212 ANDREW JACKSON HOWE. 



to practice deceit. They understand the gullibility of 

 human nature. It seemed to me that the Nebraska 

 diviner employed forked whalebone because green 

 witch-hazel did not flourish thereabouts. A fakir has 

 to conform to the necessity of circumstances. If a 

 witch can not find a hazel bush with which to make a 

 wand, she can impart potency to a forked stick of any 

 other tree or shrub. But the hazel sprout is the one 

 fancied by writers upon witchcraft. 



In Scandinavia two dry sticks of hazel-wood will 

 develop fire when vigorously rubbed together ; and 

 the revealer of the secret of fire striking does not 

 mention that primitive people the world over have 

 always developed fire by rubbing dry sticks together 

 by friction. 



The tale of William Tell, the Swiss archer, whom 

 the tyrant Gassier meant to slay, but who saved his 

 life by the extraordinary feat of shooting an apple 

 from his son's head, was enabled so to do by fashion- 

 ing an arrow from a twig of hazel, as a mediaeval 

 chronicler relates. The weapon was then like the 

 charmed gun which exercised such discrimination that 

 it would miss a calf but hit a deer. I have quite shed 

 tears over the exploits of the patriot Tell, and have 

 seen the name of the famous Swiss coupled with that 

 of Washington, therefore when I learned that there 

 never was such a man as William Tell, no tyrant Gess- 

 ler, no son to unflinchingly endure the sight of the 

 flying arrow, I felt like distrusting the story of Achilles 

 and his heel rendered vulnerable by escaping baptism 

 in the river Styx, and like questioning the very ex- 

 istence of the little hatchet which mutilated the cherry 

 tree! The earliest account of the Tell myth is the fol- 

 lowing, taken from ''-Historical Difficulties;" it is of 



