When the occupant of the haunted house returned to its owner a chest of clothes unjustly detained, no more corncobs were thrown. In Portsmouth it rained stones outdoors and in at the house of George Walton, and, what is curious, some of these stones were hot. Glass windows were shattered, and a stirrup iron traveled off on its own motion without horse or rider and was never again seen. Sometimes a hollow whistling sound was heard. This whistling devil amused himself like a true brownie by hanging the haycocks up in the trees and decorating the kitchen "all up and down" with wisps of hay. Sometimes the chains were sufficiently lengthened for a New England demon to become visible. One appeared as a "blacka-moor child," another as a woman clad in green safeguard, short blue cloak, and white cap. Once the black cat, so dear to tradition, appeared and was shot at; again the head of a man was seen swimming through the water, followed a little way off by the tail of a white cat. These American devils with their undiabolical sense of humor have at least a family likeness to the mischievous elves, pucks, brownies, and other "tricksy sprites" with which the English imagination peopled lonesome glens and the dark corners of their houses in primitve times. Whether the later demons were creatures of excited fancy or of imposture, or both, they were cast in molds supplied by ancient tradition.

The phenomena known in later times as hysteria, and as mesmerism and hypnotism, were not yet recognized to be due to natural causes. The infinitely delicate shadings by which mental sanity passes without any line of demarcation into madness could not then be imagined. A belief in demoniacal possession was almost unavoidable. That men and women might be obsessed with caco-demons," in the pedantic phrase of the time, had the sanction of the ages, of religion, and of science itself. Only the most hardy intellects ventured to question an opinion so well supported. In the Massachusetts town of Groton, in 1671, occurred

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a case of well-defined hysteria. The village minister naturally concluded that the violent contortions and "ravings" of the patient, Elizabeth Knap, "represented a dark resemblance to hellish torments." When in one of her fits she cried out, "What cheer, old man?" to whom could she be speaking if not to the devil? Like many other hysterical sufferers, she was susceptible to hypnotic suggestion, and in answer to leading questions she was able to remember having made the compact with Satan always presupposed in such cases. This in saner moments she retracted, as she did also accusations of witchcraft made against others in reply to probing inquiries. She once described to the shuddering bystanders a witch visible to her at that moment, having a dog's body and a woman's head, running through the room and climbing up the chimney. Good Parson Willard and others present found all this so exciting that they, though unable to see the apparition, could detect the imprint of a dog's foot in the clay daubing of the chimney.

Worst element of all in this delusion was the mistaken zeal of the clergy. Ministers of differing creeds agreed in believing that the palpable evidences of spiritual existence afforded by witchcraft might serve to vanquish the ever present skepticism regarding the supernatural. Squalid tales gathered at witch trials, many of them foul and revolting as well as unbelievable, were disseminated as religious reading, in hope that they might prove a means of grace by revulsion. If any man had the courage to question the supernatural character of these disgusting apparitions, he found himself gazetted in the authoritative writings of eminent divines as a Sadducee, a patron of witches, and a witch advocate; if he took a neutral position for safety, averring the existence of witchcraft but denying the possibility of proving it in particular cases, he was dubbed a "nullibist." This in America as well as in England. A new case of witchcraft did not excite pity, but something like exultation. . . . By this array of frightful

diabolism it was hoped that the swelling tide of gross immorality might be checked and religion promoted, for the appeal of religion in that day was to fear rather than to aspiration; the peril of trying to kindle altar fires with embers from hell was not understood.

Salem village, an outlying suburb, two or three miles from Salem proper, was almost a frontier town in 1692. Men still wore buckskin breeches and hats with a brim narrow in front and long behind. Wolves, bears, and catamounts were trapped. Some of the settlers had participated in the desperate battle at the Narragansetts' town sixteen years before. The sword and the rapier were still worn at the side, the fowling piece six and seven feet in length was in use. Men had been killed by the Indians in the bounds of Salem within three years. Education was generally neglected; even men of substance were sometimes unable to write. The old patriarchs who had made the settlement had just died off; the community had lost its steadfast guides. New clergymen had come in and new magistrates, not with the education of England, but with the scantier training of New England—a training in which the felling ax was more important than the Latin grammar. The new clergy, men of the second and third generations, were, with a few exceptions, profoundly impressed with the necessity of believing anything ghostly or horrible; the supernatural was the basis of their piety. Increase Mather . . . had published books on the ominous eclipses of 1680 and 1682, and another in 1686 on Illustrious Providences, which was a storehouse of those dragons' teeth that bore such ample fruit in 1692. His abler but less judicious son, Cotton, had issued a book on "Memorable Providences relating to witchcraft and Possessions." It had come to a second edition in the very year before the horrors of Salem.

The village of Salem had the elements needed for a witchcraft mania a quarrel between minister and people; a circle of young girls from eleven to twenty, including

some who worked as helps, who met at the minister's house and practiced together folk-sorcery and that kind of divining that has been the amusement of such for ages. These girls soon began to manifest symptoms of hysteria and hypnotism; one or two married women also had "fits" in sympathy with them. A doctor called to attend them decided that they were afflicted by "an evil hand." There was some heartless and heedless imposture, no doubt, in what followed, but there was also much of self-deception. The glimpses of the infernal world that we get in Salem are highly incredible. The witches say prayers to a tall black man with a high-crowned hat - always with a highcrowned hat. They ride on sticks and poles, sometimes they are on brooms, and sometimes three are on one pole. One relates that a pole carrying two broke, but, by holding fast to the one in front of her, the witch got safe to her destination. . . . Sometimes a hog, sometimes a black dog, appears and says, Serve me." Then the dog or pig 'looks like a man," and this man has a yellow bird. Cats naturally abound, white cats and red cats and cats without color. Once a man struck with a rapier at a place designated by one of the girls, and she declared the cat dead and the floor to be all covered with blood. But no one else saw it. This is probably hypnotism, hardly imposture. A great mass of such inconsequent and paltry foolery was believed, not alone by owl-blasted children, but by Stoughton and the other judges, and by pious Samuel Sewall himself, more's the pity! Where is the motive? What prompted the most eminent Christians and leading citizens to prefer so base a life — companions to cats and dogs and devils? Why did this torture of innocent children, this mischief-working witchcraft with endless perdition at the tail of it, give pleasure to rational creatures? The court never once thought to ask.

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The trial scenes were perdition. The "afflicted children" screamed, went into spasms, shouted, charged the prisoners with torturing them, and their apparent torments

were frightful. They laid to the charge of the accused unheard-of deviltries, such as the killing of wives long dead, attempting to choke aged grandparents, and what not besides. Husbands in some instances turned against wives; in others they adhered to them, were accused themselves, and died with them.

The trials were accompanied by great cruelties. Officers of the law were allowed to plunder the estates of the accused of all movable property. The prisoners had to pay their jail expenses, and many families were utterly impoverished. Prisoners were cast into the dungeon and were "fettered." Goodman Hutchinson complained of certain prisoners for tormenting his wife; additional fetters were put on them, after which Mrs. Hutchinson was "tolerable well." Some were tortured to make them confess; lads were laid neck and heels until the blood gushed from their noses. These were accredited practices at the time. Several died in prison.

The very skill of the accused was against them. One very neat woman walked miles over dirty roads without showing any mud. "I scorn to be drabbled," she said, and she was hanged for her cleanliness. George Burroughs, the minister, was a strong man, much addicted to gymnastics. He carried barrels of cider by inserting his fingers into the bunghole, and held a seven-foot gun at arm's length. He was the devil's man, away with him to the gallows! The first people in the colony became involved. Twenty in all were executed, four or five at a time. Their bodies were ignominiously thrust into holes at the place where they were executed and were scantily covered.

There were brave men and women among them. Giles Corey, an eccentric old man, had at first signed an affidavit of uncertainty about his wife, a woman of piety, and, strange to say, an entire unbeliever in witchcraft. Two of his sons-in-law turned against her, two were for her. But when old Giles was accused he stiffened his neck. He would save his property, which was considerable and