Part 24

That deposition furnishes a fair specimen of the kind of evidence sought for, admitted, and applied to prove probable compact with the devil. All of the above pertains to the first examination made at Salem, and it reveals the opinions then prevalent relating to covenantings with the Evil One, to powers and dispositions thence derived, and to then existing legal methods for proving such compacts. There is little indication that experiences at Salem, during the spring and summer of 1692, gave either the examining magistrates, or the court, much, if any, new light or any increase of wisdom or humaneness. Whatever modification of processes of procedure subsequently took place, and whatever change of decisions as to the value and admissibility of spectral evidence occurred, was for the worse rather than the better. The creeds and laws conformed to then were not formed and adopted for that occasion, but had prior existence, and were here applied with strenuous vigor by firm hearts and clear heads. Amid all the excitement, frenzy, infatuation, delusion, and credulity then abounding, logic retained its power and guidance, and held courts and juries to the requirements of the wholesome statutes of the English Parliament, pertaining to witchcraft and to Christendom's witchcraft creed. Old laws and faiths were here tested by strong men. They held for a time, and wrought woeful effects, but finally were broken.

Sarah Good was wife of an inefficient husband, "William Good, laborer." The family was very poor, having at times no home excepting such as charity granted them temporarily. She is spoken of by Calef as having "long been accounted a melancholy or distracted woman." Upham says that "she was a forlorn, friendless, and forsaken creature, broken down by wretchedness of condition and ill repute." We find no reason for dissenting from that writer's statement when he says elsewhere, that "she was an unfortunate and miserable woman _in her circumstances and condition_;" but we doubt the fitness of calling her "forlorn" and "broken down." She may have been so; but the spirit and energy generally manifested by her words and acts indicate the probability that she was rather a heedless, bold woman, free and harsh in the use of her tongue, and not very sensitive to or regardful of public opinion, but yet strong and not despondent. That she may have long been deemed, as Calef says she was, a "distracted" woman, is very probable, for many simply mediumistic persons, and even more of us who at this day solely because we believe in the advent of spirits, both good and less good, have long been accounted _crazy_.

We have met with no indication that she was physically weak or mentally despondent. She seems to have borne up well under long, tedious horseback rides daily to and from Ipswich jail, nine or ten miles distant, whither she was nightly sent ever after the time of her becoming invisible to her guards. Her keeper on the way says, "she leaped off her horse three times, railed at the magistrates, and endeavored to kill herself." That attempt, if she made one, to take her own life, was scarcely less likely to spring from the angry mental mood then prompting her to rail against the magistrates, than from despondency or forlornness.

When under examination, her answers were about as direct, explicit, and to the point, as most other suspected ones were able to give to the perplexing questions which were put; and some of hers have more snap than we usually find in words from lips of the "forlorn and broken down."

It is not probable that her previous life had won much public favor; yet no evidence has been met with that her neighbors generally cherished hostile feelings towards her, or possessed sentiments which would prompt them to rejoice at her prosecution. We, as has already been made apparent, ascribe her arrest to other causes than the lowness of her character and condition. That was not the primal incentive to her being "cried out upon." Her organization, and the then existing condition of her faculties, made her either a convenient channel through which to transmit, or a fountain from which to draw, forces into the systems of certain other sensitives, which forces might act therein for either the annoyance and suffering, or the pleasure and relief of the recipients, according to either inherent properties of the forces themselves, or to the purpose of some intelligence who should inflow and manipulate them. The sensitive girls might, and, if well unfolded mediumistically, would unerringly trace back such forces as acted upon themselves to their mundane point of emanation, and in good conscience and good faith accuse the person from whom the forces issued of being their tormentor; if clairvoyant they could see, if clairaudient could hear, and, if not specially unfolded for seeing with the inner eye and hearing with the inner ear, could _sense_ the person from whom the foreign and disturbing influences came forth.

A bold spirit and prophetic glance pertained to this woman at the close of her mortal life. When near the gallows, and about to be executed, Mr. Noyes, the clergyman at Salem proper, told her "she was a witch, and she knew that she was a witch." She promptly retorted, "You are a liar. I am no more a witch than you are a wizard; and if you take away my life, God will give you blood to drink." Subsequently that man "died of an internal hemorage, bleading profusely at the mouth." (_Hist. of Witchcraft_, vol. ii. p. 270.) Gleamings of what will be often meet internal or mediumistic eyes; and such probably did those of Sarah Good at that instant, and authorized her prophetic utterance.

DORCAS GOOD

has already been presented in the reports of evidence against her mother; but in those she was called Dorothy, and was reported as testifying that her mother "had three birds, one black, one yellow, and that these birds hurt the children, and afflicted persons." Such testimony, of course, supported the side of the accusers. The little one's words were damaging to her mother, and helpful to the mother's oppressors. But, from some cause, she soon fell under suspicion of belonging to the class of bewitchers. As early as March 3, Ann Putnam saw the apparition of this child; and on the 21st of March, Mary Walcott did the same. This, of course, was regarded as evidence that she was a witch; and on or near March 23d she was arrested, examined, and soon after sent to jail.

Yes, little Dorcas, daughter of mediumistic Sarah Good, not five years old, "looking well and hale as other children," was definitely, in legal form, accused of witchcraft; was arrested, and brought before the civil magistrates for examination. In presence of the magistrates the exhibiting graduates from the school of "necromancy, magic, and spiritualism"--the afflicted girls--accused the little child of biting them then and there, and "also of pricking them with pins, with pinching and almost choking them." In proof of all this they exhibited marks upon their flesh, just such in size and form as matched her little teeth Also pins were found under their clothing precisely where they asserted that she pricked them.

Such facts as imprints upon the arms of the girls, corresponding precisely with such as the child's teeth might make, and the invisible pinchings, prickings, &c., are not outside of nature's permissions, and therefore were not impossible. Those girls, at their circle meetings, _or elsewhere_, had obviously become very facile instruments in spiritualism, had become usable by spirits as subjects for impressions, and psychologically induced sensations. From the mediumistic little daughter of a mediumistic mother, forms and forces could be made to emanate which might act upon the plastic mediumistic sufferers in exact accordance with such experiences, and producing such results as the girls described or others witnessed. The senses of the annoyed ones could distinctly perceive that the agonizing forces issued from that little girl. The accusers probably stated only facts which they knew as well as any witness ever knew his facts when describing what his own senses had brought him knowledge of. Whether things seen and felt by the spirit senses be deemed objective or only subjective, they are alike real to the consciousness of the person that takes cognizance of them. The statements of the girls were probably true. The possibilities in heaven and earth, and along where their border-lines come in contact, are not recognized by some historians. There are some persons at this day who hold even as contracting and misleading philosophies, as Cotton Mather and the men of his generation did. Modern wisdom (?) prompts some to discredit any actual occurrence of any extra-marvelous facts--any facts _seeming_ more than natural--and to impeach the accuracy or the truthfulness of any and all who attest to such, rather than admit that the bases of their own philosophies can be improved by expansion. Such persons, when attempting to account for many facts in human history, are, though it may be unconsciously to themselves, like mill-horses tethered to an unchanging center, and made to move within a fixed circumference. Habit soon brings loss of desire, if not of courage, to turn the eyes outward and look upon facts whose producers work from outside the beaten rounds in which some theorists travel. This makes it bad for many facts, such facts as are popping into view through avenues deemed anomalous. There are writers who do their best to enforce upon such facts the Mosaic command, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." But facts are immortal; buried ones often reappear, and demonstrate their own former occurrence.

Two centuries ago, the claim of great marvels to be objective facts was generally conceded. But at that time the hidden workers of wonders were woefully slandered as to parentage: men deemed them _all_ to be both imps of the malignant ruler of the darkest regions of realms unseen, and his emissaries from pandemonium to the abodes of man.

Faith in the genuineness of witchcraft facts, though in Dorcas Good's day it hid a multitude of sins, failed to make the arresting of a mere infant witch a desirable operation. For some reason the officious marshal, Herrick, sent forth constable Braybrook to encounter and capture man's great enemy when that wily one had ensconced himself in an infant's form. But the deputy scavengered up and sub-deputized somebody else to fight that battle for God and Christ. His menial went the needful two or three miles north through the woods to Benjamin Putnam's house, and executed the daring feat of bringing on his back, or in some other way, a "hale and well-looking" girl of less than five years into court, a culprit because of co-laboring with and being a covenanted servant of witchcraft's devil! The darkness of delusion which such an arrest failed to illumine must have been thick indeed! But the creed of the day, devil-ward, the creed of the fathers, the creed of Christendom, so deluded the public judgment that it demanded the blood of a witch even though she were an infant.

The condition of the public mind only a very short time subsequent to the irrational, unkindly, barbarous arrest of that child has been depicted by Upham, vol. ii. p. 112, in sentences more graphic, spirited, and eloquent than our own powers could possibly put forth, and differing considerably from what we would essay to give were our rhetorical abilities equal to his. He states that--

"The proceedings of the 11th and 12th of April produced a great effect in driving on the general infatuation.... 'Twas awful to see how the afflicted persons were agitated.... Those girls, by long practice in 'the circle,' and day by day before the astonished and wondering neighbors gathered to witness their distresses, and especially on the more public occasions of the examinations, had acquired consummate boldness and tact. In simulations of passions, sufferings, and physical affections; in sleight of hand, and the management of voice and feature and attitude, no necromancers have surpassed them. There has seldom been better acting in a theater than they displayed in the presence of the astonished and horror-stricken rulers, magistrates, ministers, judges, jurors, spectators, and prisoners. No one seems to have dreamed that their actings and sufferings could have been the result of cunning or imposture. Deodat Lawson was a man of talents, had seen much of the world, and was by no means a simpleton, recluse, or novice; but he was totally deluded by them. The prisoners, although conscious of their own innocence, were utterly confounded by the acting of the girls. The austere principles of that generation forbade with the utmost severity all theatrical shows and performances; but at Salem village and the old town, in the respective meeting-houses, and at Deacon Nathaniel Ingersoll's, some of the best playing ever got up in this country was practiced, and patronized for weeks and months at the very centre and heart of Puritanism, by 'the most straitest sect' of that solemn order of men. Pastors, deacons, church-members, doctors of divinity, college professors, officers of state, crowded, day after day, to behold feats which have never been surpassed on the boards of any theater; which rivaled the most memorable achievements of pantomimists, thaumaturgists, and stage-players, and made considerable approaches toward the best performances of ancient sorcerers and magicians, or modern jugglers and mesmerizers."

The brilliancy, fervor, and literary finish of that description of the public enthusiasm and bewilderment are truly worthy of admiration, while the picture is not, and probably could not be, overwrought. Still we must doubt the competency of the alleged authors of the excitement to perform the bewildering and frenzying acts ascribed to them.

We have heard from of old, and could quasi believe, that mountains in labor brought forth mice. But it is only rarely one has earnestly and fervently sought and striven to entice the reading public to admit conviction that a dozen _enceinte_ mice could enwomb and give birth to a vast and terrific volcano.

One must needs look in wondering astonishment upon that keenness of vision which, at the middle of the nineteenth century, penetrating through mold and debris which have, through a century and three fourths, been gathering over momentous events, sees clearly that they were the genuine offspring of youthful "cunning and imposture," even while the owner of such vision himself perceived that neither the learned, talented, and keen Deodat Lawson, nor any other one of all the many able and sagacious men who were lookers-on at the amazing feats while they were transpiring, _dreamed_ that the actings and sufferings could have been the results of cunning and imposture. The day of Lawson and his companion observers was too near the facts for any dreams about them. It required a peculiarly plastic modern brain, and the intervening lapse of eightscore years, for the generation and birth of such a _dream_. The reason of its non-appearance in 1692 is very plain. Known facts then left no vacancy in the brains of that day for storage of the fictions of dreamland.

We return to little Dorcas Good. The creed devil-ward had hoodwinked all eyes. All things were in a terrific and bewildering whirl. Calm reflection and deliberate reasoning upon anything new were impossible. If perchance a mind asked itself whether an infant was competent to bargain with the devil and thence become a witch, it had no time to respond to its own inquiry. In open court, mysterious bitings were perpetrated by the teeth of this little girl, because the marks fitted her set and none other. The marks were made by the accused girl's teeth. Ocular demonstration, therefore, was proving her to be the devil's instrument; for otherwise she could not invisibly bite, nor could her teeth be made to bite, those who were off beyond her reach.

Standing upon what we said in the last chapter relating to the passing of hurts through the spirit to its outer body, we hold that spirits may have so applied the spirit teeth of little Dorcas to the spirit limbs of the afflicted girls, as to have left the marks of her teeth upon their flesh.

Woefully did the creed of that time not only permit, but call for the arrest of that infantile girl, solely because, under the operation of natural laws of generation, she inherited properties or capabilities which rendered her, from the time when she was conceived, ever onward, very susceptible to psychological influences. The judges, observing what were but legitimate and necessary outworkings of her inborn properties, being ignorant of their true source and nature, deemed them such a crime that the court sent her to Boston jail a prisoner, there to keep company with the mother from whom her peculiar properties had been derived, by whose milk they had been nourished, and in whose magnetisms they had unfolded. The present century is learning facts which teach that inborn properties and susceptibilities, and not compacts with the devil, constitute _witches_--some of whom are very lovely. An infantile witch is no great marvel now. Such can be found in many a family, "through whose lips angels speak" to-day, as they did through Emanuel Swedenborg's when but a child, and who, born in January, 1688, was precisely a contemporary of Dorcas Good.

SARAH OSBURN

was companion prisoner of Sarah Good and Tituba on the memorable first week in March, 1692. Thirty years before, she had been married to Thomas Prince, and at the time of her arrest was wife of Alexander Osburn; consequently she was well advanced in years. She also had long been an invalid, confined during long periods to her bed. Her worldly circumstances were comfortable--she and her family were neither poor nor rich--were neither very low nor very high on the social scale. _But she had heard words coming forth from unseen lips._ And on February 25, her apparition appeared to and annoyed Ann Putnam. Nothing has been noticed in the records which indicates that Ann ever spoke of any perceptions by her inner senses prior to that date, or that any member of the circle, excepting Tituba, preceded Ann in having opened vision. The latter saw "the tall man, with white hair and serge coat," as early as January 15. But Tituba's voice, had she have spoken, would have been powerless. Ann's position in society was high; she belonged to a family of wealth, culture, influence, and high respectability. Her mystical words were potent. In four days subsequent to her first reported vision of apparitions, three women were under arrest for witchcraft, and Ann's father was one of the very efficient advocates of prosecutions for that crime. Feeble, "bed-ridden" Sarah Osburn, of whom Upham speaks as one whose "broken and disordered mind was essentially truthful and innocent," and whose residence was at least a mile and a half north from Mr. Parris's home, and quite distant east from Ann's, on a road not likely to be often traveled by her, was among the marked and blasted three. Why? None now, perhaps, can tell with certainty. Probabilities alone can be adduced. Our supposition is, that at the moment when Ann's keen and far-sweeping inner sight was opened, and spirit substance, instead of material light, became her medium of vision, the most brilliant objects to meet her gaze, in all the region far around, would be one or more of the mediumistically unfolded persons dwelling there. From those among that class whose systems were fountains of emanations which at the time impinged upon her sensibilities, and did not harmoniously coalesce with her elements, and therefore acted as quasi acids upon her alkalies, or as alkalies upon her acids, produced painful effervescences which might ensue naturally, apart from the aid of any manipulating intelligence; or, if some intelligent being were observant of the currents and conditions of spirit magnetisms or forces then, and disposed to either intensify, abate, or modify their natural action, he might do so, and also could manipulate them to furtherance of his own ends, whether beneficent or malignant. Then and there, even high benevolence in one whose vision swept the far future, might take such primal steps as short-sighted mortals must look upon as necessarily altogether harmful in both immediate and remote results.

Such natural laws as reign supreme in spirit-realms may have led to the selection of secluded, inoffensive, "essentially truthful, and innocent" Sarah Osburn, as one of the tormentors of the girls, who were either schooled in magic by their own elected study and practice of it, or were constitutionally fitted for fitful enfranchisement of their inner perceptive organs while yet dwellers in their mortal forms, and whose bodies could become tools for other minds to use. If she was simply the voluntary actor out of her own "cunning or imposture," little Ann Putnam, twelve years old, brightest among the bright, and member of one of the most intelligent and religious families of the Village, she also must have been herself a _devil_, and so devilishly a devil, that even Cloven-foot might feel it a duty to pass his scepter into her hands. But grant that she was a medium through whose form other minds and wills could act, as she in fact was, and then we can regard her physical form as simply an instrument through which an intelligence other than herself manifested

## action to human senses; and thus we can deem _her_ guiltless, whatever

shall be our judgment of the intruding performer upon her "harp of a thousand strings."

Parts of the testimony in the case of Mrs. Osburn reveal her possession of mediumistic susceptibilities. As with Joan of Arc and many others, so with this woman; the inner ear could hear voices from some source impalpable by external senses.

"(It was said by some in the meeting-house that she had said that she would never be tied to that lying spirit any more.)

"_Q._ 'What lying spirit is this? Hath the devil ever deceived you and been false to you?'

"_A._ 'I do not know the _devil_. I never did see him.'

"_Q._ 'What lying spirit was it, then?'

"_A._ 'It was a _voice_ that I thought I heard.'

"_Q._ 'What did it propound to you?'

"_A_. 'That I should go no more to meeting. But I said I would; and did go the next Sabbath day.'"--_Woodward's Hist. Series_, No. I. p. 37.

Although the timid prisoner said only that she _thought_ she heard a voice, the reader will notice that she made no denial that she had previously said "that she would never be tied to that _lying spirit_ any more;" therefore by fair implication she conceded that she had once, if not many times, heard a voice which she had openly spoken of as having been that of a _lying spirit_; and also that she had more or less been instructed by and followed his, her, or its advice. The fact that she was enjoined not to go to meeting any more, argues nothing either against the spiritual source of the advice, or the good intent of whoever gave it. She had long been a sickly, bed-ridden woman; therefore such advice might have been given by any wise Christian physician. We are not concerned with either the moral or religious states of invisible actors and speakers, but are looking specially for some of the more distinct evidences that invisible intelligences of some quality enacted Salem witchcraft, and, therefore, looking for the peculiar properties of both the embodied persons through and those upon whom they directly acted.