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Special Dinners, Dances and Luncheons 527 |
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All hastened to assure her of their interest, but it was reserved to the hostess to "cap the climax."
"On the first page in our Bibles," she said most impressively, "we may read the most adulatory ascription contained in the whole book—' to the most high and mighty prince, James,' and 'dread sovereign.' This most commonplace of men is likened to the 'sun rising in his strength,' after the setting of 'that Occidental star, Queen Elizabeth.'
" This great little man wrote a book on ' Daemonology' with which I have been regaling myself—'moved thereto,' as he avers, 'by the fearfull abounding of those slaves of the Divell called witches.' He explains that witches were alwavs women, 'because as that sex is frailer than man, so it is easier to be intrapped in those grosse snares of the Divell, as was over-well proved by the serpent's deceiving Eve, which makes him the homelier with that sexe !'
"This wiseacre also asserts that 'the Divell teacheth to make pictures of wax, that by roasting thereof, the persons that they bear the names of, may die away by continual sickness.' Of course, we have outgrown such extreme forms of superstitious belief, but as we are often disgusted with our own faults when we see them in others, so I think the consideration of the bondage to superstition under which people used to live may make us ashamed of any lingering feeling of the kind that we ourselves may have."
The friends separated with many assurances of having enjoyed the unusual entertainment, and I am happy to say that all are alive and well up to the present moment. |
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