One day I went privately, with a companion, to see my wife dance, and kept at a short distance, as I was ashamed to go near the crowd.

On looking steadfastly upon her, while dancing or jumping, more like a deer than a human being, I said that it certainly was not my wife; at which my companion burst into a fit of laughter, from which he could scarcely refrain all the way home.

Men are sometimes afflicted with this dreadful disorder, but not frequently.

Among the Amhara and Galla it is not so common." Such is the account of Pearce, who is every way worthy of credit, and whose lively description renders the traditions of former times respecting the St.Vitus's dance and tarantism intelligible, even to those who are sceptical respecting the existence of a morbid state of the mind and body of the kind described, because, in the present advanced state of civilisation among the nations of Europe, opportunities for its development no longer occur.

The credibility of this energetic but by no means ambitious man is not liable to the slightest suspicion, for, owing to his want of education, he had no knowledge of the phenomena in question, and his work evinces throughout his attractive and unpretending impartiality.
Comparison is the mother of observation, and may here elucidate one phenomenon by another--the past by that which still exists.