rising and going through the house in the morning, no trace of the previous disorder was discovered, every thing was in its place, and the clothing and bedding which had been cut into ribbons, were all restored, and not a mark of injury was to be found on them. Clara was well, and retained no recollection of any thing that had happened to her or to the family during the period she had been so grievously afflicted. Even the family, Mr. Cotton among the rest, began to doubt, if they had not been the sport of some strange hallucination, and almost to persuade themselves that the annoyances had had no objective character.