Tituba's sister witch, as that slave's master called Sarah Good, may not
have been regarded in her generation as possessor of any large amount of
such qualities as her name is commonly used to designate. Still her
neighbors doomed her to lasting fame by selecting her as the first person
to be put under examination on suspicion of being a producer of Salem
witchcraft. As a facile tool in supernal hands she may have been, and
probably was, good in quality as well as name.
Indications that her spirit-form was susceptible of either easy
elimination or wide radiations from its material counterpart, are
contained in the facts that on January 20, 1692, the inner eye of Tituba
saw this Sarah; on February 25, Ann Putnam, and on the 28th, Elizabeth
Hubbard saw her apparition, or her spirit-form.
Man's "natural" or physical optics do not discern a spirit. Spirit, when
not materialized, is discernible only by our inner or spirit-eyes; spirit
is "spiritually discerned." The spirit forms, however, of embodied, living
men and women, are not all equally discernible by clairvoyants. Generally,
only such among flesh-clad spirits are readily seen by inner optics as are
able to slip, or are liable to be drawn, or to radiate out, from one's
ordinary integuments of flesh, or, at least, those only whose integuments
are transparent of spirit-light. Only few, relatively, can either see or
be seen readily and frequently by spiritual eyes. Eagles exist as well as
owls and bats. And clear perception of objects by the former amid light
that blinds the latter, is no proof either that the vision of eagles is
perverted, or that the objects they behold are but creatures of fancy.
Mediumistic Sarah Good, because she was highly mediumistic, would
naturally be a brilliant and attractive object in the field of vision
which the inner eyes of other mediumistic ones might be able and attracted
to survey. Distance is of little or no account in connection with vision
by the inner eye. Persons and objects, scores and hundreds of miles away,
are practically near to the inner optics. Spirit-forms are, perhaps,
thought-forms, and, like thought, can traverse oceans and continents in
the twinkling of an eye.
It is not our purpose to multiply pages by largely quoting minute accounts
of what transpired at the examinations and trials of those who were
suspected of witchcraft; and yet it may be well to present rather fully
one sample of the proceedings of the courts. This first case which the
civil authorities gave attention to may serve that purpose as well as any
other.
The arrest of Sarah Good was made February 29, and on the next day,
Tuesday, March 1, 1692, her examination was commenced, and was continued,
in connection with that of Sarah Osburn and Tituba, through the remainder
of that week. On Monday, the 7th, these three were sent to jail in Boston.
On the 30th of June Mrs. Good was put upon trial, which resulted in her
conviction, and on the 19th of July she, together with others, was
executed.
We copy first Ezekiel Cheever's account of her examination. Cheever was
temporary clerk or scribe employed by the examining magistrates to take
minutes of the testimony.
"'Sarah Good, what evil spirit have you familiarity with?' _Ans._ 'None.'
'Have you made no contract with the devil?' Good answered, 'No.' 'Why do
you hurt these children?' _Ans._ 'I do not hurt them. I scorn it.' 'Who do
you employ, then, to do it?' _Ans._ 'I employ nobody.'"
This question was doubtless based on belief then held, that one who was in
covenant with the devil had, by the terms of the covenant, received power
to command the devil and his imps to execute any desired mischief.
"'What _creature_ do you employ, then?' _Ans._ 'No creature, but I am
falsely accused.'"
Her statement that she employed _nobody_, seems not to have covered all
classes of possible servants in such business. Therefore she was asked
what _creature_ she employed. This question suggests the probable
supposition by the magistrate that such dogs, cats, birds, and hairy
nondescripts as Tituba saw, might be subservient to the commands of a
witch.
"'Why did you go away muttering from Mr. Parris's house?' _Ans._ 'I did
not mutter; but I thanked him for what he gave my child.' 'Have you made
no contract with the devil?' _Ans._ 'No.'"
The magistrate then "desired the children, all of them, to look upon her
and see if this were the person that had hurt them; and so they all did
look upon her, and said that this was one of the persons that did torment
them. Presently they were all tormented."
"'Sarah Good, do you not see now what you have done? Why do you not tell
us the truth? Why do you thus torment these poor children?' _Ans._ 'I do
not torment them.' 'Who do you employ, then?' _Ans._ 'I employ nobody. I
scorn it.' 'How came they thus tormented?' _Ans._ 'What do I know? You
bring others here, and now you charge me with it.' 'Why, who was it?'
_Ans._ 'I do not know but it was some you brought into the meeting-house
with you.' _Response._ 'We brought you into the meeting-house.' _Reply._
'But you brought in two more.' 'Who was it, then, that tormented the
children?' _Ans._ 'It was Osburn.' 'What is it you say when you go
muttering away from persons' houses?' _Ans._ 'If I must tell, I will
tell.' 'Do tell us then.' _Reply._ 'If I must tell, I will tell. It is the
commandments. I may say my commandments, I hope.' 'What commandment is
it?' _Ans._ 'If I must tell, I will. It is a psalm.' 'What psalm?'
_Statement by reporter._ 'After a long time she muttered over some part of
a psalm.' 'Who do you serve?' _Ans._ 'I serve God.' 'What God do you
serve?' _Ans._ 'The God that made heaven and earth.'"
_Comments by the reporter._ "She was not willing to mention the word God.
Her answers were in a very wicked, spiteful manner, reflecting and
retorting against the authority with base and abusing words, and many lies
she was taken in. It was here said that her husband had said that he was
afraid that she either was a witch or would be one very quickly. The
worshipful Mr. Hathorne asked him his reason why he said so of her;
whether he had seen anything _by_ her. He answered, no, _not in this
nature_; but it was her bad carriage to him; and indeed, said he, I may
say with tears that she is an enemy to all good."
Reason for asking the children to look upon the accused, Cheever says,
was, that they might "see if this was the person that hurt them." That
statement fails to cover the whole ground. According to Cotton Mather,
belief then prevailed that "when the party suspected looks on the parties
supposed to be bewitched, and they are thereupon struck down into a fit
... it is a proof that the accused is a witch in covenant with the devil."
In many subsequent examinations and trials, these magistrates required the
accused to look upon the afflicted ones, and special note was taken of the
apparent action of the supposed evil eye upon the sensitive children.
Belief was held and acted upon by these examiners, that, if the accused
were guilty, the guilt might be revealed by observable effects of
emanations from the witch's eye upon those whom she had been bent upon
tormenting. Possibly human experience and observation had gained knowledge
of facts which furnished substantial foundation for such belief. The eye
of the powerful mesmerist is very potent in action upon those whom he has
been accustomed to subdue to his will. If the children quailed and
suffered under the gaze of the accused, inference might be drawn that they
had previously been brought into servitude by imperceptible forces
proceeding from that person. Forces of that nature probably go forth more
profusely from the eye than any other part of man, though that is not
their only point of egress. Any part of the body may let them out. This
fact, no doubt, was assumed of old by would-be witch detectors, for they
often required the accused to touch their accusers, or the reverse. And
generally the contact was attended by convulsions, spasms, pains, or other
distress, or by cessation of annoyances. Such results are moderate
evidence that forces pertaining to departed spirits were then operating
upon the disturbed ones; for emanations from such source are frequently
more agitating and agonizing, or more calming and pleasurable, than any
that come forth from the simple mesmerizer. One reason for this augmented
effect, as given through mediumistic lips, is, that the greater remove of
properties of freed spirits from homogeneousness with those of flesh-robed
ones, than exists between the properties of any two mortals, naturally
causes either greater commotion or greater calmness when the disembodied
ones effect contact with those robed in flesh, than ever occurs upon the
confluence of streams exclusively mundane. It should be remembered that
spirits, when in rapport with mortal forms, have power not only to will
agonies and motions therein, but also to command and efficiently use
appliances needful to produce them. Where Tituba's tall man with white
hair was controller of performances, all such sufferings and antics as
history describes may have occurred at trials for witchcraft, and yet few
of them may have been willed to come forth by any mortal. Vailed from
external perceptions, that powerful operator shaped the speech, the
actions, and the sufferings of all the impressible ones, whether accused
or accusers, at his sole pleasure. What his object and his motives were
are not matters for consideration at this stage of our investigations.
The examining magistrates, John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin, subscribed
to the following account of this examination.
"Sarah Good upon examination denieth the matter of fact, viz., that she
ever used any witchcraft, or hurt the above-said children, or any of them.
"The above-named children, being all present, positively accused her of
hurting them sundry times within this two months, and also this morning.
"Sarah Good denied that she had been at their houses in the said time, or
near them, or had done them any hurt. All the above-said children then
present accused her face to face, upon which they were all tortured and
tormented for a short space of time; and the afflictions and tortures
being over, they charged said Sarah Good again that she had so tortured
them, and _came to them_ and did it; although _she was then kept at a
considerable distance from them_.
"Sarah Good being then asked, if that _she_ did not hurt them, who did it?
And the children being again tortured, she looked upon them and said that
it was one of them we brought into the house with us. We asked her who it
was. She then answered and said it was Sarah Osburn; and _Sarah Osburn was
then under custody, and not in the house_. And the children, being quickly
after recovered out of their fits, said that it was Sarah Good and also
Sarah Osburn that then did hurt and torment or afflict them, although
_both of them at the same time at a distance or remote from them
personally_."
The Italicized lines show that the magistrates attached importance to the
children's statement that the two women had access to them and hurt them,
even while the outer forms of the women were remote from the girls.
Precisely how Hathorne and Corwin viewed such facts we do not know.
Perhaps they deemed them strong evidence that the women were helped by the
devil. The fact, if it be a fact,--and it probably is,--that those girls
actually received painful sensations from forces coming to them from out
the forms of those two women whose bodies were at the time distant from
their own, was marvelous when it occurred, and remains so now to all such
as are unacquainted with some instructive things which modern Spiritualism
has been bringing into view. To entranced persons, to the spiritually
illumined, to the clairvoyant, distance and material objects become nearly
obliterated. Between such, also between spirits and such, when their
inner powers are in the ascendant, mind acts directly upon mind, without
aid from external senses and organs, and whatever then is done to the mind
or spirit of the incarnated, whether it be painful or pleasing, reaches
and affects the body of the earth-clad one from within, and thence works
outwardly. All sensation pertains to the mind or spirit. The body, when
life leaves it, at once becomes absolutely insensible. All hurts of the
body, come whence and as they may, are felt by the spirit only--never by
the body. Therefore when the spirit from within is pinched by a spirit
directly, the hurt, though the physical body has not been touched from
without, is felt precisely as it would be if fingers had nipped the flesh.
One's bruised spirit acting outwardly may discolor portions of the body
precisely as would an external pinch, grip, or blow. The accusing girls
may have actually perceived and positively _known_ that pain-producing
forces issuing from the forms of the accused women, were distorting and
convulsing their own bodies and the bodies of other sensitive ones, while
yet the women's wills may not have sent the forces forth; those accused
ones may have been but the wearers of bodies, or possessors of
God-bestowed organisms and temperaments through which either Tituba's tall
man or some other spirit, or even some impersonal natural force, gained
access to the spirits of the girls, and, through their spirits, caused
their bodies to manifest signs of intense sufferings. Spiritualism is
inviting physiologists and psychologists into new and interesting fields
for exploration.
The foregoing facts and views invite to very lenient judgments, whether
pertaining to the accused women or to their youthful accusers.
Many things during the examination of Sarah Good were culled from Tituba's
statements, and used with design to show that Sarah Good was a witch.
Tituba charged that woman with hurting the children, and of being one of
five who urged her to do the same. Good rode on a pole with the latter to
Mr. Putnam's, and then told the slave that she must kill somebody. She
came and made Tituba deaf at prayers. She had a yellow bird which sucked
her between her fingers; also she had a cat, and she appeared like a wolf
to Hubbard. Tituba saw Good's name in the book, and the devil (no, the
tall man), "told Good made her mark." Even her own little daughter,
Dorothy Good, testified that her mother "had three birds, one black, one
yellow, and that these birds hurt the children and afflicted persons."
Deliverance Hobbs saw Good at the witch's sacrament.
Abigail Hobbs was in company with, and made deaf by her, and knew her to
be a witch.
Mary Warren had the _book_ brought to her by Sarah Good.
Elizabeth Hubbard, Mary Walcott, Ann Putnam, Mercy Lewis, Sarah Vibber,
and Abigail Williams (all of them members of the necromantic _circle_),
were afflicted by Sarah Good, and _saw her shape_.
Richard Patch, William Allen, John Hughes, had her appear to them
apparitionally.
This long array of names of impressibles existing in the Village at so
early a time as the very first attempt to find a witchcraft-worker there,
indicates that Tituba's visitant had been an expert selector of a spot for
operation. He began his work in the midst of abundant and fit materials
with which to carry out a purpose to obtain close approach to, and to put
forth startling action upon and among embodied mortals. It may be learned
in the hereafter that he was suggester of the visible as well as of the
invisible CIRCLE which met at the parsonage; and learned, also, that his
forces magnetized the members of each. That so many mediumistic ones, a
large proportion of them wonderfully facile and plastic, were hunted up in
"the short space of two months," among the five hundred scattered
inhabitants of that Village, is surprising. Only keen eyes and active
search could have found thus many in so short a time. Germs of prophets
must have been abundant there, and must have developed rapidly under the
culture of the supernal gardener who discovered their abundance and
quality, and took them under his special watch and care.
While under examination, Sarah Good said, "None here see the witches but
the afflicted and themselves;" that is, none but the afflicted and the
accused; none but the clairvoyant. By witches she meant spirits and
semblances of mortals and spirits; and she said in substance none others
but we who behold with our internal eyes see the hovering and operating
intelligences and forms. This unschooled woman then announced a great and
instructive truth. She taught that the two classes--the tortured accusers
and the accused both--possessed powers of vision which other people did
not; that they possessed such clairvoyance and other fitful capabilities
and susceptibilities as pertained to only a quite limited number of
persons, and that these physical peculiarities were the source of the
existing mysteries.
It should be ever borne in mind that the powers which Mrs. Good had
reference to are generally very fitful in their operations. Those who
sometimes see spirits and spirit scenes are seldom able to do it at will,
or with any very long continuance without interruption. The most of them
might, every few minutes, say with Tituba, "I am blind now, I cannot see."
Having stated that the accusers and accused, and only they and others
constituted like them, could see the hidden persons and forces which were
there acting, acted upon, or being employed in putting forth mysterious
inflictions upon the distressed girls, Sarah Good forthwith charged her
fellow-prisoner, Sarah Osburn, with then "hurting the children." The fair
inference is, that she saw the spirit or the apparition of her companion
then seemingly at work upon the sufferers; and Mrs. Good may only have
described what her inner optics were then beholding. Virtually she was
confessing that she was herself clairvoyant, and consequently very near
kin to a witch, if not actually one in that dreaded sisterhood. But
clairvoyance pertained to the accusers also, and both sets of clear seers,
if their powers were a crime, deserved like treatment.
"Looking upon them" (the afflicted children) "at the same time and not
being afflicted, must consequently be a witch." The above is from the
records of her examination. Apparently she was looking upon the children
while alleging that the then absent Sarah Osburn was there present and was
occasioning their sufferings, while yet Mrs. Good was not herself
afflicted; this was deemed proof that she was a witch. What unstated
premises led to that conclusion we do not know. Our fathers had many
notions pertaining to witchcraft that are now buried in oblivion, and it
is often very difficult to find the reasons for their inferences. We are
baffled here, and can say only that indication is furnished that under
some circumstances a woman's failure to become bewitched was proof that
she was herself a witch--because she did not catch a special disease, she
must already be having it.
Constable Braybrook, who had charge of her during the night between the
first two days of her examination, deposed that he set three men as a
guard to watch her at his own house; and that in the morning the guard
informed him that "during the night Sarah Good was gone some time from
them, both barefoot and barelegged." From another source he learned that
on "that same night, Elizabeth Hubbard, one of the afflicted persons,
complained that Sarah Good came and afflicted her, being barefoot and
barelegged, and Samuel Sibley, that was one that was attending (courting)
of Elizabeth Hubbard, struck Sarah Good on the arm, as Elizabeth Hubbard
said."--_Woodward's Historical Series_, No. I, p. 27.
Braybrook's statement presents a side incident at a time when none of the
performers who had been trained in the historian's famous high school for
girls were present--an incident which rivals in marvelousness anything in
the main tragedy they are charged with enacting. When the tricksy girls
were all absent, when men alone stood guard over and were with this
prisoner, she became invisible by them. No one of the magic-working band
of girls and women was then at hand. Testimony that she disappeared is
distinct; the guards reported in the morning that "she was gone some time
from them." The constable so stated, and the statement was supported by
two assistant guards, Michael Dunnell, and Jonathan Baker. We shall not
stop to ask them how they knew that she was "barefoot and barelegged" when
she was invisible. They perhaps saw her stockings and shoes when she was
not to be seen. Also she was without such garments when seen that night by
Elizabeth Hubbard and her lover in that girl's distant home.
An intelligent, sagacious, and reliable man, Dr. H. B. Storer, of Boston,
whom we know and have long known personally, and whom we respect as being
distinctly high-minded, honorable, and adherent to facts and truths, gave,
in the Banner of Light, January 9, 1875, an instructive account of his
recent observations at the residence of Mrs. Compton, a medium, at Havana,
N. Y. We extract the following from his statements. He says that on Monday
morning, December 28, 1874,--
"By my request, Mrs. Compton acquiescing without a murmur, my lady
friends, entering her bedroom, saw her completely divested of clothing,
with the exception of two under garments, and then had her draw on a pair
of her husband's pantaloons. The basque of her alpaca dress, without the
skirt, was then put on, after careful search to render it certain that no
extra clothing could be secreted. Then, in my presence, the basque was
sewed by its points on each side to the pantaloons, and a ribbon, which I
tied with two knots closely around her neck, was sewed through the knots,
and each end of the ribbon sewed to the collar of the basque. So she had
on a closely-fitting coat and pantaloons sewed together, and so attached
by a ribbon around the neck that the clothing could not be drawn up or
down. A pair of black gloves were then drawn upon the hands and sewed
tightly around the wrists. I then put around her waist a piece of cotton
twine, tying it in two hard knots behind, and the same piece of twine was
tied by double knots to the back of the chair in which she sat."
On Saturday Dr. Storer had seen come forth from the cabinet, as Dr. F. L.
H. Willis also had on a former occasion, "a weird phantom, bearing the
semblance of a woman, and clothed in a flowing costume of white. Over her
head was thrown a vail of delicate texture, and in one hand she carried a
handkerchief that looked like a bit of a fleecy cloud. Her dress was
exceedingly white and lustrous, without a wrinkle or a fold in it." That
description by Willis is called by Storer "perfect," and is adopted by
him. This "weird" personage was called Katie. Dr. Storer, after fixing the
medium in the cabinet on Monday, as above described, says,--
"Very slowly the door [of the cabinet] opened, and soon her [Katie's]
entire form was seen dressed exactly as before--trailing skirts, vail, and
mantle, but with a belt which she gathered in her hands and rubbed
together that we might hear its silken rustle. Standing by the door, she
addressed me, saying that when she had walked entirely away from the
cabinet, she wished me to go in quickly, and, without moving the chair,
feel after the medium, and all about the cabinet, and see if I could find
her. She stepped out about five feet into the room, and at once I sprang
into the cabinet, felt in the chair, swept the floor and walls thoroughly
with my hands--but--not _a vestige of medium_ or _anything_ remained."
The italicizing is ours. We design to imitate the doctor in both frankness
and wisdom--to restate and accept his facts--but make no attempt at
explanation of them. We adduce the case because it parallels in
marvelousness the statements of Braybrook. What happens now may have had
its like before to-day. The modern case out-marvels, perhaps, the ancient
one; for we know not whether the guards felt for their prisoner or only
failed to see her. How they ascertained that she was gone is not told. Dr.
Storer felt the chair into which he had bound Mrs. Compton, felt the floor
and the ceiling all over, and could find nobody in the little cabinet,
which was but a triangle partitioned off at the corner of the room, whose
inner sides were only five feet each in length, so that a man, without
changing his position, might touch any part of it, unless the ceiling
overhead was above the man's reach. Shortly afterward, says Dr. Storer,
"the cabinet door was opened, and in the chair, tied as we had left her,
without the breaking of a thread, or the apparent movement of her person,
or in any respect differing from her appearance when last seen, sat the
medium, in that fearfully lifeless trance, from which nearly a half hour
was required to arouse her. I will not give any speculations of my own
upon this most marvelous exhibition. I submit the facts and vouch for
their entire accuracy."
Were Braybrook's statements true as to the main fact? They may have been.
If they were, we do not apprehend that the physical body of Sarah Good was
either removed from the vicinity of her guards, or seen by Elizabeth
Hubbard that night. Invisibility may have been wrapped around her body,
and yet not around her shoes and stockings; perhaps her spirit-form was
the only one seen by the distant observer. We hesitate to fix limits to
possibilities. Spirits to-day frequently manage, as they say, and as
results indicate, to render particular material objects lying within the
embrace of auras or emanations of some mediums, invisible temporarily by
the keenest of keen external eyes, even when such eyes are surrounded by
light sufficient for seeing other objects in the vicinity with
distinctness. That which is done now may have been done formerly. And
since such phenomena now seldom occur excepting in the near vicinity of
persons susceptible to spirit influences, the fair conclusion is, that
Sarah Good was a medium. Elizabeth Hubbard saw the spirit-form of Sarah
Good; which fact argues that Elizabeth was a clairvoyant, unless Sarah
Good's spirit was then materialized. Each and every one of the afflicted
girls is so repeatedly reported to have described perception of what
external sight could not see, external ear hear, nor external touch feel,
that the mediumistic susceptibilities of each and all of them are
manifest.
The susceptibilities and endowments of both accusers and accused were
exceptional and yet alike in kind. The spiritual perceptive faculties and
the receptive capabilities of both classes could be brought into such
action as would out-work results perceptible by the external senses of
common people. Also, and especially, each class could be made to serve as
_mere tools_ of invisible beings. As such they were handled, their users
employing them severally as afflictor or as afflicted, at their pleasure,
within the permissions of psychological laws.
The choice, which selected certain ones to be implements by which to
afflict, and others to be the subjects of afflictions, was made by
dwellers in spirit spheres, familiar with psychological laws, and
competent to determine in which capacity each impressible one could be
most serviceable in advancing the ends of the supernal operators. Such a
view, when its correctness shall have been confirmed, will work out vast
amelioration in the world's judgment of that band of girls and women in
Salem Village who have long borne its scorn and detestation, and will
thrill every kindly heart with joy. When it shall become apparent that
some inborn physical peculiarities involved the controlling reasons why
certain persons rather than others were charged with being Satan's
devotees, then none can fail to see that it was not roguery, not artifice,
not malice, not grudges, not family or neighborhood or parochial quarrels,
not disputes about property, nor any social, moral, or religious eminence
or debasement,--no, not any one of those base motives of the normal
intellect and heart which lively fancy has pleased itself with conjuring
up and imputing,--no, it was not any one of those reprehensible and
damning motives, but was innate susceptibility of being easily controlled
by psychological forces; especially it was a constitutional liability to
be more readily seen, heard, and felt by persons similarly endowed than
was the great mass of people around them.
Ann Putnam, Jr., the keen-sighted pioneer of the clairvoyant
witch-detectors, saw the apparition, and felt the distressing influences
of Sarah Good, on the 25th of February. Her depositions were numerous;
there were but few of the accused whose apparitions had not met her
vision, but few who had not harmed her in ways and by forces unperceived
by external senses. The character and general purport of her testimony,
and also of most of the testimony from members of THE CIRCLE, is well
presented by the first deposition we find on record; which is as
follows:--
"The deposition of Ann Putnam, Jr., who testifieth and saith, that on
the 25th of February, 1691-92, I saw the apparition of Sarah Good,
which did torture me most grievously; but I did not know her name till
the 27th of February, and then she told me her name was Sarah Good.
And then she did pinch me most grievously; and also since; several
times urging me vehemently to write in her book. And also on the 1st
of March, being the day of her examination, Sarah Good did most
grievously torture me; and also several times since. And also on the
first day of March, 1692, I saw the apparition of Sarah Good go and
afflict and torture the bodies of Elizabeth Parris, Abigail Williams,
and Elizabeth Hubbard. Also I have seen the apparition of Sarah Good
afflicting the body of Sarah Vibber.
mark
"ANN PUTNAM."
+
That deposition furnishes a fair specimen of the kind of evidence sought
for, admitted, and applied to prove probable compact with the devil. All
of the above pertains to the first examination made at Salem, and it
reveals the opinions then prevalent relating to covenantings with the Evil
One, to powers and dispositions thence derived, and to then existing legal
methods for proving such compacts. There is little indication that
experiences at Salem, during the spring and summer of 1692, gave either
the examining magistrates, or the court, much, if any, new light or any
increase of wisdom or humaneness. Whatever modification of processes of
procedure subsequently took place, and whatever change of decisions as to
the value and admissibility of spectral evidence occurred, was for the
worse rather than the better. The creeds and laws conformed to then were
not formed and adopted for that occasion, but had prior existence, and
were here applied with strenuous vigor by firm hearts and clear heads.
Amid all the excitement, frenzy, infatuation, delusion, and credulity then
abounding, logic retained its power and guidance, and held courts and
juries to the requirements of the wholesome statutes of the English
Parliament, pertaining to witchcraft and to Christendom's witchcraft
creed. Old laws and faiths were here tested by strong men. They held for a
time, and wrought woeful effects, but finally were broken.
Sarah Good was wife of an inefficient husband, "William Good, laborer."
The family was very poor, having at times no home excepting such as
charity granted them temporarily. She is spoken of by Calef as having
"long been accounted a melancholy or distracted woman." Upham says that
"she was a forlorn, friendless, and forsaken creature, broken down by
wretchedness of condition and ill repute." We find no reason for
dissenting from that writer's statement when he says elsewhere, that "she
was an unfortunate and miserable woman _in her circumstances and
condition_;" but we doubt the fitness of calling her "forlorn" and "broken
down." She may have been so; but the spirit and energy generally
manifested by her words and acts indicate the probability that she was
rather a heedless, bold woman, free and harsh in the use of her tongue,
and not very sensitive to or regardful of public opinion, but yet strong
and not despondent. That she may have long been deemed, as Calef says she
was, a "distracted" woman, is very probable, for many simply mediumistic
persons, and even more of us who at this day solely because we believe in
the advent of spirits, both good and less good, have long been accounted
_crazy_.
We have met with no indication that she was physically weak or mentally
despondent. She seems to have borne up well under long, tedious horseback
rides daily to and from Ipswich jail, nine or ten miles distant, whither
she was nightly sent ever after the time of her becoming invisible to her
guards. Her keeper on the way says, "she leaped off her horse three times,
railed at the magistrates, and endeavored to kill herself." That attempt,
if she made one, to take her own life, was scarcely less likely to spring
from the angry mental mood then prompting her to rail against the
magistrates, than from despondency or forlornness.
When under examination, her answers were about as direct, explicit, and to
the point, as most other suspected ones were able to give to the
perplexing questions which were put; and some of hers have more snap than
we usually find in words from lips of the "forlorn and broken down."
It is not probable that her previous life had won much public favor; yet
no evidence has been met with that her neighbors generally cherished
hostile feelings towards her, or possessed sentiments which would prompt
them to rejoice at her prosecution. We, as has already been made apparent,
ascribe her arrest to other causes than the lowness of her character and
condition. That was not the primal incentive to her being "cried out
upon." Her organization, and the then existing condition of her faculties,
made her either a convenient channel through which to transmit, or a
fountain from which to draw, forces into the systems of certain other
sensitives, which forces might act therein for either the annoyance and
suffering, or the pleasure and relief of the recipients, according to
either inherent properties of the forces themselves, or to the purpose of
some intelligence who should inflow and manipulate them. The sensitive
girls might, and, if well unfolded mediumistically, would unerringly trace
back such forces as acted upon themselves to their mundane point of
emanation, and in good conscience and good faith accuse the person from
whom the forces issued of being their tormentor; if clairvoyant they could
see, if clairaudient could hear, and, if not specially unfolded for seeing
with the inner eye and hearing with the inner ear, could _sense_ the
person from whom the foreign and disturbing influences came forth.
A bold spirit and prophetic glance pertained to this woman at the close of
her mortal life. When near the gallows, and about to be executed, Mr.
Noyes, the clergyman at Salem proper, told her "she was a witch, and she
knew that she was a witch." She promptly retorted, "You are a liar. I am
no more a witch than you are a wizard; and if you take away my life, God
will give you blood to drink." Subsequently that man "died of an internal
hemorage, bleading profusely at the mouth." (_Hist. of Witchcraft_, vol.
ii. p. 270.) Gleamings of what will be often meet internal or mediumistic
eyes; and such probably did those of Sarah Good at that instant, and
authorized her prophetic utterance.