Oh Lord Help Me! Your Signature Appears in the Devil’s Book on the Date of 11 April 1692!

Every Bible believer should have this concept; nothing is impossible with God. If you genuinely want to make spiritual progress, then fear two things, or so the Book of Proverbs has suggested (19.23). Life with God. Life without God. Discipline your senses. Do not let them dance you at the end of a string. There are several points at which, had circumstances been slightly different, the course of events at Salem might have changed entirely, and one of these is the examination of Rebecca Nurse. If she had held the stage alone her evident sincerity might have convinced the community that they had been mistaken, and she may have been exonerated of witchcraft before she was killed. However, unfortunately someone else was arrested and examined at the same time. This was Dorcas Good, the five-year-old daughter of Sarah Good, and within two days of her arrest she had provided Salem its second confession. Oh yes, she told the examining magistrates, she had a familiar. It was a little snake that used to such her at the lowest joint of her forefinger. Here, as on a number of other occasions, the examiners were not at first willing to take a confession at face value. Where did the snake such, they asked; Was it here? “pointing to other places” on the child’s body. No, said the child, not there. Here. And she pointed to her forefinger, where the examiners “observed a deep red spot, about the bigness of a flea bite.” Probably it was a flea bite, and the child had only imagined that she had a familiar who sucked her blood there. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

At this distance in time, it is impossible to know for certain what caused that deep red spot. However, there is no difficulty in imagining the feelings of the examiners when they say it. All of them heard that a demon in the shape of an animal came to the witch and sucked her blood, and here was what seemed to be they physical evidence of just such an “accursed suckage” on the finger of a five-year-old child, pointed out by the child herself as corroboration of her confession, corroboration which the examiners had at first been hesitant to accept. They must have been thoroughly horrified. If five-year-old children were sucking demons, then the Devil had a far surer foothold in Massachusetts than anyone has imagined, and strenuous investigation would be necessary to discover its extent. Yet their horror must have been mixed with triumph, for Dorcas Good’s confession confirmed the rightness of their procedure in imprisoning her mother, since the child accused her mother as well as herself and did it without prodding. Who had given her the little snake, they asked her. Was it the Black Man? Oh no, Dorcas replied, it was not the Black Man; it was her mother, whom she continued to accuse, testifying at her trial that she had three familiars, birds, “one black, one yellow and that these birds hurt the children and afflicted persons.” Dorcas Good’s confession, with the accompanying physical evidence of her Devil’s mark, must have quieted the doubt of the investigation that many had felt at the arrest of Rebecca Nurse. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

Because from this time on expressions of sympathy for Rebecca Nurse were met not with doubt but with suspicion. On Sunday, April 3, 1692 Samuel Parris preached on John 6, 70: Have not I chosen twelve, and one of your is a Devil. The implication of the text was clear. The Puritans believed that church members had been chosen—elected—by God. Thus Parris’ text suggested that a church member had betrayed her election just as Judas had betrayed Christ’s choice. In short, it suggested that Rebecca Nurse was guilty before she had been tried. As soon as he had spoken, Sarah Cloyse, a sister of Rebecca Nurse, rose from her seat, left the meetinghouse and slammed the door behind her “to the amazement of the congregation.” They were amazed, of course, not at her resentment of Parris but at her public expression of it in the midst of a church service, a virtually unheard of action in Puritan Massachusetts. It was quite enough to call Sarah Cloyse to the attention of the afflicted girls, who shortly began to see her apparition in their fits, taking the Devil’s sacrament of “red bread and drink.” “Oh Goodwife cloyse,” said one, “I do not think to see you here! Is this a time to receive the sacrament? You ran away on the Lord’s Day, and scorned to receive it in the meetinghouse, and is this a time to receive it? I wonder at you!” This was the third time in four days that the girls had mentioned a witches’ sacrament. The confessions of Tituba and Dorcas Good were beginning to bear fruit; the girls and the community were no longer thinking in terms of individual witches but were beginning to think of an organized society of witches with its own structure and its own sacraments. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

In spite of the growing belief that they were facing a diabolical conspiracy, the community was still moving relatively slowly. Goodwife Cloyse slammed the door of Salem Village meetinghouse on April 3. The girls must have seen her apparition within twenty-four hours, because it was on April 4 that Jonathan Walcott and Nathaniel Ingersoll entered complaints against her and Elizabeth Procter, the wife of John Procter. Yet warrants were not issued until the eight, and examinations were not conducted until the eleventh. At least a part of the delay may have been occasioned by the community’s decision to take this next examination more seriously than the early ones, perhaps as a result of the belief that they were facing an organized conspiracy. In any case, for this examination John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin were joined on the bench by four other magistrates, including Samuel Sewall of Boston and Thomas Danforth, the deputy-governor of the colony, who acted as presiding magistrate. Anyone who has read anything of Sewall’s Diary—even the brief excerpts that find their way into the typical anthology of American literature—will know that he was a person of considerable shrewdness, kindness, and common sense. However, the presence of Sewall and the other three new magistrates made no difference in the procedures of the examination. The transcript does not say who asked the questions, but we may assume from the similarity of this to the earlier transcripts that most of the questions still came from Hathorne. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Hathorne began by asking John, Parris’ Carib Indian slave, who had hurt him? Good Procter, said John, and then Goody Cloyse. What had they done to him? Choked him, he said, and brought him the book [the Devil’s book] to sign. (This choking is, of course, one more instance of the globus hystericus, the hysterical lump in the throat, coupled with an hallucination.) Did he know Goody Cloyse and Goody Procter? (That is, did he know the persons themselves or had he only seen their apparitions?) Yes, he answered. “Here is Goody Cloyse.” At this point Goodwife Cloyse could contain herself no longer, and burst out, “When did I hurt thee?” “A great many times.” “Oh,” said Sarah Cloyse, “you are a grievous liar.” The bench questioned John further, then turned to Mary Walcott, whose testimony was interrupted by her falling into fits, and to Abigail Williams. It was these two who testified that they had seen Sarah Cloyse at a meeting of witches (including Rebecca Nurse, Martha Corey, and Sarah Good) at Deacon Ingersoll’s upon which “Sarah Cloyse asked for water, and sat down as one seized with a dying fainting fit [“dying” here has the now archaic meaning of losing consciousness; “fainting” does not mean to lose consciousness but to lose strength]; and several of the afflicted fell into fits, and some of them cried out, Oh! her spirit is gone to prison to her sister Nurse.” The bench then turned to the case of Elizabeth Procter. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

“Elizabeth Procter, you understand whereof you are charged, viz. to be guilty of sundry acts of witchcraft; what say you to it? Speak the truth. And so you that are afflicted, you must speak the truth, as you will answer it before God another day. Mary Walcott, doth this woman hurt you?” “I never saw her so as to be hurt by her.” “Mercy Lewis, does she hurt you?” Her mouth was stopped. “Ann Putnam, does she hurt you?” She could no speak. “Abigail Williams, does she hurt you?” her hand was thrust in her own mouth. “John (Indian), does this woman hurt you?” “This is the woman that came in her shift and choked me.” “Did she ever bring the book?” “Yes sir.” “What to do?” “To write.” “What, this woman?” “Yes, sir.” “Are you sure of it?” “Yes sir.” Again Abigail Williams and Ann Putnam were spoke to by the court, but neither of them could make any answer, by reason of dumbness or other fits. “What do you say, Goody Proctor, to these things?” “I take God in Heaven to be my witness that I know nothing of it, no more than the child unborn.” Then bench returned to questioning the girls, and this time they were able to answer. Yes, Goody Procter had afflicted them, and many times. Upon this she looked at them, and they fell into fits. When they recovered they were asked, had she brought the book o them to sign? Yes, and boasted that her maid, Mary Warren, had signed it. When Abigail Williams asked her to face whether she had not told her that Mary Warren had signed the book, Elizabeth Proctor answered, “Dear child, it is not so. There is another judgment, dear child.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

Abigail’s reply was to fall again into fits, in which Ann Putnam joined her, and soon both were crying out that they saw Goodwife Procter’s apparition perched above the spectators on a beam. Soon they were crying out of John Procter as well, saying he was a wizard, and at this “many, if not all of the bewitched had grievous fits.” Then they saw Procter’s apparition. Abigail Williams called out, “There is Goodman Procter going to Mrs. Pope,” and immediately Goodwife Pope fell into a fit. “There is Goodman Procter going to hurt Good Bibber,” and immediately Goodwife Bibber fell into a fit. Elizabeth Procter’s demeanor had been as meek and as Christian as that of Rebecca Nurse, but how many would remember it after such a horrendous display of fits and such graphic hallucinations? Certainly Samuel Sewall did not. His brief diary entry for April 11 reads: Went o Salem, where, in the Meeting-house, the persons accused of witchcraft were examined; was a very great assembly; ‘twas awful to see how the afflicted persons were agitated. Mr. Noyes prayed at the beginning, and Mr. Higginson concluded. Indeed, the outcry against John Procter was so terrible that he was committed with his wife, and the following day the Proctors, with Sarah Cloyse, Rebecca Nurse, Martha Corey, and Sarah Good were sent o Boston jail. The accusation that Mary Warren, the Procters’ maidservant, had signed the Devil’s book had a special significance, because she had previously been one of the afflicted girls. However, lately she had taken to denying both her own testimony and that of others. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

The girls’ evidence was false, she said; they “did but dissemble.” By this she did not mean that they were simply lying. She meant that they were living in two different Worlds of experience—that of their fits, and that of normal perception—and the World of their fits was false. She told several people that “the magistrates might as well examine Keysar’s daughter that had been distracted many years and take notice of what she said as well as any of the afflicted persons. For,” said Mary Warren, “when I was afflicted I thought I saw the apparitions of a hundred persons” (for she said her head was distempered [so] that she could not tell what she said). And when she was well again she could not say that she saw any of the apparitions aforesaid. One of the other girls, Mercy Lewis, was also capable at this time of distinguishing between the hallucinations of her fits and the World of ordinary perceptions. A young man named Ephraim Sheldon testified that “I, this deponent, being at the house of lieutenant Ingersoll when Mercy Lewis was in one of her fits, I heard her cry out of Goodwife Cloyse. And when she came to herself she was asked who she saw. She answered, she saw nobody. They demanded of her whether or no she did not see Goodwife Nurse, or Goodwife Cloyse, or Goodwife Corey. She answered, she saw nobody. But Mercy Lewis was seldom asked to choose between her hallucinations and her ordinary perceptions. She was a maid in the household of Thomas Putnam, whose daughter, Anne Putnam, Jr. was one of the most violently afflicted girls and one of the most ready in making accusations, and whose wife, Ann Putnam, Sr. was not far behind. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

The Putnam household was in fact a much a center for hysterical fits and accusations as the Parris household, and given such a home environment it is scarcely surprising that Mercy Lewis never reached the point that Mary Warren achieved, of denying the general validity of her hallucinations. However, the Procter household was a very different matter. John Procter may, as has been suggested, have beaten Mary Warren out of some of her fit. Certainly he often threatened her with beating, and with worse; on one occasion he threated to burn her out of her fit with a pair of hot tongs. Another time he threatened to drown her. In her fits she had tried to run into the fire and into water, and he had prevented her, but he told her once that if it happened again he would let her destroy herself. Once he was in the room while she was in a fi and said to her, “If you are afflicted, I wish you were more afflicted.” Indeed, he added, he wished all the afflicted persons were worse afflicted. “Master,” she asked, “what makes you say so?” “Because,” said John Procter, “you go to bring out innocent persons.” Mary Warren answered that “that could not be.” However, her hysteria was vulnerable to his persistent skepticism, or to his threats, or to his violence, or to a combination of the three. She did return to sanity, and she did deny the validity of her hallucinations. This is another of those points at which the course of Salem witchcraft might have changed. If Cotton Mather, who had shown himself in Boston more interested in curing the Goodwin children than in catching witches, had been present then Mary Warren would probably have retained her sanity. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

If Samuel Willard had been present, who at Groton had seized on and explored every contradiction in the testimony of Elizabeth Knap, she might also have remained sane. However, Mather and William were not present, and the magistrates and ministers of Salem and of Sale Village were not interested in the fact that Mary Warren had recovered from her fits and was, correctly, calling them insanity. They were interested in the fact that Mary Warrens specter was now engaged in tormenting the other afflicted persons. They were not instantly sure of themselves; Mary Warren was accused of singing the Devil’s book on April 11, and she was not examined until the nineteenth. However, by that date the magistrates had plainly made up with minds. “You were a little while ago an afflicted person,” said Hathorne. “Now you are an afflicter. How comes this to pass?” “I look up to God,” said Mary Warren, “and take it to be a great mercy of God.” “What!” said Hathorne, “Do you take it to be a great mercy to afflict others?” The afflicted persons had begun having fits as soon as Mary Warren approached the bar; shortly they were all in fits. Hysteria is communicable, and Mary Warren had previously been subject to it. Shortly Mary Warren fell into a fit, and some of the afflicted cried out that she was going to confess, but Goody Corey and Procter and his wife came in, in their apparition, and struck her down and said she should tell nothing. Mary Warren continued a good space in a fit [so] that she did neither see, nor hear, nor speak. Afterwards she started up and said, “I will speak,” and cried out “Oh! I am sorry for it, I am sorry for it,” and wringed her hands, and fell a little while into a fit again, and them came to speak, but immediately her teeth were set. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

And then she fell into a violent fit and cried out, “Oh Lord help me! Oh good Lord save me!” And then afterwards cried again, “I will tell, I will tell,” and then fell into a dead fit again. And afterwards cried, “I will tell! They did! They did! They did!” and then fell into a violent fit again. After a little recovery she cried, “I will tell! They brought me to it!” and then fell into a fit again, which fits continuing she was ordered to be had out…When Mary Warren had been returned to prison she again recovered her sanity and again denied the validity of what she saw and said in her fits. The magistrates continued to examine her—sometimes in prison and sometimes in public—for the next three weeks, continually refusing to accept her denials and continually demanding that she confess. By the end of the process she had incriminated herself, her mistress, and finally her master. Once, she said, she had caught at an apparition that looked like Goody Corey, but pulling it down into her lap had found it to be John Procter. By the time she gave up her denials she was having fits so violent that her legs could not be uncrossed without breaking them. The primary characteristic of Satan, aside from his hubris and despair, is his ability to cast evil suggestions into men, women, children, animals, and nature. Evil has been defined as taking pleasure in the intentional inflicting of harm on innocent others, and 70 percent of people believe Satan is real. Satan is a Dark Lord, and is arguably the most powerful entity in existence, with God and Death as the only others that come close to matching his power. Satan is insanely cruel and barbaric. #RandolphHarris 11 of 194

Even by demon standards, Satan is extremely monstrous, finding it fun and relaxing to inflict suffering onto others. In recent decades, there has been a growing recognition of the significance of the supernatural in a Victorian context. Studied on the nineteenth-century spiritualism, occultism, magic, and folklore have highlighted that the Victorian era was ridden with specters and learned warlocks and witches. After Oliver Fisher Winchester passed away, he left his deluxe pair of ivory-gripped Volcanic Navy pistols, serial numbers 1401 and 1507—the only firearms known to have been owned by Mr. Winchester himself, to family members. T.G. Bennett, who joined Winchester in 1870, among other things, received a God Tiffany & Co. watch. These artifacts are directly associated with the two driving forces in Winchester history. Order, privilege, and property in abundant proportions have always been associated with the Winchester name. The Winchester rifle kept the family from perishing in the September massacres, and they allowed enslaved people to fight for their freedom. The Winchester family had wonderful rotations on the wheel of Fate of that dreadful time. William Wirt Winchester, the son of Oliver Winchester, was a handsome young fellow, frank, high-spirited, and of a brisk and happy temperament; which, however, modified by the many misfortunes he had undergone, was not permanently changed. William Winchester was married to Sarah Lockwood Pardee in 1862. In 1866, they had a daughter, Anne Winchester who is rumored to have died six weeks after birth from being fed on by vampire. Vampire entities have been recorded in most cultures; the term vampire was popularized in Western Europe after reports of an 18^th century mass hysteria of a pre-existing folk belief in the Balkans and Eastern Europe that, in some cases, resulted in corpses being staked and people being accused of vampirism. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

The Ark was a 400-ton English merchant ship hired in 1633 by Cecil Calvert, 2^nd Baron Baltimore to bring roughly 140 English colonists and their equipment and supplies to the new colony and Province of Maryland, one of the original thirteen colonies of British North America on the Atlantic Ocean seaboard. At the age of 22 John Winchester I (1611 – 1694) of Cranbrook, Kent England, an ancestor of William Winchester, made the historic journey to America on the Ark. On 22 November 1633, The Ark was accompanied by the smaller 40-ton pinnace Dove. The two ships, Ark and Dove, sailed from the Isle of Wight off the south coast of England. Three days later a storm in the English Channel separated Ark from Dove. When Dove disappeared from view, she was flying distress lanterns, and those aboard Ark assumed she had sunk in the storm. A second more violent storm hit Ark on 29 November 1633 and lasted three days, finally subsiding on 1 December. In the midst of the storm, the mainsail was split in half and the crew was forced to tie down the tiler and whipstaff so the ship lay ahull, keeping her bow to the wind and waves as she drifted. This was the last bad weather Ark encountered on the trans-Atlantic voyage. On 25 December 1633, wine was passed out to celebrate Christmas. The following day, 30 colonists fell ill with a fever allegedly brought on by excessive drinking and 12 died, but legend has it that Vampire twins boarded the dove, killing everyone on board, then joined the crew and woke from the short hibernation nearly a month after the Dove vanished, feeding on the crew. John Winchester survived the attack, although he was bitten. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

On 24 February 1633, the Ark arrived at Point Comfort (now called Old Point Comfort) at the mouths of the James, Nansemon, and Elizabeth rivers, which formed the great harbor of Hampton Roads in Virginia This ended the ocean voyage which had lasted slightly over three months, of which 66 days were actually spent at sea. None the less, John Winchester wrote in his journal about being attacked by beast who moved so fast he could barely see them, and being left weakened and unable to properly digest food nor could he tolerate prolong sun exposure. The journal was passed down several generations, and this was actually the catalyst that inspired Oliver Winchester to mean the Winchester Repeating Rife. William Winchester had plenty of capacity for enjoyment in him; and as his position in the Winchester company was very isolated, his mind had become enlightened on social and political matters. His wife Sarah Winchester was wonderfully well educated, and surprisingly beautiful. Not too tall to offend the taste of her compatriots, and not too short to be dignified and graceful, she had a symmetrical figure, and a small, well-poised head, whose profuse, shining, silken dark-brown hair she wore as nature intended, in a shower of curls, never touched by the hand of the coiffeur—curls which clustered over her brow, and fell far down on her shapely neck. Her features were fine; the eyes very dark, and the mouth very red; the complexion clear and rather pale, and the style of the face and its expression lofty. When Mrs. Sarah Winchester were a child, people were accustomed to say she was pretty and refined enough to belong to the aristocracy. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

Mrs. Winchester was deeply impressed with the sense of her supreme importance to her husband William Winchester, and fully comprehended that he would be influenced by and through her when all other persuasion or argument would be unavailing. Of course, Mr. Winchester was handsome, elegant, engaging, with all the external advantages, and devoid of the vice, errors, and hopelessness infatuated unscrupulousness other possessed; he had naturally quikc intelligence, and some real knowledge and comprehension of life had been knocked into him by the hard-hitting blows to Fate. Unfortunately Oliver Winchester passed away 10 December 1880, and his son William shortly after on 7 March 1881 from “tuberculosis,” but many also suspected Oliver and William had succumbed to a vampire attack. In fac, the New England vampire panic was the reaction to an outbreak of tuberculosis in the 19^th throughout Rhode Island, Eastern Connecticut, Vermont, and other parts of New England. Tuberculosis was thought to be caused by the decreased consuming the life of their surviving relatives. Bodies were exhumed and internal organs ritually burned to stop the “vampire” from attacking the local population and to prevent the spread of the disease. As the story goes, Sarah felt she was cursed, inherited a fortune, and moved to San Jose, California USA; she purchased an 18-room farmhouse and built an extensive, lofty mansion with handsome rooms. Her bedroom was splendid. Her bed was made of black oak, elaborately carved. The curtains were contrived to hang from the ceiling. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

Mrs. Winchester’s niece’s bedroom had a high folding screen of black-and-gold Japanese pattern, also a relic of the grand old times, which stood about six feet on the outside of the rails that shut in her bed. The floor was of shining oak, testifying to the conscientious and successful labourers; and on the spot where the railing of the alcove opened by a prey quaint device sundering the intertwined arms of a pair of very chubby cherub, a square space in the floor was richly carved. After Mrs. Winchester passed away in 1922, the finding of hidden treasure was not the first discovery in the mansion. The movers who were hired to auction off her furniture in San Francisco also has a keen scent and an unleasable thirst for the blood of aristocrats. Without receiving the instructions of what to do with the 19^th casket, silver gilt casket by Alderman Abel Heywood they found burned beneath the floor boards, the movers knew they had to get it out of the house at once, unseen by the servants who were at supper. They took the casket from its hiding-place. It was heavy, though not large. They managed it, however, and, the brief preparation completed, the moment of parting arrived. The young male mover and his betrothed were standing on the spot whence they had taken the casket; the craved rail with the heavy curtains might have been the outer sanctuary of an alter, and the bride and bridegroom before it, with earnest, loving faces, and clasped hands. “Farewell, Dennis,” said Rachel; “promise me once more, in this the moment of our parting, that you will come to me again, if you re alive, when the danger is passed.” “Whether I am living or dead, Rachel,” said Dennis Diderot, strongly moved by some sudden inexplicable instinct, “I will come to you again.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

Dennis amassed a good deal of money from being engaged in this very lucrative job. This was the construction of several steep descents. Meanwhile, Rachel had decided to move into the Winchester mansion after it was vacant. She and her new husband had left some furniture behind so they could occupy a small part of the mansion until it was sold. The moon was high in the dark sky, and Rachel’s beams were flung across the oak floor of her bedroom, through the great window with the balcony, when the girl has gone to sleep with her lover’s name upon her lips in prayer, awoke with a sudden start, and sat up in her bed. An unbearable dread was upon her; and yet she was unable to utter a cry, she was unable to make another movement. Had she heard a voice? No, no one had spoken, nor did she fancy that she heard any sound. However, within her, somewhere inside her heaving bosom, something said, “Rachel!” And she listened and knew what it was. And it spoke, and said: “I promised you that, living or dead, I would come to you again, And I have some to you; but no living.” She was quite awake. Even in the agony of her fear she looked around, and tried to move her hands, to feel her dress and the bedclothes, and to fix her eyes on some familiar object, that she might satisfy herself, before this racing and beating, this whirling and yet icy chilliness of her blood should kill her outright, that she was really awake. “I have come to you; but not living.” What an awful thing that voice speaking within her was! She tried to rise her head and to look towards the place where the moonbeams marked bright lines upon the polished floor, which lost themselves at the foot of the Japanese screen. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

She forced herself to this effort, and lifted her eyes, wild and haggard with fear, and there, the moonbeams at his feet, the tall black screen behind him, she saw Dennis Diderot. She saw him; she looked at him quite steadily; she rose, slowly, with a mechanical movement, and stood upright beside her bed, clasping her forehead with her hands, and gazing at him. He stood motionless, in the dress he had worn when he took leave of her, the light-coloured riding-coat of the period, with a short cape, and a large white cravat tucked into the double breast. The white muslin was flecked, and the front of the riding-coat was deeply stained, with blood. He looked at her, and she took a step froward—another—then, with a desperate effort, she dashed open the railing and flung herself on her knees before him, with her arms stretched out as if to clasp him. However, he was no longer there; the moonbeams fell clear and cold upon the polished floor, and lost themselves where Rachel lay, at the foot of the screen, her head upon the ground, and every sign of life was gone from her. And in Spain the corpse of a young man who had suffered a violent death was discovered. He was attired in a light-coloured riding-coast, and had been stabbed through the heart. At least Rachel did not have to mourn her lover who had kept his promise, and come back to her. And once, every year, on certain summer night, two ghostly figures are seen in the Winchester mansion, by any who have courage and patience to watch for the, gliding along the floors of the mansion. Therefore, do not destroy the World. I have only nibbled the grasses of my lover’s meadow. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

I hope nothing bad happens to you. Do not. Do not destroy the World. The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, long forbearing, and abundant in kindness. The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works. All Thy works shall praise Thee, O Lord, and Thy faithful ones shall bless Thee. They shall declare the glory of thy Kingdom, and talk of Thy might; to make known to the sons of men His mighty acts, and the glorious majesty of His Kingdom. Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth throughout all generations. The Lord upholdeth all who fall, and raiseth up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look hopefully to Thee, and Thou givest them their food in due season. Thou openest Thy hand, and satisfiest every living thing with favour. The Lord is righteous in all His ways, and gracious in all His works. The Lord is near unto all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of the that revere Him; He will also hear their cry, and will save them. The Lord preserveth all them that love Him; but all the wicked will He bring low. My mouth shall speak the praise of the Lord; let all humans bless His holy name for ever and ever. We will bless the Lord from this time forth, and forevermore. Hallelujah. Perhaps Mrs. Winchester did not keep her valuables in a safe? Maybe she stored them somewhere no one would think to look? The World will never know the contents of the casket, nor what happened to it. All we do know is nothing of value was found in the actual safe after her death. Perhaps just a few clues? In the search for riches, we often lose what matters most. The day will come when all you will have is what you have given to God. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19