The history of the life and adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell ; a gentleman who, though deaf and dumb, writes down any stranger's name at first sight / [Daniel Defoe].

  • Daniel Defoe
Date:
1840]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The history of the life and adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell ; a gentleman who, though deaf and dumb, writes down any stranger's name at first sight / [Daniel Defoe]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    by getting into an itch of practising and trying the little tricks of female superstition, which are often more officiously handed down by the tradition of credulous nurses and old women, from one generation to another, than the first principles of Christian doctrine, which it is their duty to instil early into little children. But I hope when this book comes to be pretty generally read among you ladies (as by your generous and numerous subscriptions I have good reason to expect), that it will afford a perfect remedy and a thorough cure to that distemper, which first took its rise from too great a growth of curiosity, and too large a stock of credulity, nursed prejudicially up with you in your more tender and infant years. Whatever young maid hereafter has an innocent but longing desire to know who shall be her husband, and what time she shall be married, will, I hope, when she has read in the following sheets of a man that can set her right in the knowledge of those points, purely by possessing the gift of the second- sight, sooner have recourse innocently to such a man than use unlawful means to acquire it, such as running to conjurers to have his figure shown in their enchanted glasses, or using any of those traditionary superstitions by which they may dream of their husbands, or cause visionary shapes of them to appear on such and such festival nights of the year; all which practices are not ordi¬ narily wicked and impious, but downright diabolical. I hope that the next twenty-ninth of June, which is St John the Baptist’s Day, I shall not see the several pasture fields adjacent to this metropolis, especially that behind Mon¬ tague House, thronged, as they were the last year, with well-dressed young ladies, crawling busily up and down upon their knees, as if they were a parcel of weeders, when all the business is to hunt superstitiously after a coal under the root of a plantain, to put under their heads that night, that they may dream who shall be their husbands. In order to shame them out of this silly but guilty practice, I do intend to have some spies out on that day, that shall discover who they are, and what they have been about; and I here give notice to the public that this ill-acted comedy (if it be acted at all this year) must begin, according to the rule of their superstition, on that day precisely at the hour of twelve. And so much for the pretty weeders: but as you (ladies) have had several magical traditions delivered to you, which, if you put in exercise and practice, will be greatly prejudicial to your honour and your virtue, let me interpose my counsels, which will conduct you innocuously to the same end which some ladies have laboured to arrive at by these impieties. Give me leave first to tell you that though what you aim at may be arrived to by these means, yet these means make that a miserable fortune which would have been a good one; because, in order to know human things beforehand, you use preternatural mediums, which destroy the goodness of the courses which nature herself was taking for you, and annexes to them diabolical influ¬ ences, which commonly carries along with them fatalities in this world as well as the next. \ou will therefore give me your pardon likewise, ladies, if I relate some other of these practices, which bare relation, of itself, after what I have said before, seems to me sufficient to explode them.