broken upon the green and sparsely settled hills of Exeter, and as a receding wave upon the seashore will sometimes leave a little pool high up on the beach, so this wave of superstition left the vampire belief among the scattered farms of the ancestors of the present Inhabitants of Exeter. The old things that do no change or give place to new, and the “vampire people” cling to the superstition of their ancestors.     Aside from the people of Exeter, the only people among whom the vampire myth is still cherished are the Albanians and the people in some parts of rural Greece. The people of Exeter are not an irreligious people and many of the farmers are well-to-do. Yet In all their religion, and, in fact, in all their daily affairs, the strain of mysticism is ever present. They know what the outside world thinks of the vampire business, but they look upon the people of the outside world much as the Rev. Dr. Cotton Mather of pious memory looked upon those who did not believe in witchcraft. He said that the man who did not believe in witchcraft deserved to be burnt himself.     The vampire myth in its wanderings over many lands from Hungary to find its last lodgment in a rural Rhode Island community suffered many changes of form. In Italy it was believed that living persons possessed the vampire gift, and simply by associating with a well person or exercising a certain will power on them could draw to themselves the life of the victim. When the time for the vampire to die was approaching he had to find a victim in

order to prolong his life. In some cases the vampire was supposed to get the victim alone, murder him and suck the blood from the dead man’s arteries. After that he had a new lease of life. It will be remembered that when Byron was living in Italy there was a certain Lord Ruthven, a pale, cadaverous man, living there, of whom the poet’s friend, the beautiful Countess Guissioli, had a great horror, as he was believed by her and the Italian populace to be a vampire. But of all the stories that were ever written about vampires, none exceed in weirdness the story of the graveyard searches and cremations of the mystics on the lonely wind-swept hills of Exeter, just at our own doors. From— The Morning News. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.), 19 Sept. 1897. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.