Dulcibel | Page 6

Mercy Lewis, also seventeen; Elizabeth Booth and Susannah Sheldon,
aged eighteen; and Mary Warren, Sarah Churchhill and Leah Herrick,
aged twenty; these latter being the oldest of the party. They were all the
daughters of respectable and even leading men, with the exception of
Mercy Lewis, Mary Warren, Leah Herrick and Sarah Churchhill, who
were living out as domestics, but who seem to have visited as friends
and equals the other girls in the village. In fact, it was not considered at
that time degrading in country neighborhoods--perhaps it is not so now
in many places--for the sons and daughters of men of respectability,
and even of property, to occupy the position of "help" or servant, eating
at the same table with, and being considered members of the family. In
the case before us, Mercy Lewis, Mary Warren and Sarah Churchhill
seem to have been among the most active and influential members of
the party. Though Abigail Williams, the minister's niece, and Ann
Putnam, only eleven and twelve years of age respectively, proved
themselves capable of an immense deal of mischief.
What the proceedings of these young women actually were, neither
tradition nor any records that I have met with, informs us; but the result
was even worse than could have been expected. By the close of the
winter they had managed to get their nervous systems, their
imaginations, and their minds and hearts, into a most dreadful condition.
If they had regularly sold themselves to be the servants of the Evil One,
as was then universally believed to be possible--and which may really
be possible, for anything I know to the contrary--their condition could
hardly have been worse than it was. They were liable to sudden

faintings of an unnatural character, to spasmodic movements and
jerkings of the head and limbs, to trances, to the seeing of witches and
devils, to deafness, to dumbness, to alarming outcries, to impudent and
lying speeches and statements, and to almost everything else that was
false, irregular and unnatural.
Some of these things were doubtless involuntary but the voluntary and
involuntary seemed to be so mingled in their behavior, that it was
difficult sometimes to determine which was one and which the other.
The moral sense seemed to have become confused, if not utterly lost for
the time.
They were full of tricks. They stuck concealed pins into their bodies,
and accused others of doing it--their contortions and trances were to a
great extent mere shams--they lied without scruple--they bore false
witness, and what in many, if not most, cases they knew was false
witness, against not only those to whom they bore ill will but against
the most virtuous and kindly women of the neighborhood; and if the
religious delusion had taken another shape, and we see no reason why it
should not have done so, and put the whole of them on trial as seekers
after "familiar spirits" and condemned the older girls to death, there
would at least have been some show of justice in the proceedings;
while, as it is, there is not a single ray of light to illuminate the judicial
gloom.
When at last Mr. Parris and Thomas Putnam became aware of the
condition of their children, they called in the village physician, Dr.
Griggs. The latter, finding he could do nothing with his medicines,
gave it as his opinion that they were "under an evil hand"--the polite
medical phrase of that day, for being bewitched.
That important point being settled, the next followed of course, "Who
has bewitched them?" The children being asked said, "Tituba."
CHAPTER IV.
Satan's Especial Grudge against Our Puritan Fathers.

"Tituba!" And who else? Why need there have been anybody else?
Why could not the whole thing have stopped just there? No doubt
Tituba was guilty, if any one was. But Tituba escaped, by shrewdly
also becoming an accuser.
"Who else?" This set the children's imagination roving. Their first
charges were not so unreasonable. Why, the vagrant Sarah Good, a
social outcast, wandering about without any settled habitation; and
Sarah Osburn, a bed-ridden woman, half distracted by family troubles
who had seen better days. There the truth was out. Tituba, Sarah Good
and Sarah Osburn were the agents of the devil in this foul attempt
against the peace of the godly inhabitants of Salem village.
For it was a common belief even amongst the wisest and best of our
Puritan fathers, that the devil had a special spite against the New
England colonies. They looked at it in this way. He had conquered in
the fight against the Lord in the old world. He was the supreme and
undoubted lord of the "heathen salvages" in the new. Now that the
Puritan forces had commenced an onslaught upon him in the western
hemisphere, to which