ed. Lady
Frankland then returned once more to her now desolate home, though she
did not live in the Clarke Mansion, but in Hopkinton, where she dwelt
until the Revolution, when she once more suffered exile, this time as a
Tory. She went to England, and there she harmed the romance of her life
by her marriage to John Drew, a rich banker; but she died within a year,
at the age of fifty-eight, and one can only regret that death did not
anticipate that unfaithfulness to the memory of her first lover. Even
with its luckless anticlimax, there are few stories so romantic as that
of the beautiful scrubbing-girl of Marblehead, and she may well be
remembered as one of the most prominent figures of colonial womanhood.

Let us now return to matters more immediately connected with the earlier
part of the period which we are considering; and among them there is
none of more interest, even though it be hardly enduring, than the story
of the epidemic of witchcraft at Salem.

It must be remembered that the witchcraft outbreak at Salem, though it
was there most exaggerated, was yet typical. It was the day of
superstition; and that superstition was both received and fostered
mostly by women. The outbreak at Salem was in a way salutary, for its
very violence brought about the reaction which soon culminated in the
establishment of a truer creed and a different influence for women; but
at the time it was in the actual direction of primitive development in
America.

It began with the troubles between the parish of Salem and the
lately-called minister, one Samuel Parris, into the nature of which
troubles it is not necessary to enter. In 1689, Mr. Parris had come to
Salem from the West Indies, and he had brought with him two colored
servants. These people, John Indian and Tituba, his wife, were experts
in palmistry, second-sight, magic, and incantations, and they soon
infected a circle of the village children with love for these matters.
The daughter and the niece of Mr. Parris, aged respectively nine and
eleven, were among the most prominent at first; but they had older
companions who soon began to make earnest that which in its inception
was only intended as a play. The girls learned to go into trances, to
talk gibberish, to creep about on all-fours, and generally to give a
good imitation of the pythonesses of old. The chief of these young
people were Mary Walcott and Elizabeth Hubbard, each aged seventeen;
Elizabeth Booth and Susannah She