Part 18

Ingenious fancy, while weaving over this case a dazzling web of rhetoric, may have deluded the eyes that overlooked the loom, and caused them to discern other seemings than the first ones; but such delusion will never become epidemic.

Hutchinson, usually a scornful handler of aught that emitted any odor of witchcraft, we now requote where he said, concerning the family which included this Martha, that "they all had been religiously educated, and were thought to be without guile;... they returned to their ordinary behavior, lived to adult age, made profession of religion.... One of them I knew many years after. She had the character of a very sober, virtuous woman, and never made any acknowledgment of fraud in this transaction." Such is the testimony of one whose views and feelings obviously inclined him, as far as possible, to consider all witchcraft works the products of imposture and fraud; and who, therefore, was not likely to assign to this family any good qualities which they were not widely and well known to possess. He spoke of them as above, and refrained from any direct imputation of fraud to them. He hinted at fraud, it is true, but probably both lacked any historical or traditionary evidence of it, and was conscious that if fraud were alleged, and even proved, it would fail to meet the case in all its parts--in those especially that "seemed more than natural." Nonplussed in the way of solution, he could only say "it was a time of great credulity"! In one important respect he had better facilities for judging this case correctly than can be obtained to-day. He had listened to conversations of many persons who were living at the time of its occurrence, and yet refrained from direct charge of fraud or imposture. Also he intimated that such causes, even if alleged, would be inadequate, because some of the transactions "seemed more than natural."

The later historian, unhampered by need to move in harmony with the knowledge and beliefs of any cotemporaries of those Goodwins, and abandoning historic grounds which furnish supermundane agencies for solving the occurrence of acts which filled the town and colony with consternation, delved into the composition of man, and fancied that he found therein enormous capabilities for credulity, fraud, imposture, infatuation, spontaneous out-flashings of highest, and more than highest, feats of histrionic art, for self-generated triplication of personal weight, for aviarial flittings, for equine antics, for self-induced roastings, self-induced showerings, for comprehension of languages never learned, &c.; fancied that he had found how one little girl, "religiously educated, and thought to be without guile," could execute to admiration each of those many things "seeming to be more than natural," and could mimic with admirable exactness most astounding feats, and such as always before had been supposed to require the powers of disembodied intelligences. That was an astounding discovery. But the present are times of great credulity, and in the infatuation of these days mental optics have been molded, which, looking back nearly two hundred years, see the brightest, most vigorous, and keen-sighted men of Boston--the "solid men of Boston"--see them stolid and gullible, and see, too, among the people there three or four little children, bright and religiously educated, and yet malignant and agile as the very devil. What a contrast between the old and the young then! Was there ever a day when Boston's wisest adults were prevailingly blockheads easily befooled, and when those of her children who had "great ingenuity of temper" metamorphosed themselves into devil-like incendiaries, and set the town ablaze with sulphurous fires? Alas! one modern eye has penetration enough to convince its owner that such a day once was. That eye, "by the aid of"--something, seems "gifted with supernatural insight;" certainly with very uncommon back-sight.

Grant to the Goodwin children all the natural human endowments which imagination can conjure up and embody, also grant to them skillful training and long-continued practice, which there is no probability they had, and even then it was impossible for them, when in separate rooms, to have voluntarily and designedly acted, and seemingly suffered, precisely and simultaneously alike, as they are alleged to have done, and as they would have naturally been made to do if all of them were under and controlled by the psychologic influence of the single mind of the resentful wild Irish woman, because then the same mental impulses would move them all like machines, and simultaneously.

After their separation, the girl at Mr. Mather's house could never have accomplished single-handed what is ascribed to her. The internal evidence of the narrative of events which transpired there combines with common sense in pronouncing it farcical--distinctly farcical--to regard that young girl as the contriver and performer of all the works and pranks which history says transpired through her physical organism, and, therefore, to external eyes, seemed to be products of her own volitions. The nature, quality, and extent of those performances bespeak producing powers both different from and greater than such a girl possessed; bespeak just such powers as departed spirits are now putting forth all around us through living human forms.

It is not only at first, but permanently incredible, "that a mere child could carry on such a complex piece of fraud and imposture as that enacted" through "the little girl whose achievements have been immortalized by the famous author of the Magnalia;" and therefore the world demands, and will yet obtain, a simpler, more rational, and more satisfactory solution of this and kindred cases; solution that will admit all the amazing feats of witchcraft to be embraced within the scope of forces that finite human beings, the seen and the unseen in conjunction, could in the past and can now so apply as to execute all the world's marvels without aid from either the One Great Devil, from fraud, or from imposture. Neither of these need ever have any connection whatever with, or complicity in, such matters. The records teach, and man's recent experience divines, that other, more befitting, and more competent actors than mere children were on hand and at work in Cotton Mather's presence.

Though justice would have us assign to any Great Dull his honest dues, it also permits us to pull off from his sable brows any unearned wreaths which Cotton Mather and others credulously placed upon them. It also and especially requires us to tear off from the fair head of guileless Martha Goodwin that badge labeled Fraud and Imposture--that emblem of deviltry--which modern delusion has most cruelly, and yet most artistically, wreathed around temples that seem worthy of a pure martyr's honoring crown.

RETROSPECTION.

From among the works of witchcraft that occurred from 1648 to 1688, we have now presented six cases, which bring into view some phenomena that are very like many which are now called spirit manifestations. The efficient touch of Margaret Jones, of Charlestown, the extraordinary efficacy of her hands and simple medicines, her prophetic powers, the keenness of her hearing, and the materialization of a spirit-child in her arms, brought her to the gallows in 1648. Ann Hibbins, of Boston, seemingly because of the wit-sharpening acuteness of her hearing, was hanged in 1656. Ann Cole, of Hartford, Conn., in 1662, had her vocal organs "improved" by some intelligence not her own for the utterance of thoughts which were never in her mind, and some of the utterances through her contributed to the conviction and consequent execution of the two Greensmiths, husband and wife. At Groton, a spirit controlling the form of Elizabeth Knap, in 1671, made avowal that he was "a pretty black boy, and not Satan." At Newbury, in 1679, the wild dance of pots, kettles, andirons, and things in general, came off on the premises of William Morse. And at Boston, in 1688, inflictions upon the Goodwin children led to the execution of Mrs. Glover, "one of the wild Irish."

Cases thus scattered in both time and space, half of them limited each to a single actor or sufferer, and each differing widely from any other in many of its prominent features, cannot satisfactorily be ascribed to acquired skill in legerdemain, histrionic art, magic, or necromancy, unattended by help from the living dead.

The name of the wild Irish woman, whose harsh language was speedily followed by the distortions and sufferings of the Goodwin children, was Glover. Calef calls her "a despised, crazy, ill-conditioned old woman--an Irish Roman Catholic." The public believed that she put forth criminal action upon that family, arrested her therefor, received at her trial some indications that she had dealings with invisible beings, pronounced her guilty of witchcraft, and hanged her. She doubtless forsensed retention of power to act either directly or through others upon the objects of her resentment, even after the gallows should have done its utmost work upon herself. For it is stated that "at her execution she said the children would not be relieved by her death ... and ... the three children continued in their furnace as before, and it grew rather seven times hotter than it was, and their calamities went on till they barked at one another like dogs, and then purred like so many cats; would complain that they were in a red-hot oven, and sweat and pant as if they had been really so. Anon they would say cold water was thrown on them, at which they would shiver very much. They would complain of being roasted on an invisible spit; and then that their heads were nailed to the floor, and it was beyond an ordinary strength to pull them from it."--Annals of Witchcraft, p. 185.

Such facts were gathered from Cotton Mather's account; they come to us from one whose influences and writings are alleged to have been most strongly provocative of executions for witchcraft. Perhaps some of them became so. But his presentation of both the momentous fact and its confirmation by observed experiences, that the spirit of an executed psychologist could act back from beyond the gallows, involved a crushing argument against the wisdom of suspending her or any one else with a view to stop bewitchment. The liberation of one's spirit increases its powers for action upon surviving mortals. Mather's facts argued that.

SALEM WITCHCRAFT.

The world-renowned and momentous display of extraordinary manifestations, known the world over as Salem Witchcraft, originated and was mainly manifested in what was then called Salem Village--territory distinct from Salem proper--embracing the present town of Danvers, together with parts of Beverly, Wenham, Topsfield, and Middleton, in the County of Essex and State of Massachusetts.

There, in the family of the Rev. Samuel Parris, minister at the Village, on the 29th of February, 1692, mysterious causes had wrought strange maladies upon two young girls during the six preceding weeks, which excited great public alarm, and produced such mental agitation that the civil authorities were called upon to give the matter official attention.

The true origin and the actual authors and enactors of that tragedy are among the prime objects of our present researches. It is not our purpose to furnish a full history, but to scrutinize and test the hypotheses of other writers; and give a solution of the origin and specification of the actors and effects of that tragedy different--widely different--from the prevalent modern ones. Upham, Drake, and Fowler all agree in fundamentals. All of them have assumed that the agents and forces which evolved those marvelous operations were scarcely, if anything, other than ten or twelve respectable girls, from nine to twenty years of age, together with a few married women and a few men, voluntarily exercising and manifesting only their own wayward constitutional faculties and forces, in the performance of tricks, impositions, and malignancies; and with none other than lamentable results. Their positions we deem open to deserved attack, and we expect to overthrow much that has been reared upon them, by using facts abounding in the primitive records of testimony given in at trials for witchcraft as our chief instrumentalities. The three expounders just named have rested much upon allegations that the girls and women alluded to above had, just previous to the strange outburst of terrors at the Village, been accustomed to meet as a circle, and at their meetings put themselves in training for the efficient and successful performance of what soon after transpired through them. Our readings of the records pertaining to Salem witchcraft have, as we know and freely confess, fallen short of complete exhaustion; and yet we have read much, and also have failed to find any remembered allusion to such a circle prior to its mention in the present century.

Upham states (vol. ii. pp. 2 and 386) that "for a period embracing about two months they" (certain girls and women) "had been in the habit of meeting together, and spending the long winter evenings, at Mr. Parris's house, practicing the arts of fortune-telling, jugglery, and magic."

Drake says ("Annals of Witchcraft," p. 189) that "these females instituted frequent meetings, or got up, as it would now be styled, a club, which was called a circle. How frequent they had these meetings is not stated; but it was soon ascertained that they met to try projects, or to do or produce superhuman acts."

Fowler remarks, in Woodward's Series (vol. iii. pp. 204 and 205), that "Mary Warren, one of the most violent of the accusing girls, lived with John Proctor," who, "out of patience with the meetings of the girls composing this circle," &c. "It is at the meeting of this circle of eight girls, for the purpose of practicing palmistry and fortune-telling, that we discover the germ or the first origin of the delusion."

The position of each of these writers substantially is, that the accusing girls, at circle meetings which they held, qualified themselves for the parts they subsequently performed, wherein, Fowler says, "their whole course, as seen by their depositions, discloses much malignancy."

Upham has told us that these meetings were held "at Mr. Parris's house," and that they occurred within the space of "about two months ... during the winter of 1691 and 1692." Drake found no statement as to "how frequent they had these meetings," and Fowler finds in them "the germ ... of the delusion." We have found no mention at all of this circle in the more ancient records and accounts, and not one of the authors named makes mention of the source of his information. Those men, two of whom are our personal acquaintances and friends, would not state anything which they did not believe to be true. We therefore shall not gainsay their allegations. Still, we feel privileged to doubt whether their uncertain number of meetings during the short space of two winter months, held at the minister's own house, and under an eye as vigilant as that of Mr. Parris, could have furnished those girls with opportunity to learn very much in any arts whose practice would not receive the approbation of the Rev. Master of the house--not much could they there of themselves learn, at their few meetings in two months, of the anti-Christian arts of "palmistry ... and fortune-telling;" not much could they then and there accomplish in the way "of becoming," by their voluntary efforts, "experts in the wonders of necromancy, magic, and Spiritualism."

The general purpose of any stated meetings "at Mr. Parris's house," naturally and almost necessarily had his approbation; and the presumption from his general character is, that he was neither the good-natured indolent man who let others take their own course, however wayward, nor the absent-minded one whom children or even bright adults could easily and repeatedly deceive and hoodwink. The probability seems excessively small that such a one as he would permit repeated gatherings under his own roof for the special purpose of acquiring knowledge of and skill in practicing tabooed arts. Whatever their authority for it, the writers referred to imply that the members of a circle of girls and misses, meeting statedly "at Mr. Parris's house," there very expeditiously qualified themselves to become not only most efficient actors of long-continued dissimulation, imposture, cunning, devilish trickery, and fiendish malice, but also to be bona fide concoctors and successful executors of vastly complicated, deep, and broad schemes of hellish outrages upon parents, neighbors, and the country.

Wiser heads and greater powers than those girls possessed were manifested by the acts they seemed to perform. In a literary sense they were uncultured; but they, doubtless, had been subject to as good domestic, social, moral, and religious teachings and example as existed in any community. The literary deficiencies of the girls are indicated in the following extracts:--

Drake says, "They were generally very ignorant, for out of the eight but two could write their names. Such were the characters which set in motion that stupendous tragedy which ended in blood and ruin." In vol. i. p. 486, Upham says, "How those young country girls, some of them mere children, most of them wholly illiterate, could have become familiar with such fancies to such an extent, is truly surprising.... In the Salem witchcraft proceedings, the superstition of the middle ages was embodied in real action. All its extravagances, absurdities, and monstrosities appear in their application to human experience."

Such, according to their own concessions, was the feebleness of the agents whom the historians credited with performances which seem superhuman, and required for their production intellect and forces above what any community has often witnessed. Notwithstanding the inherent and insuperable incompetency of such persons to voluntarily devise and perform what has been ascribed to them, those females have been earnestly set forth as the actual and almost impromptu devisers and enactors of as intricate and effective a scheme for inflicting tortures and misery upon a vast multitude of human beings as has rarely been found in the annals of the race. If it be admitted that they, through frequent meetings at the parsonage, became fitted to conjure up and control the devastating monster that had his lair and foraging-grounds at Salem Village, the presumption amounts closely to certainty that those gatherings were ostensibly held for some laudable object. Meetings for some purpose may possibly have been held when and where the historians assume them to have occurred. But if so, it is our privilege to assume the possibility that the meetings were availed of by unseen intelligences of some grade, for developing into facile mediums such members of the circle as were constitutionally impressible and controllable by spirits; and, if so, the meetings may have become productive of results widely different from any contemplated by either the members themselves or the master of the house in which they met.

In his general history of Salem Village, introductory to that of its witchcraft, Upham, giving us the geographical positions of their several residences, and also their relations and positions in domestic life, furnishes ample grounds for very strong presumption that frequent attendance upon sportive meetings at the parsonage must have been so inconvenient and onerous to several of those girls, that they would not have been present many times in the short space of two months. Ann Putnam, a sensitive girl only twelve years old, and Mercy Lewis, a servant girl, or "the maid," in the family of Ann's father, two of the most efficient pupils in that necromantic school, resided together in a home situated not less than two and a half miles distant, in a north-westerly direction from the specified place of the meetings. Elizabeth Hubbard, an important member, lived about the same distance off, on a different road at the east. On a still different road, and equally as far away at the south-east, resided Sarah Churchill; and quite as remote, at the south, was the home of Mary Warren; and the last two must take divergent roads when they had gone only a little more than half way home. Each one of these five was very conspicuous amid the ostensible accusers, and the genuinely "afflicted ones." Excepting Ann Putnam, each was old enough to be an efficient helper in household labors, and each, unless we except Elizabeth Hubbard,--and such exception is hardly needful, because, though a niece of his wife, she is mentioned as Dr. Griggs's "maid," which probably implies that she was compensated for services she rendered,--excepting Ann Putnam, each of them was "out at service."

What, therefore, is the probability that these five girls, with any great frequency or regularity, went to and returned home from avowedly sportive or necromantic meetings at the parsonage? Each of them would have to travel, in going and returning, not less than five or six miles, mostly along separate routes, in winter's shortest days, by lonely and crooked roads, through miles of dark forests, over winter's snows, and amid its freezing airs. What is the probability that such persons, so circumstanced, would either desire to go, or be permitted by parents and employers to go, frequently and regularly to such meetings? Slight--very slight--because both natural and domestic obstacles must have been great. Were horses, vehicles, and drivers, or were even saddle-horses, regularly at the command of such girls for conveyance to and from such meetings? Would such persons, if physically strong and courageous enough to go on foot, be often spared by their employers to spend long winter evenings, and two hours more for travel, in practicing "fortune-telling, necromancy, and magic"? Such questions of themselves put forth a negative answer. Frequent attendance by such members of the circle was next to an impossibility. If they learned much upon any subject at the very few meetings which circumstances would permit them to attend in the short space of two months, they were very apt pupils indeed. That they became very considerably modified and unfolded in certain directions in consequence of meeting together occasionally is very credible.

We should concede its probable correctness, were an historian to make the supposition that the two Indian slaves in Mr. Parris's kitchen, John Indian and his wife Tituba, often amused themselves and any young folks or other visitors, who there basked in genial light and warmth from blazing logs in a huge New England fireplace on a cold winter's evening, by rehearsing ghost stories and magic lore, and performing any such feats in fortune-telling or other mystical doings as they might be able to exhibit, or as might transpire through them. That the little girls, Elizabeth, daughter of Mr. Parris, and Abigail Williams, his niece, were accustomed to spend many cold winter evenings in the warm kitchen of their own home is very credible. Mary Walcut and Susanna Sheldon, who lived in the near neighborhood, perhaps dropped in frequently. But the majority of those whose astonishing proficiency in performing what Drake said the circle met for, viz., "to do or produce superhuman acts," and for learning, as Upham would say, how to manifest "the superstition of the middle ages ... embodied in real action,"--the majority of those girls obviously must have had only very restricted opportunities for study and practice at the parsonage. It is not at all improbable that each of them was present in that kitchen occasionally during two months of that winter; nor that each of them was impregnated by the auras of that place and of its occupants both visible and invisible; nor that the physical and psychic soils in each were there mellowed, and also sown with some seed which produced unlooked-for fruits during the following spring and summer.