NORTH SHORE BREEZE 17 
tlers. The first pioneers were men of education. Those 
who followed were much their inferiors. 
Historians, who have made the witch craft delu- 
sion a special study, claim it did not result wholly from 
ignorant superstition but partially from religious big- 
otry. Everybody believed it. It is claimed that the 
people in general, even their superiors, were men of 
limited parts and lacked the education of their ances- 
tors. Colonial ministers of Boston and Salem believed 
in all the current superstitions of that period. They 
encouraged rather than stopped it. It was indeed the 
very darkest age of local colonial history. 
_ As a very religious people withal, there existed a 
‘strong belief in the evil power of the invisible world. 
The colonial ministers, who practically usurped all the 
power of church and government, began to find their 
power waning. To hold their great influence they built 
up a new power on error and superstition. All who 
doubted stood forth as enemies to the clergy. Such 
adverse influence had to be stopped or the ministerial 
power was lost. The Quakers were dragged through 
the streets of Salem tied to the ends of a cart and 
whipped. They had dared to maintain contrary be- 
liefs. Banishments from the colony were frequent for 
slight dissentions or lack of observance of ministerial 
laws. 
It was not only the religious gleanings of Biblical 
tales of whicheraft that so deeply impressed them. 
Just imagine the Colonial Salemites gathered around 
their huge fireplaces in the wilds of the North Shore 
reading for diversion ‘‘Discourses of the Damned Art 
of Witcheraft’’? written about 1600. Our modern 
lurid. 
As late as 1765, it was taught that to deny the 
possibility of all such sorceries was to contradict the 
revealed word of God and to have dealings with evil 
spirits. Crabbedness in old age or misfortune, common 
scolds, neighborhood gossips, who knew the innermost 
secrets, present and future, of their neighbors, were 
verily believed to be ‘‘in compact with the devil’’ to 
torment and cause death to God’s people. 
The outbreak of witch craft in the Salem territory 
in 1692 is not phenomenal. It was quite general in all 
the colonies. It did not get a firmer hold, however, in 
the minds of the ‘‘Salem Village’’ people. It was fos- 
tered by certain ministers and prominent men. 
Its first inception in Salem is said to have been 
in the home of Rev. Samuel Parris. Tituba, his West 
Indian slave, taught the minster’s daughters and girls 
of the neighborhood to practice tricks of jugglery and 
ineantation for amusement. Ann Putnam was among 
the girls who witnessed them. 
When Rev. and Mrs. Parris discovered what was 
going on, they called in Dr. Griggs. He was at loss 
to know how to treat such a ‘‘disease.’’ He diag- 
nosed their cases as ‘‘bewitched by the devil.’’ People 
eame from far and near to witness their ‘‘antics.”’ 
Now all this had been going on secretly with these 
colonial girls. They delighted in showing their prow- 
ess and amazing their friends. What today we would 
eonsider was a social accomplishment was to their el- 
ders a source of the gravest concern. The girls knew 
severe punishment and public discipline in church faced 
them. They must avoid it. 
What was their method of procedure? Deceit and 
false accusation which carried witchcraft’s first mar- 
iyrs to the gallows because no clemency was shown 
them since these girls belonged to families of promi- 
pence and respectability and no scandal must touch 
them. This is a plausible suggestion of some witch 
eraft historians, 
Thus came about the first witcheraft trial and 
the execution of Tituba, Sarah Good, a laborer’s wite, 
and Sarah Osbun accused by the Parris girls and their 
friends. At the execution of Sarah Good, the Rev. 
Mr. Noyes addressed her: ‘‘You are a witch and you 
iknow you are a witch.’’ ‘‘You are a liar,’’ was her 
indignant reply, ‘‘l1 am no more a witch than you are 
a wizard and if you take my life God will give you 
Lleod to drink.”’ 
Modern melodrama is not to be compared with the 
numerous eases of witchcraft delusion and execution 
that Salem history gives us. Our beautiful North Shore 
territory was peopled then with imaginative geniuses. 
They did not stop at intentional or wilful falsehood to 
increase the tide of this sensational period or the out- 
pourings of disordered minds. They were insane over 
their new belief. 
In 1696 the first radical change took place. January 
14, 1697 Stoughton colonists ordained that day as a 
public fast day. God was implored to turn away his 
anger for what had happened. Heirs of executed or 
imprisoned witches were reimbursed by the general 
court. Everybody was in favor of having the great 
wrong righted. July 8, 1703, Salem’s ministers ad- 
dressed a memorial to the General Court in behalf of 
innocent people who had suffered. Still they never de- 
nied their belief in the delusion or ‘‘disease’’ only de- 
plored the tragic and hasty manner of their attempted 
reform. It was a ‘“‘horrid nightmare’’ like any great 
modern misfortune of plague, famine, conflagration or 
earthquake. 
Thus the North Shore territory, which is so beau- 
tiful, restful and admirable in present day dress and 
atanosphere, should be still more impressionable to the 
thoughtful tourist. It is a great, shadowy amphi- 
theatre peopled with the mystic characters of the past, 
who made their mistakes and atoned. We should, as 
their modern audience, be tolerant critics and urgent 
reformers of all modern wrongs, be grateful for our 
innumerable privileges and blessings. ‘‘Witcheraft in 
Salem Village’”’ teaches a great lesson. 
Preach virtue, sacrifice and love—be yourself vir- 
tuous, loving and ready for self-sacrifice. Speak your 
own thoughts boldly, and bravely name your wants, 
but without anger and without threats.—Guiseppe Maz- 
zini. 
Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard 
than anybody else expects of you. Never pity yoursell. 
Be a hard master to yourself—and be lenient to every- 
body else-——Henry Ward Beecher. 
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