d on it, the more
convinced they became. The contagion of this mental disease was as great
as if it had been a pestilence. One after the other the women fainted
away, asserting on their recovery that they had seen the spectres of
witches. Where there were three or four girls in a family, they so worked
each upon the diseased imagination of the other, that they fell into fits
five or six times in a day. Some related that the devil himself appeared
to them, bearing in his hand a parchment-roll, and promising that if they
would sign an agreement, transferring to him their immortal souls, they
should be immediately relieved from fits and all the ills of the flesh.
Others asserted that they saw witches only, who made them similar
promises, threatening that they should never be free from aches and pains
till they had agreed to become the devil's. When they refused, the witches
pinched, or bit, or pricked them with long pins and needles. More than two
hundred persons named by these mischievous visionaries were thrown into
prison. They were of all ages and conditions of life, and many of them of
exemplary character. No less than nineteen were condemned and executed
before reason returned to the minds of the colonists. The most horrible
part of this lamentable history is, that among the victims there was a
little child only five years old. Some women swore that they had seen it
repeatedly in company with the devil, and that it had bitten them often
with its little teeth for refusing to sign a compact with the evil one. It
can hardly increase our feelings of disgust and abhorrence when we learn
that this insane community actually tried and executed a dog for the same
offence!

One man, named Cory, stoutly refused to plead to the preposterous
indictment against him. As was the practice in such cases, he was pressed
to death. It is told of the Sheriff of New England, who superintended the
execution, that when this unhappy man thrust out his tongue in his mortal
agony, he seized hold of a cane, and crammed it back again into the mouth.
If ever there were a fiend in human form, it was this sheriff: a man who,
if the truth were known, perhaps plumed himself upon his piety--thought he
was doing God good service, and

"Hoped to merit heaven by making earth a hell!"

Arguing still in the firm belief of witchcraft, the bereaved people began
to inquire, when they saw their dearest friends snatched away from them by
these wide-spreadin