Deborah Donaldson, or, as she was always called, "Aunt Debie,"
was, "after the strictest sect of her religion," a Quaker, and she
never quite forgave James and Martha Gurney for leaving the Church
of their fathers. She had been a widow for more than thirty years,
her husband having been killed by the falling of a limb from a
tree which he was chopping down, and she had been blind and deaf
for the greater part of that time.

She had been a woman of very great energy, and there were some who
hinted that she was the controlling member of the matrimonial firm
when the now lamented Donaldson was living. Whether there was any
truth or not in that report it is not for the writer to say, but
she was certainly a woman of great force of character--a living
embodiment of the Scripture maxim, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to
do, do it with all thy might." And even now, in extreme old age--
for she was more than four score--though in many ways she
manifested she had entered her second childhood, she yet retained
a great deal of her original energy. As I have illustrated, though
she possessed genuine piety, it was so mingled with superstition
as to leave it difficult to decide which exerted the controlling
influence.

If any of my readers have associated to any extent with the
people in the rural districts, especially those of American or
Dutch-American descent, they, no doubt, have observed that a great
many of the older and more illiterate ones among them are very
superstitious, being implicit believers in signs, charms,
apparitions, etc.; and most of them, also, entertain the opinion
that the moon exerts an occult influence over many things of vital