"What, Satan! is this the Dancing that Richard gave himself to thee for? Can'st thou Dance no better? Ransack the old Records of all past Times and Places in thy Memory: Can'st thou not there find out some better way of Trampling? Pump thine Invention dry: Cannot that universal Seed-plot of subtile Wiles and Stratagems spring up one new Method of Cutting Capers? Is this the top of Skill and Pride, to shuffle Feet, and brandish Knees thus, and to trip like a Doe, and skip like a Squirrel? And wherein differs thy Leapings from the Hoppings of a Frog, or Bouncings of a Goat, or Friskings of a Dog, or Gesticulations of a Monkey? And cannot a Palsy shake such a loose Leg as that? Dost thou not twirl like a Calf that hath the Turn, and twitch up thy Houghs just like a Spring-hault Tit?" This was one of the conversations, or rather exhortations, which the dissenting ministers had with the devil inhabiting Richard Dugdale--he who was called by some the Surrey demoniac,[157] by others the impostor, as faith or reason was the stronger. Richard drew largely upon the faith of his generation, largely even for the credulous generation flourishing in the year of our Lord 1695: for Richard the "possessed" vomited gold, silver, and brass rings, hair buttons, blue stones like flints, and once a big stone bloody at the edges; and he was transformed sometimes to the manner of a horse, when he would gallop round the barn on all fours, quite as quickly as any cob ever foaled, and whinny like a cob, and eat provender like a cob; and sometimes he was like a dog, "harring" and snarling and growling and barking so like a mastiff, that once a dog, a real mastiff and no counterfeit, set upon him, and would have given him rather an undesirable taste of canine fraternity had he not been prevented. Then he would be heavy or light in the same fit--now so heavy that six men could not lift him, now so light that he did not weigh six pounds: "sometimes light as a Feather-Boulster, but before he came out heavier than a Load of Corn," says a husbandman; "as light as a Chip, and as heavy as a horse," says a carpenter: and he had fits of leaping, as fast as a man could count; and he would dance on his toes and his knees, with marvellous agility--dance more quickly than ordinary men, not possessed, could do on their honest feet; then he would lie as if dead; or he would gape and snatch with his mouth, catching at flies; and he had noises in his mouth and breast, as if a family of young whelps were lapping, snarling, or sucking in his inside; and he rolled up his tongue into a lump and turned his eyes inward; and talked gibberish, which some one said was Latin; and played with rushes as if they had been dice and bowls. "And when he had thrown the 'Jack,' he said, 'I must now throw my Gill;' then running a good way, as if he had been running after a bowl, swearing, 'Run, Run, Flee, Flee, Hold a Biass;' and sometimes he catched up rushes, as if they