Weaver 12 Wantage Hinchman 7 Fork of the old Penn- Roads Bonnet Willis 14 Foot of Dryridge Mac Quakertown Roberts 6 Suffex Court-House Bethlehem 8 Hardwick Goble 5 cracken or Wirth 3 Old Moravian town Medfkar 92 ditto Alexander 7 ditto Maccracken 7 Youghiegany River, or Bud's Ferry, 2 miles further up Patterson 10 Road from Fishkill to Shippinfboro' Rippy 7 Devore's Ferry at the the Ohio River. From Fishkill to the Clark's Gap Cooper 10 Over the Blue Moun Monongahela Patterson Maccarmick II tain to Skinner's 3 Washington C. H. Ferry 5 Over the Path Valley Over the Ferry to and Tuscarora Moun- Well's Mills 16 Newboro' 2 tains to the Burnt Cab- Coxe's fort on the fouthins Jemmerfon 8 ern Banks of the Ohio 10 Edmondfon 4 Fort-Littleton Bird 4 Down the Ohio to the Bloomingfgrove Gold- Foot of Skillinghill mouth of the Muskin Bethlehem Chester Warwick Κι BOOKS AND STATIONARY. JOHN WEST, At his Book-Store, No. 75, Cornhill, Boflon, 95 524 EEPS conftantly for Sale, a well-afforted and large Collection of BOOKS, in every Branch of Literature. Alfo, Bibles, Teftaments Pfalters, Spelling-Books of every kind, Pfalm-Books, Primers, &c. by the grofs, dozen, or fingle; together with every Article in the STATIONARY line; with all which Country Merchants and others may be supplied, Wholefale or Retail. SOCIAL and PRIVATE LIBRARIES fupplied on reasonable terms. HAVE AN EYE TO THE MOON! TH HE moon, as everybody knows, was formerly thought to have a constant and powerful effect on men and things. This article of faith was universal and there is no occasion to dwell upon its antiquity. It has left plain traces upon our language in moon-calf for "monster," moonstruck, and mooning, as well as in lunatic. As Othello said It is the very error of the moon: She comes more near the earth than she was wont, And makes men mad. Of the significance of the moon's place in medical treatment enough has already been said in our chapter on the famous Anatomy, that grotesque figure encircled by the signs of the zodiac which was once regarded as indispensable in an almanac.1 In particular, the waxing and waning of the moon, connected as it is with the movements of the tides, was believed to exercise a sympathetic influence over all nature, animate and inanimate. Remnants of these fancies may even now be discovered in the folk-lore of New England. There are mothers who still prefer to cut their children's hair in the increase of the moon, that it may grow more luxuriantly; and some farmers must still follow the same rule in killing their pigs, in order that the pork may swell, rather than shrink, in the barrel or the kettle. Mr. Thomas as we have seen on other occasions, was 1 See pp. 53 ff., above. disposed to attach little importance to this kind of natural philosophy. The earlier numbers of the Almanac give it scanty recognition, and there is a suspicion of goodhumored banter in such allusions as he makes to the subject. As time goes on, the irony becomes more obvious, and before long the whole matter is ignored. A few extracts from the Farmer's Calendar will show how he felt about the moon. They will have some interest for amateurs of folk-lore, and, indeed, for all who care for the significant little things of history. 1794. January 14. Kill your winter pork and beef, and it will enlarge while cooking. 1794. April 13. A good time in the moon to sow hemp and flax, if your ground be not too wet. 1795. January 5. Pork and beef kill for winter's use, to have it increase while cooking. 1799. January 6. At this quarter of the moon cut fire-wood, to prevent its snapping. 1799. April 8. Wheat, sown at this quarter of the moon, is said not to be subject to smutting. 1800. August 19. Mow bushes! mow bushes now! if you have any faith in the influence of the moon on them. 1801. September 12. Moon-arians have not neglected hauling up and destroying pernicious weeds before this day of the month! 1804. August 22. Mow bushes, and kill them if you can, in the old moon, sign in heart, &c. 1814. January 1. Kill your winter pork, which I presume by this time is fat and plump from good keeping. The entry last quoted, we observe, is perfectly noncommittal. We cannot be sure that the author was thinking of the moon at all. In 1803, however, there is a rather pretty bit of irony, which shows how he regarded the "Moon-arians": 1803. January 18. Old Experience says, (and she generally speaks the truth) that pork, killed about this time, will always come out of the pot as large as when it was put in. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the influence of the moon on animal and vegetable life was not merely an article of faith among the ignorant. It was an accepted tenet of science, though there was some doubt as to the precise limits of this influence. Cotton Mather, perhaps, will hardly be allowed to "qualify as an experti -though his reputation for exceptional credulity comes rather from his having put himself on record than from any peculiarity in his mental temper. But no one will deny that Robert Boyle, the founder of the Royal Society, the improver of the air-pump, and the discoverer of Boyle's Law of the elasticity of gases, was a genuinely scientific personage. Mather writes: One Abigail Eliot had an iron struck into her head, which drew out part of her brains with it: a silver plate she afterwards wore on her skull where the orifice remain'd as big as an half crown. The brains left in the child's head would swell and swage, according to the tides; her intellectuals were not hurt by this disaster; and she liv'd to be a mother of several children.1 And Boyle records "an odd observation about the influence of the moon" in the following terms: I know an intelligent person, that having, by a very dangerous fall, so broken his head, that divers large pieces of his skull were taken out, as I could easily perceive by the wide scars, that still remain; answered me, that for divers months, that he lay under the chirurgeons hands, he constantly observed, that about full moon, there would be extraordinary prickings and shootings in the wounded parts of his head, as if the meninges were stretched 1 Magnalia, book vi, chap. 2, ed. 1853, II, 356. |