has already been presented in the reports of evidence against her mother;
but in those she was called Dorothy, and was reported as testifying that
her mother "had three birds, one black, one yellow, and that these birds
hurt the children, and afflicted persons." Such testimony, of course,
supported the side of the accusers. The little one's words were damaging
to her mother, and helpful to the mother's oppressors. But, from some
cause, she soon fell under suspicion of belonging to the class of
bewitchers. As early as March 3, Ann Putnam saw the apparition of this
child; and on the 21st of March, Mary Walcott did the same. This, of
course, was regarded as evidence that she was a witch; and on or near
March 23d she was arrested, examined, and soon after sent to jail.
Yes, little Dorcas, daughter of mediumistic Sarah Good, not five years
old, "looking well and hale as other children," was definitely, in legal
form, accused of witchcraft; was arrested, and brought before the civil
magistrates for examination. In presence of the magistrates the exhibiting
graduates from the school of "necromancy, magic, and spiritualism"--the
afflicted girls--accused the little child of biting them then and there,
and "also of pricking them with pins, with pinching and almost choking
them." In proof of all this they exhibited marks upon their flesh, just
such in size and form as matched her little teeth Also pins were found
under their clothing precisely where they asserted that she pricked them.
Such facts as imprints upon the arms of the girls, corresponding precisely
with such as the child's teeth might make, and the invisible pinchings,
prickings, &c., are not outside of nature's permissions, and therefore
were not impossible. Those girls, at their circle meetings, _or
elsewhere_, had obviously become very facile instruments in spiritualism,
had become usable by spirits as subjects for impressions, and
psychologically induced sensations. From the mediumistic little daughter
of a mediumistic mother, forms and forces could be made to emanate which
might act upon the plastic mediumistic sufferers in exact accordance with
such experiences, and producing such results as the girls described or
others witnessed. The senses of the annoyed ones could distinctly perceive
that the agonizing forces issued from that little girl. The accusers
probably stated only facts which they knew as well as any witness ever
knew his facts when describing what his own senses had brought him
knowledge of. Whether things seen and felt by the spirit senses be deemed
objective or only subjective, they are alike real to the consciousness of
the person that takes cognizance of them. The statements of the girls were
probably true. The possibilities in heaven and earth, and along where
their border-lines come in contact, are not recognized by some historians.
There are some persons at this day who hold even as contracting and
misleading philosophies, as Cotton Mather and the men of his generation
did. Modern wisdom (?) prompts some to discredit any actual occurrence of
any extra-marvelous facts--any facts _seeming_ more than natural--and to
impeach the accuracy or the truthfulness of any and all who attest to
such, rather than admit that the bases of their own philosophies can be
improved by expansion. Such persons, when attempting to account for many
facts in human history, are, though it may be unconsciously to themselves,
like mill-horses tethered to an unchanging center, and made to move within
a fixed circumference. Habit soon brings loss of desire, if not of
courage, to turn the eyes outward and look upon facts whose producers work
from outside the beaten rounds in which some theorists travel. This makes
it bad for many facts, such facts as are popping into view through avenues
deemed anomalous. There are writers who do their best to enforce upon such
facts the Mosaic command, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." But
facts are immortal; buried ones often reappear, and demonstrate their own
former occurrence.
Two centuries ago, the claim of great marvels to be objective facts was
generally conceded. But at that time the hidden workers of wonders were
woefully slandered as to parentage: men deemed them _all_ to be both imps
of the malignant ruler of the darkest regions of realms unseen, and his
emissaries from pandemonium to the abodes of man.
Faith in the genuineness of witchcraft facts, though in Dorcas Good's day
it hid a multitude of sins, failed to make the arresting of a mere infant
witch a desirable operation. For some reason the officious marshal,
Herrick, sent forth constable Braybrook to encounter and capture man's
great enemy when that wily one had ensconced himself in an infant's form.
But the deputy scavengered up and sub-deputized somebody else to fight
that battle for God and Christ. His menial went the needful two or three
miles north through the woods to Benjamin Putnam's house, and executed the
daring feat of bringing on his back, or in some other way, a "hale and
well-looking" girl of less than five years into court, a culprit because
of co-laboring with and being a covenanted servant of witchcraft's devil!
The darkness of delusion which such an arrest failed to illumine must have
been thick indeed! But the creed of the day, devil-ward, the creed of the
fathers, the creed of Christendom, so deluded the public judgment that it
demanded the blood of a witch even though she were an infant.
The condition of the public mind only a very short time subsequent to the
irrational, unkindly, barbarous arrest of that child has been depicted by
Upham, vol. ii. p. 112, in sentences more graphic, spirited, and eloquent
than our own powers could possibly put forth, and differing considerably
from what we would essay to give were our rhetorical abilities equal to
his. He states that--
"The proceedings of the 11th and 12th of April produced a great effect in
driving on the general infatuation.... 'Twas awful to see how the
afflicted persons were agitated.... Those girls, by long practice in 'the
circle,' and day by day before the astonished and wondering neighbors
gathered to witness their distresses, and especially on the more public
occasions of the examinations, had acquired consummate boldness and tact.
In simulations of passions, sufferings, and physical affections; in
sleight of hand, and the management of voice and feature and attitude, no
necromancers have surpassed them. There has seldom been better acting in a
theater than they displayed in the presence of the astonished and
horror-stricken rulers, magistrates, ministers, judges, jurors,
spectators, and prisoners. No one seems to have dreamed that their actings
and sufferings could have been the result of cunning or imposture. Deodat
Lawson was a man of talents, had seen much of the world, and was by no
means a simpleton, recluse, or novice; but he was totally deluded by them.
The prisoners, although conscious of their own innocence, were utterly
confounded by the acting of the girls. The austere principles of that
generation forbade with the utmost severity all theatrical shows and
performances; but at Salem village and the old town, in the respective
meeting-houses, and at Deacon Nathaniel Ingersoll's, some of the best
playing ever got up in this country was practiced, and patronized for
weeks and months at the very centre and heart of Puritanism, by 'the most
straitest sect' of that solemn order of men. Pastors, deacons,
church-members, doctors of divinity, college professors, officers of
state, crowded, day after day, to behold feats which have never been
surpassed on the boards of any theater; which rivaled the most memorable
achievements of pantomimists, thaumaturgists, and stage-players, and made
considerable approaches toward the best performances of ancient sorcerers
and magicians, or modern jugglers and mesmerizers."
The brilliancy, fervor, and literary finish of that description of the
public enthusiasm and bewilderment are truly worthy of admiration, while
the picture is not, and probably could not be, overwrought. Still we must
doubt the competency of the alleged authors of the excitement to perform
the bewildering and frenzying acts ascribed to them.
We have heard from of old, and could quasi believe, that mountains in
labor brought forth mice. But it is only rarely one has earnestly and
fervently sought and striven to entice the reading public to admit
conviction that a dozen _enceinte_ mice could enwomb and give birth to a
vast and terrific volcano.
One must needs look in wondering astonishment upon that keenness of vision
which, at the middle of the nineteenth century, penetrating through mold
and debris which have, through a century and three fourths, been gathering
over momentous events, sees clearly that they were the genuine offspring
of youthful "cunning and imposture," even while the owner of such vision
himself perceived that neither the learned, talented, and keen Deodat
Lawson, nor any other one of all the many able and sagacious men who were
lookers-on at the amazing feats while they were transpiring, _dreamed_
that the actings and sufferings could have been the results of cunning and
imposture. The day of Lawson and his companion observers was too near the
facts for any dreams about them. It required a peculiarly plastic modern
brain, and the intervening lapse of eightscore years, for the generation
and birth of such a _dream_. The reason of its non-appearance in 1692 is
very plain. Known facts then left no vacancy in the brains of that day for
storage of the fictions of dreamland.
We return to little Dorcas Good. The creed devil-ward had hoodwinked all
eyes. All things were in a terrific and bewildering whirl. Calm reflection
and deliberate reasoning upon anything new were impossible. If perchance a
mind asked itself whether an infant was competent to bargain with the
devil and thence become a witch, it had no time to respond to its own
inquiry. In open court, mysterious bitings were perpetrated by the teeth
of this little girl, because the marks fitted her set and none other. The
marks were made by the accused girl's teeth. Ocular demonstration,
therefore, was proving her to be the devil's instrument; for otherwise she
could not invisibly bite, nor could her teeth be made to bite, those who
were off beyond her reach.
Standing upon what we said in the last chapter relating to the passing of
hurts through the spirit to its outer body, we hold that spirits may have
so applied the spirit teeth of little Dorcas to the spirit limbs of the
afflicted girls, as to have left the marks of her teeth upon their flesh.
Woefully did the creed of that time not only permit, but call for the
arrest of that infantile girl, solely because, under the operation of
natural laws of generation, she inherited properties or capabilities which
rendered her, from the time when she was conceived, ever onward, very
susceptible to psychological influences. The judges, observing what were
but legitimate and necessary outworkings of her inborn properties, being
ignorant of their true source and nature, deemed them such a crime that
the court sent her to Boston jail a prisoner, there to keep company with
the mother from whom her peculiar properties had been derived, by whose
milk they had been nourished, and in whose magnetisms they had unfolded.
The present century is learning facts which teach that inborn properties
and susceptibilities, and not compacts with the devil, constitute
_witches_--some of whom are very lovely. An infantile witch is no great
marvel now. Such can be found in many a family, "through whose lips angels
speak" to-day, as they did through Emanuel Swedenborg's when but a child,
and who, born in January, 1688, was precisely a contemporary of Dorcas
Good.