Thirty years earlier, their juggling might
have proved as disastrous as that at Salem Village. There, parish and
boundary feuds had set enmity between neighbors, and the girls, called on
to say who troubled them, cried out upon those whom they had been wont to
hear called by hard names at home. They probably had no notion what a
frightful ending their comedy was to have; but at any rate they were
powerless, for the reins had passed out of their hands into the sterner
grasp of minister and magistrate. They were dragged deeper and deeper, as
men always are by their own lie.
The proceedings at the Salem trials are sometimes spoken of as if they
were exceptionally cruel. But, in fact, if compared with others of the
same kind, they were exceptionally humane. At a time when Baxter could
tell with satisfaction of a "_reading_ parson" eighty years old, who,
after being kept awake five days and nights, confessed his dealings with
the Devil, it is rather wonderful that no mode of torture other than
mental was tried at Salem. Nor were the magistrates more besotted or
unfair than usual in dealing with the evidence. Now and then, it is true,
a man more sceptical or intelligent than common had exposed some
pretended demoniac. The Bishop of Orleans, in 1598, read aloud to Martha
Brossier the story of the Ephesian Widow, and the girl, hearing Latin,
and taking it for Scripture, went forthwith into convulsions.
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