IN T R O D U C T I O N
branches and leaves, and in all respects like a natural tree; that when it was thus grown up, this informant and all the rest of the company saw two little men, each about one foot high, dressed in short jackets, with caps on their heads, their complexions sunburnt, and hearing their axes, begin to cut it down with great celerity, the chips flying about at every stroke; that the tree seemed to fall with great force, and as soon as this was done, the tree, chips, and the little workmen went from their sight, they knew not how, leaving all the company in a great consternation, except this informant him self, who says he beheld the whole from beginning to end (which he thinks was about half an hour) without any sensible degree of fear, though at the same time he confessed he wished he had been elsewhere. That he observed one of the little workmen, during the gathering up of the chips, to look about very angrily, and that Coal observing the same also, said he was sure some of the company had taken away and concealed some chips of the tree, but whether it was so, this informant said he does not now well remember. The great simplicity and seriousness with which this man delivered his whole narrative was so very remarkable, that there was not the least room to suspect his having any design to impose upon us, or that he himself did no\. really believe he saw what he related. He assured us he was in no way disordered by liquor at the time it happened, nor does he remember any of the company were so; and said Coal had the character of being a sober, serious man, much given to mathematical and other studies, that he died to all appearances of old age, and without anything extraordinary attending his death. Parkes with his musical spirits and his unpleasant familiar, Coal with his wood-chopping gnomes, others of the same breed whose very names are now forgotten; such were the men who practised and kept alive the magical arts in the age of Locke and Voltaire.
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