rope had laws making witchcraft a capital crime. One was enacted in
England under Henry VIII., another in James I.'s first year, denouncing
death against all persons "invoking any evil spirit, or consulting,
covenanting with, entertaining, employing, feeding, or rewarding any
evil spirit, or taking up dead bodies from their graves to be used in
any witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment, or killing or otherwise
hurting any person by such infernal arts." A similar statute was
contained in the "Fundamentals" of Massachusetts, probably inspired by
the command of Scripture, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." This
law, we shall see, was not a dead letter.

No wonder such a law was of more effect in New England than anywhere
else on earth. The official religion of the Puritans was not only
superstitious in general but gloomy in particular, and most gloomy in
New England. Its central tenet, here at least, seemed to be that life
ought to furnish no joy, men seeking to "merit heaven by making earth a
hell." Sunday laws were severe, and rigidly enforced from six o'clock
Saturday evening till the same hour the next. Not the least work was
allowed unless absolutely necessary, nor any semblance of amusement.
Boys bringing home the cows were cautioned to "let down the bars softly,
as it was the Lord's day." Sunday travellers were arrested and fined.
Men might be whipped for absence from church. A girl at Plymouth was
threatened exile as a street-walker for smiling in meeting. Increase
Mather traced the great Boston fire of 1711 to the sin of Sunday labor,
such as carrying parcels and baking food. In Newport, some men having
been drowned who, to say good-by to departing friends, had rowed out to
a ship just weighing anchor, Rev. John Comer prayed that others might
take warning and "do no more such great wickedness."

Sermons were often two hours long; public prayer half an hour. Worse
still was what went by the name of music--doggerel hymns full of the
most sulphurous theology, uttered congregationally as "lined off" by the
leader--nasal, dissonant, and discordant in the highest imaginable
degree. The church itself was but a barn, homely-shaped, bare, and in
winter cold as out-of-doors. At this season men wrapped their feet in
bags, and women stuffed their muffs with hot stones. Sleepers were
rudely awakened by the tithing-man's baton thwacking their heads; or, if
females, by its fox-tail end brushing their cheeks. Fast-days