Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 September 1875 — A Story of Superstition and Ignorant Credulity. [ARTICLE]

A Story of Superstition and Ignorant Credulity.

An extraordinary story of gross superstition and ignorant credulity has been communicated to the New York Mercury's London correspondent from Loftliouse. a small town in Cleveland, Yorkshire, England : Since she attained womanhood, three years since, Miss Sallie Booth had been reckoned the belle of the small town and had been much courted and flattered by young men of her rank in life. She was the daughter of a poor farmer and had received.a very primitive education. She had. gypsy-looking black eyes, aquiline nose, brilliant white teeth and small hands ; but there were two moles on her upper lip from which coarse black hairs constantly sprung. Many of her admirers affected to see no end of beauty in these moles, but spiteful girls spoke of Sallie Booth’s mustache, and the irritated-beauty tried all sorts of quack depilatories to eradicate what she thought were facial blemishes. Meanwhile Miss Booth captured an aristocratic lover. He was the son of Capt. Wharton, of Slielton Castle, and had acquired an unenviable reputation at Harrow public school for irregularities of a dissolute type. Farmer Booth held his farm under Capt. Wharton, and the dissolute yoifig man therefore had easy access to tliefgirl. While the girls of the place grew green with envy when they saw Sallie Booth walking forth with the ” gentleman lover,” older people predicted that no good come out of it. Capt. Wharton unavailingly remoni strated with his son and then warned Farmer Booth of his unscrupulous character. But the farmer was. as proud of the connection as his daughter, and openly boasted of his future son-in-law in the toe-houses of the place. On being im portuued by Sallie to fulfill his marriage engagement, the young man informed her that he had no objection to marry her if ” those horrid moles” were removed from her lip. In the spring and heyday of their acquaintance he had pronounced them pretty; now their.removal was a sine qua non to matrimony. s Five-and-twenty miles "from Lofthouse, at a small village named Searner, there resides an old woman reputed to possess supernatural powers—always exercised” however, for beneficial ends. To old Nanny Hunter Miss Booth proceeded and submitted Tier case. After retiring for “ prayer and meditation” the sybil Informed her that there was but one way to obliterate the moles, and that was* by touching them with a dead man’s hand at midnight, in a dark room—the hand to be held ria contact with the lip until it grew wanfi! It was a crucial operation, yet, revolting as it was, Sallie resolved to i:“ go through it” the first opportunity. ♦ ■.' XL. '

It was some weeks la-fore a dead man turned up to be experimented on by Miss Booth. But on the last night of June the body of a seaman was washed ashore off the alum works, and the corpse was conveyed to the stable of a neighboring public house and locked up'Htitil the inquest. Sullieff once proceeded to the inn and acquainted the old hostler with the story of her moles and the Seamer wise woman's prescriptions, offering him half a sovereign to aid and abet her in applying the swollen, flabby hands of the unknown Corpse to her face when midnight camp. “ She was as bold as ashe-lionj’ said Bob Suggett, the hostler, in'telling the story afterward, “ she went right into the deep darkness of the stable, and I heard her rustling among the straw as she groped for the dead man’s hand, while I stood, feeling outside the door. It might have been five, or it might have been ten minutes, when she guv such a screech as might ha’ wakefied the dead. Then she yell, yell, yelled like a locomotive whistle, and I tuk to my heels and ran.” Landlord Coulson and his patrons listened with awe and amazement to the hostler’s story, and proceeded to tip; stable with a lantern. The corpse sat bolt upright, white and jelly-like as a new-scald-ed pig; and SallieMkfoth held on to its shoulders, giggling and grinning and laughing. The spectators jvere pierced with horror. But as theystood motionless and silent, and saw the girl embrace the clammy corpse and cry: “ Kiss me, Harry, darling; the moles is gone,’’they became satisfied that they 9aw before them a gigantic misfortune that had merged into madness. When the landlord approached to take her away she dropped down with a piercing shriek and swooned away. She was carried home by four men on the stable-door, and was subsequently removed to York Asylum, hopelessly insane. Y'et nothing has been done tow : ard punishing the Seamer sibyl, of the ignorant accomplice, Bob Suggett.