Part 10

"At one time, in Cincinnati, although three miles away, I heard my landlady say to her daughter, after I had been boarding with them a week, 'I don't like that man--he is _not_ all right;' and went on to tell her impressions, what she thought I was, which it is not necessary to repeat. At first I felt indignant, forgetting, for the moment, I was three miles away. I finally concluded to say nothing about it when I went home at night, as I thought at first of doing, else they might think I was wrong in some way, as they were both members of the M. E. Church. But, when I got home, having a good opportunity, I told the daughter word for word what her mother had said about me, and also her response to her mother after she (the mother) had got through berating me--which was, 'What do you mean?' and the mother's answer to her exclamation, 'I mean just as I say.' I requested the daughter not to say anything to the mother, as it would do no good. But in the course of the following day the mother got speaking of me again in much the same strain, when the daughter could not resist the temptation, and told her to be careful what she said; and then told her what I had said. The mother was thunderstruck, and after a moment said, 'He is a devil.' I happened to be in a condition such that I heard the mother's response. This I told to the daughter that evening. Now, if I had had a thought that the mother entertained such feelings toward me, I might have attributed it to the workings of my own mind. But as I thought they had diametrically the opposite opinion, I concluded that it was another case of the inner hearing.

"Now, if you can make use of this, or a part of it, you are welcome to do so. Should you desire any other cases, I can furnish many.

"With high considerations I remain, "D. C. DENSMORE."

The writer of the above, when in conversation with me in my own study, incidentally dropped a word which intimated that his inner ear was sometimes receptive of utterances put forth by embodied men and women, who, at the time, were far away from him. In response to my expressed wish to know whether such was the fact, he detailed a number of cases in which he had had such experience; I then asked him to give me one or two of them, briefly, on paper. That request shortly drew forth the foregoing letter.

Much more of the emphatically educational period of Captain Densmore's life was spent in forecastles and cabins of whaleships than in school on shore, and he perhaps expected me to reconstruct his sentences, in part at least, before presenting them in print. But such facts as his experience has encountered ought to be accompanied by the spirit of conscious knowledge and truth pervading his own vocabulary. His language is sufficiently perspicuous to convey his meaning, and possesses force which any considerable change would impair. That spirit makes rhetoric and grammar of secondary consequence in the narration of facts and experiences which show that there exist capacities in some embodied human beings for receiving intelligence-fraught impressions, in ways and under circumstances which the schoolmen and teachers of the world lack knowledge of, but ought to know and get instruction from. Therefore the reader has been permitted to see in his own words the statement of one who has at times heard with his inner or spiritual senses the exact words of speakers who were miles away from him, and thus shown that Mrs. Hibbins, through the possession of natural faculties, though of a kind but rarely developed, might have been something very different from a mere skillful guesser. An assumption that she was helped by spirits is not needful to a satisfactory explanation of a mode in which she might have learned directly and instantly what far absent ones were uttering. Her own faculties, independently of special spirit help or teaching, may have permitted her to hear with perfect distinctness what would have been utterly inaudible by mortals in their ordinary condition. Measuring the marvelousness of her knowledge by the frenzy it produced in the community, and the awful doom it drew upon herself, we look upon her manifestations of "wit" as an outflow of knowledge gained through her own inner or spiritual organs of perception--either with or without the aid of spirits.

When commenting upon what he assumed to be fact, viz., that Mrs. Hibbins made a correct guess, and only a _guess_, Upham says, that "in the blind infatuation of the time, it was considered proof positive of her being possessed, _by aid of the devil_, of supernatural insight." Thus he assumed that the mass of people in Boston were under such an infatuation as could and did cause them to believe that very successful _guessing_ required the devil's help! They may have been infatuated, but their infatuation did not act in that direction. Their senses and judgments for determining the forces needful to produce either material or mental effects, may, for aught that history states, have been as keen as any people ever possessed, and their general wisdom and thrift indicate that they did. Why, therefore, hastily brand them with the imbecility of being unequal to a fair, common-sense estimate of the adequacy of causes to produce observed effects? To do so is ungenerous, unjust, and uncalled for by their action. It may have been, and probably was, their freedom from infatuation; it may have been the very keenness and accuracy of their perceptions of the quantity and quality of cause needful to acquirement of knowledge which her utterances revealed, that generated and sustained the hostility against Mrs. Hibbins. Her accuracy in reading facts, secret and transpiring at a distance, was possibly, on many occasions, so far beyond what common experience or science was able to impute to either luck or skill at guessing, that few, if any, could avoid the conclusion that she was receiving supernal aid.

Anything supernal was then deemed devilish. After public excitement had been aroused against her, a very successful guess might possibly be evidence that the devil was its author, but not till the excitement had acquired and exercised bewildering force. Some extraordinary sayings or doings of this lady obviously must have antedated the public furore, else it would never have raged. The nature and circumstances of the case indicate an almost certainty that minds around her, while in their ordinary calmness, must have witnessed sayings or doings by her which "seemed to them more than natural"--which were startling--were out of the usual course, and readily distinguishable from GUESSINGS: because without something of this kind the excitement itself could never have commenced. What first started the public terror of her is the most important question in the case. The excitement did not spring up uncaused. A successful guess was no great novelty and no marvel in times of calmness. It could not then be regarded as diabolical. The bewilderings of antecedent causes were needful to make a correct _guess_ terrific. Excitement might metamorphose a guess into devil-imputed knowledge, but a guess could not beget, though it might intensify, blood-seeking excitement. Whence the excitement itself--such excitement as could regard an accurate guess as necessarily the offspring of diabolical insight?

Mrs. Hibbins lived among the _elite_ of a province, whose people were decidedly sagacious in matters of both private and public business, and were also probably possessed of as high moral and religious principles, as prevailed in any other community on the globe. As before stated, Richard Bellingham, one of the very eminent men of the country, and at that time deputy-governor of the province, was her brother; she was widow of one who had been among the most esteemed citizens of the town, and she is credited with having possessed more wit than her neighbors. Therefore we are hunting for a cause adequate to excite public indignation against a woman of bright intellect, of high position in society, and standing under the shelter of near kinship with those in authority. The cause must have been some strange one. _Skill at guessing_ was too common and natural, and does not meet the requirements.

We all unite in calling the people of 1656 infatuated in relation to witchcraft. But did their infatuation so affect them as to bring obtuseness upon their external senses and their intellectual ability for discerning the nature, character, and force of testimony and evidence? or, on the other hand, did it not show itself almost exclusively in their reception and tenacious retention of monstrous items in their witchcraft creed? Which? Admit an affirmative to the first part of the inquiry--admit that senses and intellects were befooled by external manifestations--and you make those noble forefathers but a band of dolts, heartless and bloodthirsty, taking life because they had not wit enough to read clearly the significance of observed external facts or to see the bearings and force of evidence. Admit the second, viz., that their creed was father of their infatuation, and you may look upon them as a band possessing clear perception of the exact meaning and logical results of all Christendom's fixed creed upon diabolism, and of unflinching purpose to fight for God and Christ against the devil. Demonologically they were infatuated, in common with the enlightened world; while yet for keen observance of outward facts, for just estimate of the adequacy of a cause to produce an observed effect, for determining the just significance of any well-observed fact, for discriminating application of evidence under the rules of their creeds both God-ward and devil-ward, no reason appears why they were not equal to any other community anywhere. Their infatuation was not first on the practical, but on the theoretical side. It was devil-ward, not man-ward _directly_, though through the creed it became man-ward.

Though perceiving the meagerness and improbability of Hutchinson's solution, Upham, ignoring what he avowed to be the only historical "clew we have" to a correct one, which led directly to the woman's own wit, was pleased to find the exciting cause of her persecution not in _her_, but in other people, and dogmatically said, "The _truth_ is, the tongue of slander was let loose against her." Such assumption--and it is bold assumption, even if it be in accordance with facts--fails--entirely fails--to meet the fair demands of our common-sense requirements. What started, and extended, and intensified that tongue if it did wag? If its utterances were _slanderous_, they were a mixture of _falsehood_ and _malice_. What _lies_ were or could be fabricated against such a woman, the nature of which the common sagacity of society there and then would not detect? What _lies_ which the truthfulness of society there and then would not decline to repeat against her? What malice against that lady of high connections could so pervade society there as to generate a public sentiment that demanded and obtained her life? The people of Boston were not wicked enough to let falsehood and malice triumph in their highest court of justice. Something different from _slander_ was needed to awaken and sustain the popular clamor against this woman, and to cause the court to pass sentence of death upon her. We granted to Upham the faculties of a fictionist, and he used them when he declared that "the truth is, the tongue of slander was let loose upon her." "The truth is," neither he nor any other one among us at this day, knows whether that woman was slandered or not. She may have been, but it is only matter of conjecture, and should not be put forth as _truth_. Something more than slander in its utmost expandings and accretions was needful to the tragic results which ensued.

We recur again to the only historical cause of excitement against this lady, viz., Norton's hint that she possessed such marvelous wit for guessing, as Upham supposes the people around her considered "proof positive of her being possessed, _by the aid of the devil_, of supernatural insight." That hint unlocks a door behind which may be found a more adequate and philosophical cause of her arraignment and condemnation than has hitherto been assigned. Since many persons now possess, she too may have possessed constitutional faculties, which, at times, enabled her to _sense_, comprehend, and enunciate facts and truths which it was impossible for her to learn by man's ordinary processes. Admit simply that she may have possessed intuitive faculties which read the thoughts of others or sensed afar the spirit of sounds, and solution of all mysteries about her is made. Wide awake, keen-sighted, good people may have seen in her the exercise of such powers as were clearly, distinctly, and beyond all question, extraordinary,--yes, supermundane. What then? Why, by all fair logic from Christendom's faith at that time, the devil must be her teacher, and she must be his covenanted servant. Such a helper of Satan, however high in character or station, must be deprived of power to work for him. Very wonderful revelations, such as disclosures of the secret thoughts and private conversations of other and distant persons, being a few times repeated by her, what could people, true to their God and their creed, do less than demand her execution? Nothing--nothing less. Their infatuated but sincere belief about the devil plainly and with mighty force called for her blood. And this not because of any crabbedness in her--not because of any lies about her--not because of malice toward her--not because of the tongue of slander--but because of facts, unquestionable facts, outwrought through her, which the tongue of truth might dutifully publish and republish throughout the town. The trouble, the murderous impulses, sprang from the _creed_, and especially from those parts of it which made any and all mysterious and disturbing outworkings devilish in their source, and which taught that the devil could act through no human beings but such as had made a voluntary compact to serve him. Those who had covenanted with him must die. Mrs. Hibbins was born with mediumistic faculties, and because of her legitimate use of these, the faith of her times conscientiously took her life.

It gladdens the heart to find a view which legitimately permits Mrs. Hibbins to have been a bright, refined, high-toned, and most estimable lady; and at the same time lessens the blackness of the cloud which has long hung over her judges and executioners. They were not so weak and wicked as to doom one to die because of temper, nor so villainous as to slander away a lady's life. Stern religious adherence and application of an honest, though deluded _faith_, made them executioners of all such as had exhibited powers which in the dim light of their philosophy and science seemed supernatural. Their weakness consisted of such strong faith as could, and in emergencies must, put in abeyance the kindlier sentiments of their hearts. Their great infirmity, which was then a general one throughout Christendom, was solely infatuation _devil-ward_.

We charge our ancestors with _infatuation_. People in all ages and nations have, no doubt, been subject to its influence. Perhaps every individual man and woman is more or less swayed by it. Each one in respect to some things may act without his usual good judgment, and contrary to the dictates of reason. The people of Boston were obviously debarred, by their infatuation devil-ward, from perceiving that Mrs. Hibbins might have received extraordinary gifts from some other giver than the great evil devil. And is it _impossible_ that infatuation influenced her recent historian first to reject the historic wit, and substitute for it fancied slander, as cause for the excitement against her, and then put his substitution forth as the _truth_; though both common sense and sound philosophy see at a glance, first, that it is only a conjecture, and secondly, that it is entirely inadequate to produce the effects which it was fabricated to account for? In doing this _he_ seemingly acted without _his_ usual good judgment, and contrary to the appropriate dictates of his enlightened reason--was infatuated.

Both of the two historians above quoted, virtually assumed that there never occurred here any phenomena, either mental or physical, which were not wrought out by agents, forces, and faculties purely mundane. Therefore the facts of history necessarily pushed them up to make implied, and often explicit, allegation that whole communities of resolute, wide-awake, energetic people, were possessors of external senses which were pitifully and superlatively deludible--possessors of enormous general credulity--of perceptions and judgments woefully warped and benighted in matters generally, excepting only a few of their girls and old women, who manifested cunning and deviltry supreme in making high sport out of the weaknesses of their elders and betters. Having driven stakes beyond which nature and natural forces must not go under forfeiture of historic recognition, anything not explainable by forces recognized within those stakes, is accounted for by the sage exclamation, "But that was a time of great credulity;" or "in the blind infatuation of the time," things were thus and so. We are willing to grant the existence of much credulity and infatuation both of old and now, but are not willing to allow that the facts of seeing what some other persons have not seen, and knowing the existence and partial operations of some forces in nature which some people have not paid attention to, are proof of either "great credulity" or "blind infatuation." Had the later historian been free from all infatuation, he could have learned from passing developments that Mrs. Hibbins probably, at times, was essentially a liberated spirit, hearing what Swedenborg calls "cogitatio loquens"--speaking thought--and that her repetition of what she thus learned took her life.

Hers was not a case of necessary spirit co-operation, was perhaps only one of uncommon liberation of the internal perceptive faculties. Because highly illumined, her brilliancy was judged to be diabolical, and therefore must be extinguished.

ANN COLE.

Manifestations differing widely from any noticed in the preceding cases, were observed in the presence of a Connecticut girl named Ann Cole. American witchcraft history has transmitted no distinct account of the use of human organs of speech by intellect that was foreign to the legitimate owner of the vocals used, prior to the instance described by Hutchinson in the following extract. The history of Ann Cole involves all that we know of the Greensmiths, husband and wife, mentioned therein, and who were executed for witchcraft.

"In 1662, at Hartford, Conn., one Ann Cole, a young woman who lived next door to a Dutch family, and, no doubt, had learned something of the language, was supposed to be possessed with demons, who sometimes spoke Dutch, and sometimes English, and sometimes a language which nobody understood, and who held a conference with one another. Several ministers, who were present, took down the conference in writing, and the names of several persons mentioned in the course of the conference as actors or bearing parts in it; particularly a woman, then in prison upon suspicion of witchcraft, one Greensmith, who, upon examination, confessed, and appeared to be surprised at the discovery. She owned that she and the others named had been familiar with a demon, who had carnal knowledge of her; and although she had not made a formal covenant, yet she had promised to be ready at his call, and was to have had a high frolic at Christmas, when an agreement was to have been signed. Upon this confession she was executed, and two more of the company were condemned at the same time." Hutchinson also credits to Goffe's diary the statement that "after one of the witches was hanged, the maid was well."

Another account of this Ann's case, furnished by an eye-witness and personal hearer when she was in her trances, has been transmitted. The writer of it promptly made, but afterward lost, minutes of what he heard from her lips, and about twenty years afterward wrote his remembrances of the manifestations, and forwarded the following account to Increase Mather:--

"Anno 1662. This Ann Cole (living in her father's family) was taken with strange fits wherein she (or rather the devil, as 'tis judged, making use of her lips) held a discourse for a considerable time. The general substance of it was to this purport, that a company of familiars of the evil one (who were named in the discourse that passed from her) were contriving how to carry on their mischievous designs against some, and especially against her; mentioning sundry ways they would take to that end, as that they would afflict her body, spoil her name, hinder her marriage, &c.... The conclusion was, 'Let us confound her language; she may tell no more tales.'... The discourse passed into a Dutch tone, ... and therein was given an account of some afflictions that had befallen divers, among the rest a young Dutch woman ... that could speak but very little, had met with great sorrow, as pinchings of her arms in the dark, &c.... Judicious Mr. Stone being by, when the latter discourse passed, declared it, in his thoughts, impossible that one not familiarly acquainted with the Dutch (which Ann Cole had not at all been) should so exactly imitate the Dutch tone in the pronunciation of English.... Extremely violent bodily motions she many times had, even to the hazard of her life, ... and very often great disturbance was given in the public worship of God by her and two other women who had also strange fits.... The consequence was, that one of the persons presented as active in the forementioned discourse (a lewd, ignorant, considerably aged woman), being a prisoner upon suspicion of witchcraft, the court sent for Mr. Haynes and myself to read what we had written.... She forthwith and freely confessed these things to be true: (that she and other persons named in the discourse) had familiarity with the devil. Being asked whether she had made an express covenant with him, she answered, she had not, only as she promised to go with him when he called (which she had accordingly done sundry times).... Amongst other things, she owned that the devil had frequent use of her body with much seeming (but indeed horrible, hellish) delight to her. This, with the concurrent evidence, brought the woman and her husband to their death as the devil's familiars.... After this execution ... the good woman had abatement of her sorrows, which had continued sundry years, and she yet remains maintaining her integrity.

"Ann Cole was daughter of John Cole, a godly man among us. She hath been a person esteemed pious, behaving herself with a pleasant mixture of humility and faith under very heavy sufferings, professing (as she did sundry times) that _she knew nothing_ of those things that were spoken by her, but that her tongue was improved to express what never was in her mind."--_John Whiting to Increase Mather. Feb. 1682._