few vicious children afflicted with hysteria or
epilepsy to bring a score of mostly reputable persons to an ignominious
death, to ruin more than that number of homes and to spread consternation
throughout the commonwealth.

The Salem delusion began in the house of Mr. Parris, the minister at
Danvers. Parris had two slaves, an Indian and his wife, Tituba, the
latter half negro and half Indian. Tituba taught the children various
tricks. While practicing these tricks, some of them became hysterical and
acted in a peculiar manner. It was suggested that they were bewitched,
and they were asked who had bewitched them. They indicated a woman named
Sarah Goode, who was generally disliked. She was arrested and imprisoned.
This seems to have gratified the children, who soon after had convulsions
in the presence of another victim, one Giles Corey. Corey stood mute
under the accusation, and was tortured to death by pressing. The cases
attracted attention, and at the instance of Cotton Mather and others,
Governor Phipps designated a special court to try persons accused of
witchcraft. Malice, greed and craft promptly supplied more victims for
the court and the hangman. Doctors discovered what they called
witch-marks, such as moles or callosities of any kind, and after the
children or others alleged to have been bewitched had performed the usual
contortions, the accused were swiftly convicted. Francis Nourse and his
wife, Rebecca, had a controversy about the occupation of a farm with a
family named Endicott. The Endicott children went into hysterics and
charged that Rebecca Nourse had bewitched them. Although as good and pure
a woman as there was in the colour, Rebecca was convicted, hanged on
Witches' Hill, and her body cast into a pit designed for those who should
meet her fate. Mr. Parris, the minister, thought it necessary to preach a
sermon fortifying the belief in witchcraft, and when Sarah Cloyse, a
sister of Rebecca, got up and went out of the meeting-house, regarding
the sermon as an insult to the memory of her murdered sister, she was
also denounced and arrested. The Rev. Dr. Cotton Mather, one of the
lights of Puritanism, and son of Dr. Increase Mather, president of
Harvard University, was most active and violent in the prosecutions.
Among the victims was the Rev. Stephen Burroughs, a learned minister of
exemplary life, who was accused of possessing a witch's trumpet. Mather
witnessed the hanging of Burroughs, and when the