Think, then, of the blazing stars, that shook their horrid hair in the
sky; the phantom ship, that brought its message direct from the other
world; the story of the mouse and the snake at Watertown; of the mice
and the prayer-book; of the snake in church; of the calf with two heads;
and of the cabbage in the perfect form of a cutlash,--all which innocent
occurrences were accepted or feared as alarming portents.

We can smile at these: but we cannot smile at the account of unhappy Mary
Dyer's malformed offspring; or of Mrs. Hutchinson's domestic misfortune
of similar character, in the story of which the physician, Dr. John Clark
of Rhode Island, alone appears to advantage; or as we read the Rev.
Samuel Willard's fifteen alarming pages about an unfortunate young woman
suffering with hysteria. Or go a little deeper into tragedy, and see
poor Dorothy Talby, mad as Ophelia, first admonished, then whipped; at
last, taking her own little daughter's life; put on trial, and standing
mute, threatened to be pressed to death, confessing, sentenced, praying
to be beheaded; and none the less pitilessly swung from the fatal ladder.

The cooper's crazy wife--crazy in the belief that she has committed the
unpardonable sin--tries to drown her child, to save it from misery; and
the poor lunatic, who would be tenderly cared for to-day in a quiet
asylum, is judged to be acting under the instigation of Satan himself.
Yet, after all, what can we say, who put Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress,"
full of nightmare dreams of horror, into all our children's hands; a
story in which the awful image of the man in the cage might well turn the
nursery where it is read into a madhouse?

The miserable delusion of witchcraft illustrates, in a still more
impressive way, the false ideas which governed the supposed relation of
men with the spiritual world. I have no doubt many physicians shared in
these superstitions. Mr. Upham says they--that is, some of them--were in
the habit of attributing their want of success to the fact, that an "evil
hand" was on their patient. The temptation was strong, no doubt, when
magistrates and ministers and all that followed their lead were contented
with such an explanation. But how was it in Salem, according to Mr.
Upham's own statement? Dr. John Swinnerton was, he says, for many years
the principal physician of Salem. And he says, also, "The Swinnerton
family were all along opposed to Mr. Parris, and kept remarkably clear
fr