Father Lejeune, in 1637, gives a case which reminds us of Home.
According to Home, and to Mrs. S. C. Hall, and other witnesses, when
'in power' he could not only handle live coals without being burned,
but he actually placed a large glowing coal, about the size of a
cricket-ball, on the pate of Mr. S. C. Hall, where it shone redly
through Mr. Hall's white locks, but did him no manner of harm. Now
Father Pijart was present, tesmoin oculaire, when a Huron medicine-
man heated a stone red hot, put it in his mouth, and ran round the
cabin with it, without receiving any harm. Father Brebeuf,
afterwards a most heroic martyr, sent the stone to Father Lejeune;
it bore the marks of the medicine-man's teeth, though Father Pijart,
examining the man, found that lips and tongue had no trace of burn
or blister. He reasonably concluded that these things could not be
done 'sans l'operation de quelque Demon'. That an excited patient
should not feel fire is, perhaps, admissible, but that it should not
scorch either Mr. Hall, or Home, or the Huron, is a large demand on
our credulity. Still, the evidence in this case (that of Mr.
Crookes and Lord Crawford) is much better than usual.

It would be strange if practices analogous to modern 'table-turning'
did not exist among savage and barbaric races. Thus Mr. Tylor, in
Primitive Culture (ii. 156), quotes a Kutuchtu Lama who mounted a
bench, and rode it, as it were, to a tent where the stolen goods
were concealed. The bench was believed, by the credulous Mongols,
to carry the Lama! Among the Manyanja of Africa thefts are detected
by young men holding sticks in their hands. After a sufficient
amount of incantation, dancing, and convulsions, the sticks became
possessed, the men 'can hardly hold them,' and are dragged after
them in the required directions. {50a} These examples are analogous