Parris, who fell under the ban of suspicion, there is room
to suspect the reverent Mr. Parris with making a strong effort to
gratify his revenge.

Many a child has had its early life blighted and its nerves shattered by
a ghost-believing and ghost-story-telling nurse.

No class of people is more superstitious in regard to ghosts and witches
than negroes. Whatever fetich ideas may have been among the Indians of
the New World, many more were imbibed from the Africans with whom they
early came in contact.

Old Tituba was a horrid-looking creature. If ever there was a witch on
earth, she was one, and as she crouched in one corner, smoking her clay
pipe, her eyes closed, telling her weird stories to the girls, no one
can wonder that they were strangely affected.

"Now, chillun, lem me tell ye, dat ef ebber a witch catches ye, and
pinches ye, and sticks pins in ye, ye won't see 'em, ye won't see
nobody, ye won't see nuffin," said old Tituba.

"What should we do if a witch were to catch us, Tituba?" asked Abigail
Williams, the niece of Mr. Parris.

"Dar but one thing to do, chile. Dat am to burn de witch or hang 'em."

"Are there witches now?"

"Yes, dar be plenty. I see 'em ob night. Doan ye nebber see a black man
in de night?"

The children were all silent, until one little girl, whose imagination
was very vivid, thought she had seen a black man, once.

"When was it?" asked Abigail Williams.

"One night, when I waked out of my sleep, I saw a great black something
by my side."

The little blue eyes opened so wide and looked with such earnestness on
the assembled children, that there could be no doubting her sincerity.

"Can we catch witches?" Abigail asked Tituba.

"Yes."

"How?"

"Many ways."

Then she proceeded to tell of the various charms by which a witch might
be detected, such as drawing the picture of the person accused and
stabbing it with a knife of silver, or shooting it with a silver bullet.

"Once, when a witch was in a churn," continued Tituba, "and no butter
would come, den de man, he take some hot water an' pour it in de churn,
an' jist den dar come a loud noise like er gun, an' dey see er cloud
erbove de churn. Bye um bye, dat cloud turned ter er woman's head an' et
war an ole woman wat lib in der neighborhood and war called a witch."

"Is that true, Tituba?" asked one of the little girls.

"It am so, fur er sartin sure fact, chile."

Nothing is more susceptible than a young imaginat