"How was that?" inquired Charley.

"He made a grand festival at his new brick house," said Grandfather,
"and invited all the ship-carpenters of Boston to be his guests. At the
head of the table, in our great chair, sat Sir William Phips himself,
treating these hard-handed men as his brethren, cracking jokes with
them, and talking familiarly about old times. I know not whether he wore
his embroidered dress; but I rather choose to imagine that he had on a
suit of rough clothes, such as he used to labor in while he was Phips
the ship-carpenter."

"An aristocrat need not be ashamed of the trade," observed Laurence;
"for the Czar Peter the Great once served an apprenticeship to it."

"Did Sir William Phips make as good a governor as he was a
ship-carpenter?" asked Charley.

"History says but little about his merits as a ship-carpenter," answered
Grandfather; "but, as a governor, a great deal of fault was found with
him. Almost as soon as he assumed the government, he became engaged in
a very frightful business, which might have perplexed a wiser and better
cultivated head than his. This was the witchcraft delusion."

And here Grandfather gave his auditors such details of this melancholy
affair as he thought it fit for them to know. They shuddered to hear
that a frenzy, which led to the death of many innocent persons, had
originated in the wicked arts of a few children. They belonged to the
Rev. Mr. Parris, minister of Salem. These children complained of being
pinched and pricked with pins, and otherwise tormented by the shapes of
men and women, who were supposed to have power to haunt them invisibly,
both in darkness and daylight. Often in the midst of their family
and friends the children would pretend to be seized with strange
convulsions, and would cry out that the witches were afflicting them.

These stories spread abroad, and caused great tumult and alarm. From the
foundation of New England, it had been the custom of the inhabitants,
in all matters of doubt and difficulty, to look to their ministers for
counsel. So they did now; but, unfortunately, the ministers and wise
men were more deluded than the illiterate people. Cotton Mather, a very
learned and eminent clergyman, believed that the whole country was full
of witches and wizards, who had given up their hopes of heaven, and
signed a covenant with the evil one.

Nobody could be certain that his nearest neighbor or most intimate
friend was not guilty of this