Part 25

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.