The Prophet of Bethelnie. 197 



he " was able to impose upon those at a distance by 

 the appearance of much wisdom he found it more dif- 

 ficult to do so with regard to his own family." His wife, 

 " whose superior judgment supplied the defects of his," 

 from motives of prudence took care to keep the secret, 

 but his daughter did not scruple to cheat the seer 

 openly, mulcting him of part of his professionally 

 earned sixpences under his very nose to buy fine clothes, 

 and then openly laughing at him among her compa- 

 nions. " He never," says Dr. Anderson, " had any 

 friend with whom he kept up a cordial intercourse ; he 

 left no sort of writings behind him ; nor have I ever 

 heard of a single sentence of his that was worth 

 repeating ; unless it be the four lines of poetry which 

 he desired the painter to put at the bottom of his 

 picture : 



Time doth all things devour ; 

 And time doth all things waste, 

 And we waste time, 

 And so are we at last." 



Of imitators of the prophet, or rather of practi- 

 tioners, more or less renowned, of the same class, 

 there was no great lack up to a considerably later 

 time. The indispensable qualification was possession 

 of a certain amount of low cunning ; and ugliness, 

 or oddity of personal appearance, was undoubtedly 

 an advantage. Hence the readiness with which 

 queer-looking old women were accepted as witches, 

 and credited with the power of performing various 

 cantrips. Superstitious belief in the supernatural, 

 and an easy credulity regarding physical phenomena 

 were the common endowment of the mass of the 

 population, so that whoever chose to attempt the role 

 of warlock or " skeely man/' would find the path open 

 and easy ; and once entered thereon it might be hard 

 to say in some cases whether the witch-doctor made 

 most progress in deceiving others or deceiving himself. 

 Certain it was that a good many of them came to have 



