Chapter C: W. Upham (8)

Small as Tituba's mental capacities were, she had some unusual susceptibilities, which permitted, or rather obliged, her to possess more knowledge of the origin and progress, and also of the nature and of the active producer, of the distressing ailments and "amazing feats" in her master's family, than did master, mistress, physician, and magistrates combined. They saw--if it can be said that they saw at all--they saw only through thick, coarse, and blurred glasses, very dimly; while she, at times, clearly saw living actors face to face. From her we get the testimony of a witness who learned directly through her own senses what she stated; her testimony gives forth the ring of unflawed truth, and lifts a vail off from long-hidden mysteries.

Hutchinson, Upham, and Drake each sought to make it apparent that mundane roguishness, trickery, and malice, operating amid public credulity and infatuation, prompted and enabled frail girls and women to produce the "amazing feats," marvelous convulsions, and all the many other woeful outworkings of witchcraft. Having been either unobservant of, or having ignored, the plain historic fact seen over and over again in Tituba's testimony, that certain other intelligences than girls, that minds which were freed more or less fully and permanently from the hamperings of flesh, actually started the first display of witchcraft pinchings, fits, and convulsions at Salem Village, those historians wrongfully charged girls and women, whose bodies were then the subjects and tools of other intelligences, with being the feigners of maladies and the producers of acts which an eye-witness and reluctant participator distinctly declares were manifested in obedience to a will or wills not their own. Such oversight, or such discarding of facts, whichever it may have been, caused those writers to so restrict their stores of intelligent agents having more or less access to and power over man, as to put outside of their own reach and vision the actual producers of witchcraft phenomena. This self-imposed or self-retained restriction forced upon them necessity for efforts to show that mere children possessed gigantic physical and mental powers and brains which concocted and executed schemes that shook to their very foundations the strong fabrics of church and state--yes, forced them to ascribe mighty public agitations to insignificant operators.

Tituba, on the other hand, by a simple statement of what her own interior self saw, heard, felt, and did,--by a statement of what she actually _knew_,--designated the genuine and the obviously competent authors of witchcraft marvels, and explained their advent rationally. She, therefore, by far--very far--outranks each and all of those historians as a competent and authoritative expounder of the authorship, origin, and nature of Salem Witchcraft. Her "something like a man"--her _tall white-haired man in serge coat_--was its author. That man was a spirit, and his works were Spiritualism of some quality. Opposition revealed his possession of mighty force. And, whatever his motive, the result of his scheme was the death of witchcraft throughout Christendom, and consequent wide emancipation from mental slavery.

Some statements made and published by Robert Calef not long subsequent to 1692, wear on their surface the semblance of impeachments, or at least of questionings of the value of Tituba's testimony. He says, "The first complained of was the said Indian woman named Tituba; she confessed _the devil_ urged her to sign a book, which he presented to her, and also to work mischief to the children," &c. We fail to find in Corwin's report anything like a _confession_ of any such things; she there states distinctly that _The Devil tells her nothing_, and also that the book was offered to her, and that the urgings to hurt the children were made to her by "something like a man"--by "_the man_." She had no idea that the devil was her visitant, and never confessed that he tempted her.

Calef goes on and says, "She was afterward committed to prison, and lay there till sold for her fees. The account she since gives of it is, that her master did beat her and otherwise abuse her to make her confess and accuse (such as he called) her sister witches; and that whatsoever she said by way of confessing, or accusing others, was the effect of such usage." This is credible, and is probably true. Such proceedings on the part of Mr. Parris are not inconsistent with the character which he bears. Tituba's other master, the white-haired man, had charged her "to say nothing;" she perhaps, therefore, was in fact induced to utter "whatsoever she said by way of confessing or accusing others," by beatings she received from her visible master. But what did she say by way of confessing or accusing? Nothing, really. She merely stated facts known to her; and such statement should not be misnamed either confession or accusation.

Corwin's record of that slave's testimony excites an apprehension--yes, generates belief--that Calef unconsciously made misleading statement when he wrote that "she _confessed_ the _devil_ urged her to sign a book." We have met with no indication that she ever made what should be called _confession_. We repeat, that she quite fully narrated that she had seen, held conversation with, and been forced to obey, a white-haired _man_, and also that the women Good and Osburn were at times her companion operators when the Man was present. That frank statement of facts constituted her only confession, so far as we perceive. Had this been made by an intelligent witness who comprehended how the public mind would interpret it, there might be plausible reason for saying that she or he "_confessed_." But with Tituba it was a simple statement of the truth.

We suspect that Calef, under the prevalent habit of his day, unwittingly wrote _devil_ where Tituba, according to Corwin, said "the man." If he followed Cheever's report of the trial, he seemed to have authority for doing so. That Tituba regarded the devil and "the tall man" as two distinct individuals is very obvious. When questioned, she admitted that the devil _might_ hurt the children for aught she knew, but she had never seen _him_, nor had _he_ ever told her anything. She had no acquaintance with that personage. While the questions related to _his_ doings she could give no information; but as soon as opportunity was given her to introduce her "tall man" she was ready to speak of him freely and instructively. The people around her, not interiorly illumined, applied the name _devil_ to any disembodied intelligence that acted upon, or whose power became manifest to, their external senses; not so did either Tituba or any of her clairvoyant sister sufferers or sister _accusers_ either. Throughout the whole of her two days' rigid examination she persistently called her strange visitant "the man." And it is a significant fact that all the mediumistic ones then, both accusers and accused, escaped ever falling into the prevalent habit of accusing THE DEVIL. Other agents met their vision.

Fear of Mr. Parris may have forced Tituba to tell her true tale, which but for him she might have withheld. But is there probability either that he dictated any part of her testimony, or that she fabricated anything? We see none. The fair and just presumption is, that though forced to speak, she simply described what she had seen, and narrated what she had experienced. The apparent promptness, directness, and general consistency of her answers, strongly favor that presumption. In her judgment, as in ours, what she said was no confession of familiarity with the devil, for she disclaimed any knowledge of him; and therefore she made no confession of witchcraft as then defined, and no accusation of it against the other women.

Calef imputes to her a subsequent position which may be so construed as to indicate that she declined to stand by her previous statements. He says, "her master refused to pay her" jail "fees," and thus liberate her from prison, "unless she would stand to what she had said." In that quotation is involved all that we find in the older records which wears even a semblance of impeaching her testimony, or suggests any reason why we should distrust its intentional accuracy in any particular. The master did not pay the fees. She "lay in jail thirteen months, and was then sold to pay her prison charges." (Drake. Annals, 190.) But what did her master require her to "stand to"? Calef says he beat her "to make her confess, and accuse [such as he called] her sister witches; and that whatsoever she did by way of _confessing_ or _accusing_ others, was the effect of such usage." What she may have confessed to having done, or what she may have accused others of doing, at other times than when she was under examination, we do not know. Her statements then, as she then meant, and as we now understand them, fell far short of confessing familiarity with the devil, or of laying that crime to any others; therefore she neither made herself nor her companions _witches_. Still her master, no doubt, as did the recorder Ezekiel Cheever and the court, understood her as meaning _devil_ when she said "the man," though she herself did not so mean. Even Corwin, apparently, as judge, put the prevalent construction upon her words, though his fidelity as a recorder caused him to write "the man" when she said "the man." This general habit of understanding _devil_, when some other personage was both named and meant, enables us to see that there may have been subsequent dispute between her and her master as to her real meaning, and that he made it a condition for her liberation that she should put his construction upon what she had said, rather than her own. It is an open question whether she ever refused to stand by her own meaning, or the true meaning of her own words. Perhaps she did refuse to stand by construction which the faith and habit of the day led most minds to put upon her words unjustifiably; but we doubt whether she refused to stand by the literal and intended meaning of what she had said.

Poor Tituba! Because of your forced connection with a scheme and works which entirely baffled your comprehension, because of your forced disclosure of things you had witnessed and experienced behind the vail of flesh, your own body was imprisoned thirteen months, and two innocent women were doomed to death. Guileless and innocent, so far as connected with witchcraft, you was borne on by mighty forces to seem to act voluntarily, though in fact unwillingly and perforce, a prominent part in one of the most fearful scenes in human history. Man's ignorance of spiritual agents and forces in your day, together with the prevalent hallucination devil-ward, made you a humble and pitiable martyr to simple truth-telling. Some seeds in your simple story now gathered from out the chaff that has covered them for nine-score years, may soon be scattered over New England soil, from which, we trust, you above, and men below, may gather wholesome fruits of justice and truth.

SARAH GOOD.

Tituba's sister witch, as that slave's master called Sarah Good, may not have been regarded in her generation as possessor of any large amount of such qualities as her name is commonly used to designate. Still her neighbors doomed her to lasting fame by selecting her as the first person to be put under examination on suspicion of being a producer of Salem witchcraft. As a facile tool in supernal hands she may have been, and probably was, good in quality as well as name.

Indications that her spirit-form was susceptible of either easy elimination or wide radiations from its material counterpart, are contained in the facts that on January 20, 1692, the inner eye of Tituba saw this Sarah; on February 25, Ann Putnam, and on the 28th, Elizabeth Hubbard saw her apparition, or her spirit-form.

Man's "natural" or physical optics do not discern a spirit. Spirit, when not materialized, is discernible only by our inner or spirit-eyes; spirit is "spiritually discerned." The spirit forms, however, of embodied, living men and women, are not all equally discernible by clairvoyants. Generally, only such among flesh-clad spirits are readily seen by inner optics as are able to slip, or are liable to be drawn, or to radiate out, from one's ordinary integuments of flesh, or, at least, those only whose integuments are transparent of spirit-light. Only few, relatively, can either see or be seen readily and frequently by spiritual eyes. Eagles exist as well as owls and bats. And clear perception of objects by the former amid light that blinds the latter, is no proof either that the vision of eagles is perverted, or that the objects they behold are but creatures of fancy.

Mediumistic Sarah Good, because she was highly mediumistic, would naturally be a brilliant and attractive object in the field of vision which the inner eyes of other mediumistic ones might be able and attracted to survey. Distance is of little or no account in connection with vision by the inner eye. Persons and objects, scores and hundreds of miles away, are practically near to the inner optics. Spirit-forms are, perhaps, thought-forms, and, like thought, can traverse oceans and continents in the twinkling of an eye.

It is not our purpose to multiply pages by largely quoting minute accounts of what transpired at the examinations and trials of those who were suspected of witchcraft; and yet it may be well to present rather fully one sample of the proceedings of the courts. This first case which the civil authorities gave attention to may serve that purpose as well as any other.

The arrest of Sarah Good was made February 29, and on the next day, Tuesday, March 1, 1692, her examination was commenced, and was continued, in connection with that of Sarah Osburn and Tituba, through the remainder of that week. On Monday, the 7th, these three were sent to jail in Boston. On the 30th of June Mrs. Good was put upon trial, which resulted in her conviction, and on the 19th of July she, together with others, was executed.

We copy first Ezekiel Cheever's account of her examination. Cheever was temporary clerk or scribe employed by the examining magistrates to take minutes of the testimony.

"'Sarah Good, what evil spirit have you familiarity with?' _Ans._ 'None.' 'Have you made no contract with the devil?' Good answered, 'No.' 'Why do you hurt these children?' _Ans._ 'I do not hurt them. I scorn it.' 'Who do you employ, then, to do it?' _Ans._ 'I employ nobody.'"

This question was doubtless based on belief then held, that one who was in covenant with the devil had, by the terms of the covenant, received power to command the devil and his imps to execute any desired mischief.

"'What _creature_ do you employ, then?' _Ans._ 'No creature, but I am falsely accused.'"

Her statement that she employed _nobody_, seems not to have covered all classes of possible servants in such business. Therefore she was asked what _creature_ she employed. This question suggests the probable supposition by the magistrate that such dogs, cats, birds, and hairy nondescripts as Tituba saw, might be subservient to the commands of a witch.

"'Why did you go away muttering from Mr. Parris's house?' _Ans._ 'I did not mutter; but I thanked him for what he gave my child.' 'Have you made no contract with the devil?' _Ans._ 'No.'"

The magistrate then "desired the children, all of them, to look upon her and see if this were the person that had hurt them; and so they all did look upon her, and said that this was one of the persons that did torment them. Presently they were all tormented."

"'Sarah Good, do you not see now what you have done? Why do you not tell us the truth? Why do you thus torment these poor children?' _Ans._ 'I do not torment them.' 'Who do you employ, then?' _Ans._ 'I employ nobody. I scorn it.' 'How came they thus tormented?' _Ans._ 'What do I know? You bring others here, and now you charge me with it.' 'Why, who was it?' _Ans._ 'I do not know but it was some you brought into the meeting-house with you.' _Response._ 'We brought you into the meeting-house.' _Reply._ 'But you brought in two more.' 'Who was it, then, that tormented the children?' _Ans._ 'It was Osburn.' 'What is it you say when you go muttering away from persons' houses?' _Ans._ 'If I must tell, I will tell.' 'Do tell us then.' _Reply._ 'If I must tell, I will tell. It is the commandments. I may say my commandments, I hope.' 'What commandment is it?' _Ans._ 'If I must tell, I will. It is a psalm.' 'What psalm?' _Statement by reporter._ 'After a long time she muttered over some part of a psalm.' 'Who do you serve?' _Ans._ 'I serve God.' 'What God do you serve?' _Ans._ 'The God that made heaven and earth.'"

_Comments by the reporter._ "She was not willing to mention the word God. Her answers were in a very wicked, spiteful manner, reflecting and retorting against the authority with base and abusing words, and many lies she was taken in. It was here said that her husband had said that he was afraid that she either was a witch or would be one very quickly. The worshipful Mr. Hathorne asked him his reason why he said so of her; whether he had seen anything _by_ her. He answered, no, _not in this nature_; but it was her bad carriage to him; and indeed, said he, I may say with tears that she is an enemy to all good."

Reason for asking the children to look upon the accused, Cheever says, was, that they might "see if this was the person that hurt them." That statement fails to cover the whole ground. According to Cotton Mather, belief then prevailed that "when the party suspected looks on the parties supposed to be bewitched, and they are thereupon struck down into a fit ... it is a proof that the accused is a witch in covenant with the devil."

In many subsequent examinations and trials, these magistrates required the accused to look upon the afflicted ones, and special note was taken of the apparent action of the supposed evil eye upon the sensitive children. Belief was held and acted upon by these examiners, that, if the accused were guilty, the guilt might be revealed by observable effects of emanations from the witch's eye upon those whom she had been bent upon tormenting. Possibly human experience and observation had gained knowledge of facts which furnished substantial foundation for such belief. The eye of the powerful mesmerist is very potent in action upon those whom he has been accustomed to subdue to his will. If the children quailed and suffered under the gaze of the accused, inference might be drawn that they had previously been brought into servitude by imperceptible forces proceeding from that person. Forces of that nature probably go forth more profusely from the eye than any other part of man, though that is not their only point of egress. Any part of the body may let them out. This fact, no doubt, was assumed of old by would-be witch detectors, for they often required the accused to touch their accusers, or the reverse. And generally the contact was attended by convulsions, spasms, pains, or other distress, or by cessation of annoyances. Such results are moderate evidence that forces pertaining to departed spirits were then operating upon the disturbed ones; for emanations from such source are frequently more agitating and agonizing, or more calming and pleasurable, than any that come forth from the simple mesmerizer. One reason for this augmented effect, as given through mediumistic lips, is, that the greater remove of properties of freed spirits from homogeneousness with those of flesh-robed ones, than exists between the properties of any two mortals, naturally causes either greater commotion or greater calmness when the disembodied ones effect contact with those robed in flesh, than ever occurs upon the confluence of streams exclusively mundane. It should be remembered that spirits, when in rapport with mortal forms, have power not only to will agonies and motions therein, but also to command and efficiently use appliances needful to produce them. Where Tituba's tall man with white hair was controller of performances, all such sufferings and antics as history describes may have occurred at trials for witchcraft, and yet few of them may have been willed to come forth by any mortal. Vailed from external perceptions, that powerful operator shaped the speech, the actions, and the sufferings of all the impressible ones, whether accused or accusers, at his sole pleasure. What his object and his motives were are not matters for consideration at this stage of our investigations.

The examining magistrates, John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin, subscribed to the following account of this examination.

"Sarah Good upon examination denieth the matter of fact, viz., that she ever used any witchcraft, or hurt the above-said children, or any of them.

"The above-named children, being all present, positively accused her of hurting them sundry times within this two months, and also this morning.

"Sarah Good denied that she had been at their houses in the said time, or near them, or had done them any hurt. All the above-said children then present accused her face to face, upon which they were all tortured and tormented for a short space of time; and the afflictions and tortures being over, they charged said Sarah Good again that she had so tortured them, and _came to them_ and did it; although _she was then kept at a considerable distance from them_.

"Sarah Good being then asked, if that _she_ did not hurt them, who did it? And the children being again tortured, she looked upon them and said that it was one of them we brought into the house with us. We asked her who it was. She then answered and said it was Sarah Osburn; and _Sarah Osburn was then under custody, and not in the house_. And the children, being quickly after recovered out of their fits, said that it was Sarah Good and also Sarah Osburn that then did hurt and torment or afflict them, although _both of them at the same time at a distance or remote from them personally_."

The Italicized lines show that the magistrates attached importance to the children's statement that the two women had access to them and hurt them, even while the outer forms of the women were remote from the girls. Precisely how Hathorne and Corwin viewed such facts we do not know. Perhaps they deemed them strong evidence that the women were helped by the devil. The fact, if it be a fact,--and it probably is,--that those girls actually received painful sensations from forces coming to them from out the forms of those two women whose bodies were at the time distant from their own, was marvelous when it occurred, and remains so now to all such as are unacquainted with some instructive things which modern Spiritualism has been bringing into view. To entranced persons, to the spiritually illumined, to the clairvoyant, distance and material objects become nearly obliterated. Between such, also between spirits and such, when their inner powers are in the ascendant, mind acts directly upon mind, without aid from external senses and organs, and whatever then is done to the mind or spirit of the incarnated, whether it be painful or pleasing, reaches and affects the body of the earth-clad one from within, and thence works outwardly. All sensation pertains to the mind or spirit. The body, when life leaves it, at once becomes absolutely insensible. All hurts of the body, come whence and as they may, are felt by the spirit only--never by the body. Therefore when the spirit from within is pinched by a spirit directly, the hurt, though the physical body has not been touched from without, is felt precisely as it would be if fingers had nipped the flesh. One's bruised spirit acting outwardly may discolor portions of the body precisely as would an external pinch, grip, or blow. The accusing girls may have actually perceived and positively _known_ that pain-producing forces issuing from the forms of the accused women, were distorting and convulsing their own bodies and the bodies of other sensitive ones, while yet the women's wills may not have sent the forces forth; those accused ones may have been but the wearers of bodies, or possessors of God-bestowed organisms and temperaments through which either Tituba's tall man or some other spirit, or even some impersonal natural force, gained access to the spirits of the girls, and, through their spirits, caused their bodies to manifest signs of intense sufferings. Spiritualism is inviting physiologists and psychologists into new and interesting fields for exploration.

The foregoing facts and views invite to very lenient judgments, whether pertaining to the accused women or to their youthful accusers.

Many things during the examination of Sarah Good were culled from Tituba's statements, and used with design to show that Sarah Good was a witch. Tituba charged that woman with hurting the children, and of being one of five who urged her to do the same. Good rode on a pole with the latter to Mr. Putnam's, and then told the slave that she must kill somebody. She came and made Tituba deaf at prayers. She had a yellow bird which sucked her between her fingers; also she had a cat, and she appeared like a wolf to Hubbard. Tituba saw Good's name in the book, and the devil (no, the tall man), "told Good made her mark." Even her own little daughter, Dorothy Good, testified that her mother "had three birds, one black, one yellow, and that these birds hurt the children and afflicted persons."

Deliverance Hobbs saw Good at the witch's sacrament.

Abigail Hobbs was in company with, and made deaf by her, and knew her to be a witch.

Mary Warren had the _book_ brought to her by Sarah Good.

Elizabeth Hubbard, Mary Walcott, Ann Putnam, Mercy Lewis, Sarah Vibber, and Abigail Williams (all of them members of the necromantic _circle_), were afflicted by Sarah Good, and _saw her shape_.

Richard Patch, William Allen, John Hughes, had her appear to them apparitionally.

This long array of names of impressibles existing in the Village at so early a time as the very first attempt to find a witchcraft-worker there, indicates that Tituba's visitant had been an expert selector of a spot for operation. He began his work in the midst of abundant and fit materials with which to carry out a purpose to obtain close approach to, and to put forth startling action upon and among embodied mortals. It may be learned in the hereafter that he was suggester of the visible as well as of the invisible CIRCLE which met at the parsonage; and learned, also, that his forces magnetized the members of each. That so many mediumistic ones, a large proportion of them wonderfully facile and plastic, were hunted up in "the short space of two months," among the five hundred scattered inhabitants of that Village, is surprising. Only keen eyes and active search could have found thus many in so short a time. Germs of prophets must have been abundant there, and must have developed rapidly under the culture of the supernal gardener who discovered their abundance and quality, and took them under his special watch and care.

While under examination, Sarah Good said, "None here see the witches but the afflicted and themselves;" that is, none but the afflicted and the accused; none but the clairvoyant. By witches she meant spirits and semblances of mortals and spirits; and she said in substance none others but we who behold with our internal eyes see the hovering and operating intelligences and forms. This unschooled woman then announced a great and instructive truth. She taught that the two classes--the tortured accusers and the accused both--possessed powers of vision which other people did not; that they possessed such clairvoyance and other fitful capabilities and susceptibilities as pertained to only a quite limited number of persons, and that these physical peculiarities were the source of the existing mysteries.

It should be ever borne in mind that the powers which Mrs. Good had reference to are generally very fitful in their operations. Those who sometimes see spirits and spirit scenes are seldom able to do it at will, or with any very long continuance without interruption. The most of them might, every few minutes, say with Tituba, "I am blind now, I cannot see."

Having stated that the accusers and accused, and only they and others constituted like them, could see the hidden persons and forces which were there acting, acted upon, or being employed in putting forth mysterious inflictions upon the distressed girls, Sarah Good forthwith charged her fellow-prisoner, Sarah Osburn, with then "hurting the children." The fair inference is, that she saw the spirit or the apparition of her companion then seemingly at work upon the sufferers; and Mrs. Good may only have described what her inner optics were then beholding. Virtually she was confessing that she was herself clairvoyant, and consequently very near kin to a witch, if not actually one in that dreaded sisterhood. But clairvoyance pertained to the accusers also, and both sets of clear seers, if their powers were a crime, deserved like treatment.

"Looking upon them" (the afflicted children) "at the same time and not being afflicted, must consequently be a witch." The above is from the records of her examination. Apparently she was looking upon the children while alleging that the then absent Sarah Osburn was there present and was occasioning their sufferings, while yet Mrs. Good was not herself afflicted; this was deemed proof that she was a witch. What unstated premises led to that conclusion we do not know. Our fathers had many notions pertaining to witchcraft that are now buried in oblivion, and it is often very difficult to find the reasons for their inferences. We are baffled here, and can say only that indication is furnished that under some circumstances a woman's failure to become bewitched was proof that she was herself a witch--because she did not catch a special disease, she must already be having it.

Constable Braybrook, who had charge of her during the night between the first two days of her examination, deposed that he set three men as a guard to watch her at his own house; and that in the morning the guard informed him that "during the night Sarah Good was gone some time from them, both barefoot and barelegged." From another source he learned that on "that same night, Elizabeth Hubbard, one of the afflicted persons, complained that Sarah Good came and afflicted her, being barefoot and barelegged, and Samuel Sibley, that was one that was attending (courting) of Elizabeth Hubbard, struck Sarah Good on the arm, as Elizabeth Hubbard said."--_Woodward's Historical Series_, No. I, p. 27.

Braybrook's statement presents a side incident at a time when none of the performers who had been trained in the historian's famous high school for girls were present--an incident which rivals in marvelousness anything in the main tragedy they are charged with enacting. When the tricksy girls were all absent, when men alone stood guard over and were with this prisoner, she became invisible by them. No one of the magic-working band of girls and women was then at hand. Testimony that she disappeared is distinct; the guards reported in the morning that "she was gone some time from them." The constable so stated, and the statement was supported by two assistant guards, Michael Dunnell, and Jonathan Baker. We shall not stop to ask them how they knew that she was "barefoot and barelegged" when she was invisible. They perhaps saw her stockings and shoes when she was not to be seen. Also she was without such garments when seen that night by Elizabeth Hubbard and her lover in that girl's distant home.

An intelligent, sagacious, and reliable man, Dr. H. B. Storer, of Boston, whom we know and have long known personally, and whom we respect as being distinctly high-minded, honorable, and adherent to facts and truths, gave, in the Banner of Light, January 9, 1875, an instructive account of his recent observations at the residence of Mrs. Compton, a medium, at Havana, N. Y. We extract the following from his statements. He says that on Monday morning, December 28, 1874,--

"By my request, Mrs. Compton acquiescing without a murmur, my lady friends, entering her bedroom, saw her completely divested of clothing, with the exception of two under garments, and then had her draw on a pair of her husband's pantaloons. The basque of her alpaca dress, without the skirt, was then put on, after careful search to render it certain that no extra clothing could be secreted. Then, in my presence, the basque was sewed by its points on each side to the pantaloons, and a ribbon, which I tied with two knots closely around her neck, was sewed through the knots, and each end of the ribbon sewed to the collar of the basque. So she had on a closely-fitting coat and pantaloons sewed together, and so attached by a ribbon around the neck that the clothing could not be drawn up or down. A pair of black gloves were then drawn upon the hands and sewed tightly around the wrists. I then put around her waist a piece of cotton twine, tying it in two hard knots behind, and the same piece of twine was tied by double knots to the back of the chair in which she sat."

On Saturday Dr. Storer had seen come forth from the cabinet, as Dr. F. L. H. Willis also had on a former occasion, "a weird phantom, bearing the semblance of a woman, and clothed in a flowing costume of white. Over her head was thrown a vail of delicate texture, and in one hand she carried a handkerchief that looked like a bit of a fleecy cloud. Her dress was exceedingly white and lustrous, without a wrinkle or a fold in it." That description by Willis is called by Storer "perfect," and is adopted by him. This "weird" personage was called Katie. Dr. Storer, after fixing the medium in the cabinet on Monday, as above described, says,--

"Very slowly the door [of the cabinet] opened, and soon her [Katie's] entire form was seen dressed exactly as before--trailing skirts, vail, and mantle, but with a belt which she gathered in her hands and rubbed together that we might hear its silken rustle. Standing by the door, she addressed me, saying that when she had walked entirely away from the cabinet, she wished me to go in quickly, and, without moving the chair, feel after the medium, and all about the cabinet, and see if I could find her. She stepped out about five feet into the room, and at once I sprang into the cabinet, felt in the chair, swept the floor and walls thoroughly with my hands--but--not _a vestige of medium_ or _anything_ remained."

The italicizing is ours. We design to imitate the doctor in both frankness and wisdom--to restate and accept his facts--but make no attempt at explanation of them. We adduce the case because it parallels in marvelousness the statements of Braybrook. What happens now may have had its like before to-day. The modern case out-marvels, perhaps, the ancient one; for we know not whether the guards felt for their prisoner or only failed to see her. How they ascertained that she was gone is not told. Dr. Storer felt the chair into which he had bound Mrs. Compton, felt the floor and the ceiling all over, and could find nobody in the little cabinet, which was but a triangle partitioned off at the corner of the room, whose inner sides were only five feet each in length, so that a man, without changing his position, might touch any part of it, unless the ceiling overhead was above the man's reach. Shortly afterward, says Dr. Storer, "the cabinet door was opened, and in the chair, tied as we had left her, without the breaking of a thread, or the apparent movement of her person, or in any respect differing from her appearance when last seen, sat the medium, in that fearfully lifeless trance, from which nearly a half hour was required to arouse her. I will not give any speculations of my own upon this most marvelous exhibition. I submit the facts and vouch for their entire accuracy."

Were Braybrook's statements true as to the main fact? They may have been. If they were, we do not apprehend that the physical body of Sarah Good was either removed from the vicinity of her guards, or seen by Elizabeth Hubbard that night. Invisibility may have been wrapped around her body, and yet not around her shoes and stockings; perhaps her spirit-form was the only one seen by the distant observer. We hesitate to fix limits to possibilities. Spirits to-day frequently manage, as they say, and as results indicate, to render particular material objects lying within the embrace of auras or emanations of some mediums, invisible temporarily by the keenest of keen external eyes, even when such eyes are surrounded by light sufficient for seeing other objects in the vicinity with distinctness. That which is done now may have been done formerly. And since such phenomena now seldom occur excepting in the near vicinity of persons susceptible to spirit influences, the fair conclusion is, that Sarah Good was a medium. Elizabeth Hubbard saw the spirit-form of Sarah Good; which fact argues that Elizabeth was a clairvoyant, unless Sarah Good's spirit was then materialized. Each and every one of the afflicted girls is so repeatedly reported to have described perception of what external sight could not see, external ear hear, nor external touch feel, that the mediumistic susceptibilities of each and all of them are manifest.

The susceptibilities and endowments of both accusers and accused were exceptional and yet alike in kind. The spiritual perceptive faculties and the receptive capabilities of both classes could be brought into such action as would out-work results perceptible by the external senses of common people. Also, and especially, each class could be made to serve as _mere tools_ of invisible beings. As such they were handled, their users employing them severally as afflictor or as afflicted, at their pleasure, within the permissions of psychological laws.

The choice, which selected certain ones to be implements by which to afflict, and others to be the subjects of afflictions, was made by dwellers in spirit spheres, familiar with psychological laws, and competent to determine in which capacity each impressible one could be most serviceable in advancing the ends of the supernal operators. Such a view, when its correctness shall have been confirmed, will work out vast amelioration in the world's judgment of that band of girls and women in Salem Village who have long borne its scorn and detestation, and will thrill every kindly heart with joy. When it shall become apparent that some inborn physical peculiarities involved the controlling reasons why certain persons rather than others were charged with being Satan's devotees, then none can fail to see that it was not roguery, not artifice, not malice, not grudges, not family or neighborhood or parochial quarrels, not disputes about property, nor any social, moral, or religious eminence or debasement,--no, not any one of those base motives of the normal intellect and heart which lively fancy has pleased itself with conjuring up and imputing,--no, it was not any one of those reprehensible and damning motives, but was innate susceptibility of being easily controlled by psychological forces; especially it was a constitutional liability to be more readily seen, heard, and felt by persons similarly endowed than was the great mass of people around them.

Ann Putnam, Jr., the keen-sighted pioneer of the clairvoyant witch-detectors, saw the apparition, and felt the distressing influences of Sarah Good, on the 25th of February. Her depositions were numerous; there were but few of the accused whose apparitions had not met her vision, but few who had not harmed her in ways and by forces unperceived by external senses. The character and general purport of her testimony, and also of most of the testimony from members of THE CIRCLE, is well presented by the first deposition we find on record; which is as follows:--

"The deposition of Ann Putnam, Jr., who testifieth and saith, that on
the 25th of February, 1691-92, I saw the apparition of Sarah Good,
which did torture me most grievously; but I did not know her name till
the 27th of February, and then she told me her name was Sarah Good.
And then she did pinch me most grievously; and also since; several
times urging me vehemently to write in her book. And also on the 1st
of March, being the day of her examination, Sarah Good did most
grievously torture me; and also several times since. And also on the
first day of March, 1692, I saw the apparition of Sarah Good go and
afflict and torture the bodies of Elizabeth Parris, Abigail Williams,
and Elizabeth Hubbard. Also I have seen the apparition of Sarah Good
afflicting the body of Sarah Vibber.

mark
"ANN PUTNAM."
+

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--