your little affairs, and let us have prayers."
She boiled over, saying, "I will have none of
your praying about me." Our Peter then
began expostulating very mildly, and trying
to reason with her. But she answered him
only with bad language. He then put on a
stern countenance, and said:

"Madam, if you were a wife of mine, I
would break you of your bad ways, or I
would break your neck."

This called forth another volley, "almost
beyond human endurance," says Peter, whose
patience was worn threadbare.

"Now," said he, to her, "if you do not be
still, and behave yourself, I'll put you out of
doors."

At this she clenched her fist, and swore
she was one half alligator, and the other
snapping turtle, and it would take a better
man than he to put her out. So Peter
caught her by the arm, swung her round in
a circle, brought her up to the door, and
shoved her out. She jumped up, tore her
hair, and foamed; and such swearing as she
uttered was seldom equalled, and never surpassed.
Determined to conquer or die in
this attempt at exorcism, Peter began to sing
a spiritual song as loudly as he could, to
drown her cries in the yard. The little
children, four or five in number, crawled
under the bed, scared to death, poor little
things: what the afflicted husband was about
we are not told. Still the tumult went on:
the half-alligator, half snapping turtle, raging,
roaring, screaming, foaming, in the yard:
Peter, within, shouting out his hymn at the
top of his thundering voice. In a short time
the woman, having foamed out all her fury,
knocked at the door, saying, meekly, "Mr.
Cartwright, please let me in." He opened
the door, and she entered, bathed in perspiration,
pale as death, and quiet as a lamb.

"O!" she said, as she sat down by the
fire, "what a fool I am!"

"Yes," answers Peter, "about one of the
biggest fools I ever saw in all my life. And
now, you'll have to repent of all this, or you
must go to the devil at last."

So they had prayers, and the cat was not
in request; and "in less than six months
after this frolic with the devil," the woman
was soundly converted, and lived and died a
shouting vehement Christian.

Another exorcism was wrought on the
person of a certain Major, who was suddenly
seized and grievously tormented, because he
had resented an impertinence of Peter towards
his son. He was seized on the camping
ground, in the middle of the night. He was
in an agony, and roared and prayed so as to
be heard all over the camp. His wife sent
messages to Peter full of entreaty; but Peter
was inexorable. He sent back word only:
"The Lord increase his pains! for he has
legions of evil spirits in him, and it will be a
long time before they are all cast out. "However,
when he thought the time was come, he
went to the tent of the roaring major; whom
he found grovelling among the straw, "praying
away at a mighty rate." Peter prayed
too, and called on others to pray, so at last
the major got relief, and professed comfort in
believing. At least a legion of very dirty
little devils were cast out of him.

Another gentleman was uneasy at the extreme
affection of his wife and daughters for
Cartwright, who had converted them, and to
whom, by his own showing, they were profoundly
and dangerously attached. Cartwright
at once says the man is possessed and
must be converted. At a camp meeting
where he went with his wife and daughter,
to watch them somewhat more narrowly than
usual, the programme of his conversion is
arranged. "You must pray hard," says
Peter to the daughter, who had warned him
of her father's angry surveillance, "and the
work will be done. It is not the old big
devil that is in your father: it must be a
little weakly, sickly devil that has taken
possession of him, and I do not think it will
be a hard job to cast him out. Now if God
takes hold of your father and shakes him
over hell a little while, and he smells brimstone
right strong, if there was a shipload of
these little sickly devils in him they would
be driven out of him just as easy as a tornado
would drive the regiments of musquitos from
around and about those stagnant ponds in
the country." Seeing him so confident, the
daughter wept and raised the shout in anticipation.
Peter succeeded. On Sunday
night, when a tremendous power fell on the
congregation, and the rowdies were struck
down by dozens on the right and left, that
special persecutor, the over anxious father
and suspicious husband, fell suddenly, as if
a rifle ball had been shot through his heart;
being powerless, and cramped all over until
sunrise, when he began to come to. With a
smile on his countenance he then sprang up
and bounded all over the camp ground with
swelling shouts of glory and oratory that
seemed to shake the encampment. The
daughter went skipping and leaping to Peter,
crying out that those mean and sickly little
devils were cast out of her father, and they
all went home, and for days did little but
sing and shout, and pray.

At a camp meeting, where a large number
of Arians attended, there was wholesale exorcism
—quite after Peter's own heart. An
Arian must of necessity be possessed, according
to our backwoods-preacher; it is the
inevitable logic of the situation; so that when
many attending that camp meeting recanted,
it was because the legions that had distracted
them for years were cast out, and they came
to their right minds.

In that meeting the crowd fell by hundreds;
mourners were grovelling on the ground in
every direction; the cries of the penitents
and the shouts of those who had got religion
went up without intermission night and day;