“A further testimony of William Morse and his wife,” as follows:—
“We saw a keeler of bread turn over against me, and struck me, not any being near it, and so overturned. I saw a chair standing in the house, and not anybody near. It did often bow toward me, and rise up again. My wife also being in the chamber, the chamber door did violently fly together, not anybody being near it. My wife going to make a bed, it did move to and fro, not anybody being near it. I also saw an iron wedge and spade was flying out of the chamber on my wife, and did not strike her. My wife going into the cellar, a drum, standing in the house, did roll over the door of the cellar; and being taken up again, the door did violently fly down again. My barn-doors four times unpinned, I know not how. I, going to shut my barn-door, looking for the pin—the boy being with me—as I did judge, the pin, coming down out of the air, did fall down near to me.
“Again: Caleb Powell came in as aforesaid, and seeing our spirits very low by the sense of our great affliction, began to bemoan our condition, and said that he was troubled for our afflictions, and said that he had eyed this boy, and drawed near to us with great compassion: ‘Poor old man, poor old woman! This boy is the occasion of your grief; for he hath done these things, and hath caused his good old grandmother to be counted a witch.’ ‘Then,’ said I, ‘how can all these things be done by him?’ Said he, ‘Although he may not have done all, yet most of them; for this boy is a young rogue, a vile rogue. I have watched him and see him do things as to come up and down.’ Caleb Powell also said he had understanding in Astrology and Astronomy, and knew the working of spirits, some in one country and some in another; and, looking on the boy, said, ‘You young rogue to begin so soon. Goodman Morse, if you be willing to let me have this boy, I will undertake you shall be free from any trouble of this kind while he is with me.’ I was very unwilling at the first, and my wife; but, by often urging me, till he told me wither and what employment and company he should go, I did consent to it, and this was before Jo. Badger came; and we have been freed from any trouble of this kind ever since that promise, made on Monday night last, to this time being Friday in the afternoon. Then we heard a great noise in the other room, oftentimes, but, looking after it, could not see anything; but, afterward looking into the room, we saw a board hanged to the press. Then we, being by the fire, sitting in a chair, my chair often would not stand still, but ready to throw me backward oftentimes. Afterward, my cap almost taken off my head three times. Again, a great blow on my poll, and my cat did leap from me into the chimney-corner. Presently after, this cat was thrown at my wife. We saw the cat to be ours; we put her out of the house, and shut the door. Presently the cat was throwed into the house. We went to go to bed. Suddenly—my wife being with me in bed, the lamp-light by our side—my cat again throwed at us five times, jumping away presently into the floor; and one of those times, a red waistcoat throwed on the bed, and the cat wrapped up in it. Again, the lamp standing by us on the chest, we said it should stand and burn out; but presently was beaten down, and all the oil shed, and we left in the dark. Again—a great voice, a great while very dreadful. Again—in the morning, a great stone, being six-pound weight, did move from place to place; we saw it. Two spoons throwed off the table, and presently the table throwed down. And, being minded to write, my ink-horn was hid from me, which I found covered with a rag, and my pen quite gone. I made a new pen; and while I was writing, one ear of corn hit me in the face, and fire, sticks, and stones throwed at me, and my pen brought to me. While I was writing with my new pen, my ink-horn taken away; and not knowing how to write any more, we looked under the table and there found him; and so I was able to write again. Again—my wife her hat taken from her head, sitting by the fire by me, the table almost thrown down. Again—my spectacles thrown from the table, and thrown almost into the fire by me, and my wife, and the boy. Again—my book of all my accounts thrown into the fire, and had been burnt presently, if I had not taken it up. Again—boards taken off a tub, and set upright by themselves; and my paper, do what I could, hardly keep it while I was writing this relation, and things thrown at me while a-writing. Presently, before I could dry my writing, a Mormouth hat rubbed along it; but I held so fast that it did blot but some of it. My wife and I, being much afraid that I should not preserve it for public use, did think best to lay it in the Bible, and it lay safe that night. Again—the next day I would lay it there again; but in the morning, it was not there to be found, the bag hanged down empty; but after was found in a box alone. Again—while I was writing this morning, I was forced to forbear writing any more, I was so disturbed with so many things constantly thrown at me.”
Such is the account given by an eye and ear witness, who had as good opportunities to receive sensible demonstration of acts performed as can well be imagined. Did he see, hear, and feel all that he testifies to? Has he left record of a series of facts, or only of fictions which he set forth as facts? Was he a faithful and true witness, or not? Who and what was he? An aged shoemaker, who ran the gantlet of a fierce witchcraft ordeal and came out with character sound and untarnished; a man who “was esteemed a sincere and understanding Christian by those that knew him.” The strong words in his favor, which came from such a trustworthy scribe as the Rev. Mr. Hale, on an occasion when circumstances would influence him to be careful and exact in expression, are clearly indicative that Morse’s testimony was probably true and discriminative. “A sincere and understanding Christian.” What qualities give better a priori promise of correct testimony than do sincerity and a sound understanding? Where these combine, their utterances imperatively claim very respectful hearing by any one who is in pursuit of positive facts pertaining to human experience. The history of him and his family, during those ten or eleven days and nights through which they were enveloped in the waters of mystery, trouble, and consternation, gives no indication that Mr. Morse’s reason ever yielded its normal and just sway over his actions or his words—no indication of his being blinded by any excessive or bewildering excitement or enthusiasm. The fact that he himself wrote out with his own hand, and in the very midst of the startling and hair-lifting phenomena, a narrative of events which gives dates, occurrences, and experiences clearly, in perspicuous and often terse language, accompanied by appropriate specifications of circumstances which elucidate the character of the whole scene, bespeaks a straightforward, truthful, unexaggerating mind, self-controlled, and moving straight forward in an honest statement of events actually witnessed. Our ancient records contain few testimonies that exhibit clearer or stronger internal evidences of exactitude and reliability than that of William Morse. The form, language, and tone of his account are all in favor of his intelligence, discrimination, and credibility; so much so, that, taken in connection with his whole character, we can conceive of no objection to crediting his narration, excepting what shall be wrung out from the nature and kind of facts he swore to. But neither their nature nor source was concern of his, as a witness; and his own sound understanding perceiving this, kept him back from expressing any surmises or innuendoes as to who were the actual authors of his great annoyances. The man understood his position as a witness, kept his reason at the helm throughout the fearful storm, and suspected and accused, not the little boy, but Powell. Obviously his own senses, unbeclouded by the mists of unreasoning excitement, had witnessed the facts he stated, and he knew that they had occurred. His testimony is true.
How can the occurrence of such facts be explained, or rather who produced them? Historians say that the little boy, John, did. How could he? Had history-weaving heads, when at work in the quiet study, been as clear and as free from the blinding action of foregone conclusions, as was that of Mr. Morse amid the flying missiles about his head while he was writing, their reason, as his did, would have asked their witness Powell, “How could all these things be done by him,” the boy? And the cowed witness would have replied to them in the nineteenth century as he did to Morse in the seventeenth, “Although he may not have done all, yet, most of them.” He would have backed down before the historians as he did before the better “understanding” of Mr. Morse. Obviously to common sense, the boy was incompetent to perform a tithe of what was ascribed to him. No one but Powell accused him. The age of that boy is not given. He is not known to have been called upon as a witness, and Powell says to him, “You young rogue, to begin so soon.” These facts, together with the absence of any words spoken by him to any one, excepting on a single occasion, lead naturally to the inference that he was quite young, and perhaps also that he was apparently inactive. At no age in boyhood, nor yet in manhood, could a single performer, or a host of men, have accomplished by unobservable processes and forces all that is distinctly stated to have been performed in and around the house of William Morse.
Any designation of its source which avows the mischief to have come primarily from the mind of little John Stiles, by necessary implication impeaches Mr. Morse’s powers of perception and observation, and the worth of his testimony. It indirectly, at least, accuses him of a great blunder when he suspected Powell rather than little John. On the hypothesis of modern historians, the sedate old man—the “understanding Christian”—was but making much ado about nothing, or next to that; for the little boy was not competent to much. So little could he do alone, that, were he the chief deviser and performer, Mr. Morse was incompetent to distinguish with common acuteness between the ordinary and the marvelous, or else he was an egregious fictionist and impostor. Far, far better would it be both for himself and his readers if the historic instructor recognized, and based his inferences upon, facts well attested, and sought for agents and forces adequate to manifest such results as were evolved. Vastly better would be history when founded upon broad comprehension of existing agents and forces, and a firm basis in the nature of things spreading out wide enough to underlie each and all of the ancient marvels, and admitting an imputation of them to authors whose inherent powers could bring them out to distinct cognition by human senses, than it can be when it ruthlessly pares down the dimensions of facts, dwarfs their fair import, and impeaches the trustworthiness of those who solemnly attested to the truth of descriptions which have come down from former generations! Better, much better would it be to honor the fathers by omitting to undermine and topple over their strong powers and good traits of character, and perversely bring their positive knowledge, gained through the senses, down to the lower level on which modern speculation obtains convictions! Descent to free and reiterated insinuations and allegations that the best individuals and communities of old were infatuated, credulous, deluded, stultified, because some of their statements and actions are unexplainable by our theories and philosophies, is unbecoming any generous and philanthropic spirit. Fair play calls for frank admission that giant facts occurred of old,—facts so huge that they cannot be stretched at full length upon the beds of modern science and philosophy, nor be wrapped up in the narrow blankets now in fashion,—facts so huge that they cannot squeeze themselves through, nor be forced through, the narrow entrance doors of some modern mental chambers. Does the hugeness which debars them from entering contracted domiciles to-day prove their existence to be but fabulous? Surely not. The sagacity and truthfulness of our predecessors were sound and good. They recorded facts. Shame be to those who are ashamed to admit that their equals in mental acuteness and accuracy of statement may, of old, actually have witnessed genuine phenomena which justified their descriptions. To brand the events as being the products of fraud, credulity, and infatuation, because only modern limitations to nature’s permissions and powers render them unexplainable as facts, is shameful.
Newbury, in 1679-80, was obviously visited and disturbed by giants. To deem that the biggest of these were children of little John Stiles, is not only farcical in the extreme, but it necessarily, however indirectly, asperses good William Morse, that “sincere and understanding Christian,” and also his equally good wife, who passed through the severe ordeals of witchcraft scenes and persecutions, and came forth untarnished,—asperses them by an imputation of incompetency to observe and describe with average clearness and accuracy events that passed before their eyes,—incompetency to give a truthful and unexaggerated account of what they saw.
Every sentiment of justice begs for a tongue with which to rebuke the sneers that overweeningly wise witchcraft historians have cast upon the senses and the mental and moral states of the observers and describers of the great marvels of former days. The foul broods of harpy adjectives which history has sent forth to prey upon the vitals of good characters for truthfulness and discrimination, should be forced to unloose their talons, and hie themselves back to roost where they were hatched.
Assuming, as the histories of all nations in all ages and lands indicate, and as many tested modern workers demonstrate, that some disembodied, unseen intelligences can at times either banish from the human body, or put in abeyance, or irresistibly control, the mental, affectional, and moral powers of some impressible human beings, and also use their whole physical structures and nerve elements as instruments; assuming, further, both that such unseen workers may have been the actual authors of many startling phenomena which the preceding pages have brought up before the reader’s mind, and that Mrs. Morse, Caleb Powell, and the boy were each of them mediumistical, contributing to the performance of the wonders—assuming this, the proximity of those several persons to the spots where the marvels appeared, would subject them all to rigid scrutiny, and their movements or their positions would probably, at times, indicate to external senses that they were somehow actors in the mêlée. They were obviously unconscious reservoirs of the forces there used, and as such were all involved in the production of the great mischief. It is credible, yes, quite probable, that the little boy was actually seen by Powell enacting a prominent part; but that Powell, who then saw, was practically a spirit, beholding a spirit form like in all things to the boy, but moved, energized, and controlled, all imperceptibly to external vision, by disembodied spirits. At the very time when all merely external beholders saw the external boy standing about the room in quiet and repose, or sitting still in the corner, spirit vision might have seen his semblance being used for infiltrating seeming life, motive powers, and longings for a lively jig and a merry time generally into the whole group of household utensils and supplies. When dead wood and iron, when leather and wool, when sausages and bread, when an iron wedge and a spade, find legs, and arms, and wings,—when such become things of seeming life, of forceful life, too, and of self-guiding actions,—they preach with power which no mere human tongue can command. No eloquence from its common sources can equal theirs in forcing conviction. They say “unseen intelligences move us”—“unseen intelligences move us,” and every self-possessed and logical hearer responds, Amen.
All things have their use. This case of seemingly low as well as rough manifestations, where spirits exhibited the effects of their force mainly upon gross, lifeless matter and brute animals, shows more forcibly and convincingly, if possible, the fact of supermundane agents, than did the effective hands, and simples, and clear visions of Margaret Jones; the “wit” or clairaudience of Ann Hibbins; the Dutch tones and unconscious utterances of Ann Cole, or the contortions of Elizabeth Knap, and the words of the pretty black boy. Life and self-action in dead wood and iron are phenomena too striking and pregnant with meaning to be wisely slurred or ignored.