RECENT RECRUDESCENCE OF SUPERSTITION. 75 



his bicycle broken to pieces, and was under the necessity of walk- 

 ing a long distance to the nearest railway station. It was only 

 the fear of his enchantments as a wandering magician that saved 

 him from personal harm. 



In October, 1894, a chromolithograph of St. Anna, in a church 

 at Naples, showed suddenly on the breast of the saint a white 

 spot, which in the eyes of her worshipers gradually grew into 

 the form of a lily. The rumor of this wonder caused thousands 

 of people to flock to the sacred shrine, and several miracles were 

 already reported, when the police ordered the print to be taken 

 down and examined. On investigation, the white lily proved to 

 be mold. It is hardly credible that the JSTeapolitau clergy should 

 not have known the nature of this phenomenon, and yet they did 

 nothing to expose the delusion, but made capital out of it by 

 holding solemn services at the altar in recognition of its sup- 

 posed miraculous character. 



The results of such superstitious notions are not always so 

 harmless as in the cases just cited. Thus, a peasant living at Pon- 

 tea Ema, about a mile from Florence, in Tuscany, had a daughter 

 who was subject to severe hysterical convulsions ; she had also 

 "suffered many things of many physicians," and was thereby 

 "nothing bettered, but rather grew worse" a result which will 

 not surprise any one who knows what a wretched quacksalver the 

 country doctor is in Italy. The parish priest intimated that the 

 girl was probably possessed with a devil, and one day in Febru- 

 ary, 1893, the peasant and his daughter, after hearing several 

 masses suitable to the occasion, went to Florence to consult a wise 

 woman famous for sorceries, who informed him that an ordinary 

 conjuration would cost five lire, and might not be effective, 

 whereas the invocation of Beelzebub, which would cost twenty- 

 five lire, would be an infallible remedy. The peasant paid the 

 twenty-five lire and the old witch began her conjurations, drag- 

 ging herself over the floor on her knees and howling fearfully. 

 Finally she ceased, and declared that the conjuration had been 

 successful. " Now go home," she added, " and heat the oven. The 

 first person who comes to your door will be the one who has 

 caused your daughter's malady ; thrust this person into the oven 

 in the presence of your daughter, and there will be no recurrence 

 of the disease." The peasant obeyed these instructions and kept 

 the oven heated all night. Early the next morning there was a rap 

 at the door. "Chi e ?" (Who's there ? ) asked the peasant. " For 

 heaven's sake, a piece of bread ! " was the reply. The peasant 

 rushed to the door, seized the beggar woman as she stood there 

 pale with hunger and shivering with cold, and without a mo- 

 ment's hesitation put her into the heated oven. Two milkmen 

 passing by heard her cries, and, breaking open the bolted door of 



