The fancy of Number Seven about the witches’ broomsticks suggested to one of us the following poem: 

        Thebroomstick train;
     or, the return of the witches.

   Lookout!  Look out, boys!  Clear the track! 
   The witches are here!  They’ve all come back! 
   They hanged them high,—­No use!  No use! 
   What cares a witch for a hangman’s noose? 
   They buried them deep, but they would n’t lie, still,
   For cats and witches are hard to kill;
   They swore they shouldn’t and wouldn’t die,
   Books said they did, but they lie! they lie!

   —­A couple of hundred years, or so,
   They had knocked about in the world below,
   When an Essex Deacon dropped in to call,
   And a homesick feeling seized them all;
   For he came from a place they knew full well,
   And many a tale he had to tell. 
   They long to visit the haunts of men,
   To see the old dwellings they knew again,
   And ride on their broomsticks all around
   Their wide domain of unhallowed ground.

   In Essex county there’s many a roof
   Well known to him of the cloven hoof;
   The small square windows are full in view
   Which the midnight hags went sailing through,
   On their well-trained broomsticks mounted high,
   Seen like shadows against the sky;
   Crossing the track of owls and bats,
   Hugging before them their coal-black cats.

   Well did they know, those gray old wives,
   The sights we see in our daily drives
   Shimmer of lake and shine of sea,
   Brown’s bare hill with its lonely tree,
   (It wasn’t then as we see it now,
   With one scant scalp-lock to shade its brow;)
   Dusky nooks in the Essex woods,
   Dark, dim, Dante-like solitudes,
   Where the tree-toad watches the sinuous snake
   Glide through his forests of fern and brake;
   Ipswich River; its old stone bridge;
   Far off Andover’s Indian Ridge,
   And many a scene where history tells
   Some shadow of bygone terror dwells,
   Of “Norman’s Woe” with its tale of dread,
   Of the Screeching Woman of Marblehead,
   (The fearful story that turns men pale
   Don’t bid me tell it,—­my speech would fail.)

   Who would not, will not, if he can,
   Bathe in the breezes of fair Cape Ann,
   Rest in the bowers her bays enfold,
   Loved by the sachems and squaws of old? 
   Home where the white magnolias bloom,
   Sweet with the bayberry’s chaste perfume,
   Hugged by the woods and kissed by the seal
   Where is the Eden like to thee?

   For that “couple of hundred years, or so,”
   There had been no peace in the world below;
   The witches still grumbling, “It is n’t fair;
   Come, give us a taste of the upper air! 
   We’ve had enough of your sulphur springs,