Upham states (vol. ii. pp. 2 and 386) that “for a period embracing about two months they” (certain girls and women) “had been in the habit of meeting together, and spending the long winter evenings, at Mr. Parris’s house, practicing the arts of fortune-telling, jugglery, and magic.”
Drake says (“Annals of Witchcraft,” p. 189) that “these females instituted frequent meetings, or got up, as it would now be styled, a club, which was called a circle. How frequent they had these meetings is not stated; but it was soon ascertained that they met to try projects, or to do or produce superhuman acts.”
Fowler remarks, in Woodward’s Series (vol. iii. pp. 204 and 205), that “Mary Warren, one of the most violent of the accusing girls, lived with John Proctor,” who, “out of patience with the meetings of the girls composing this circle,” &c. “It is at the meeting of this circle of eight girls, for the purpose of practicing palmistry and fortune-telling, that we discover the germ or the first origin of the delusion.”
The position of each of these writers substantially is, that the accusing girls, at circle meetings which they held, qualified themselves for the parts they subsequently performed, wherein, Fowler says, “their whole course, as seen by their depositions, discloses much malignancy.”
Upham has told us that these meetings were held “at Mr. Parris’s house,” and that they occurred within the space of “about two months ... during the winter of 1691 and 1692.” Drake found no statement as to “how frequent they had these meetings,” and Fowler finds in them “the germ ... of the delusion.” We have found no mention at all of this circle in the more ancient records and accounts, and not one of the authors named makes mention of the source of his information. Those men, two of whom are our personal acquaintances and friends, would not state anything which they did not believe to be true. We therefore shall not gainsay their allegations. Still, we feel privileged to doubt whether their uncertain number of meetings during the short space of two winter months, held at the minister’s own house, and under an eye as vigilant as that of Mr. Parris, could have furnished those girls with opportunity to learn very much in any arts whose practice would not receive the approbation of the Rev. Master of the house—not much could they there of themselves learn, at their few meetings in two months, of the anti-Christian arts of “palmistry ... and fortune-telling;” not much could they then and there accomplish in the way “of becoming,” by their voluntary efforts, “experts in the wonders of necromancy, magic, and Spiritualism.”
The general purpose of any stated meetings “at Mr. Parris’s house,” naturally and almost necessarily had his approbation; and the presumption from his general character is, that he was neither the good-natured indolent man who let others take their own course, however wayward, nor the absent-minded one whom children or even bright adults could easily and repeatedly deceive and hoodwink. The probability seems excessively small that such a one as he would permit repeated gatherings under his own roof for the special purpose of acquiring knowledge of and skill in practicing tabooed arts. Whatever their authority for it, the writers referred to imply that the members of a circle of girls and misses, meeting statedly “at Mr. Parris’s house,” there very expeditiously qualified themselves to become not only most efficient actors of long-continued dissimulation, imposture, cunning, devilish trickery, and fiendish malice, but also to be bona fide concoctors and successful executors of vastly complicated, deep, and broad schemes of hellish outrages upon parents, neighbors, and the country.
Wiser heads and greater powers than those girls possessed were manifested by the acts they seemed to perform. In a literary sense they were uncultured; but they, doubtless, had been subject to as good domestic, social, moral, and religious teachings and example as existed in any community. The literary deficiencies of the girls are indicated in the following extracts:—
Drake says, “They were generally very ignorant, for out of the eight but two could write their names. Such were the characters which set in motion that stupendous tragedy which ended in blood and ruin.” In vol. i. p. 486, Upham says, “How those young country girls, some of them mere children, most of them wholly illiterate, could have become familiar with such fancies to such an extent, is truly surprising.... In the Salem witchcraft proceedings, the superstition of the middle ages was embodied in real action. All its extravagances, absurdities, and monstrosities appear in their application to human experience.”
Such, according to their own concessions, was the feebleness of the agents whom the historians credited with performances which seem superhuman, and required for their production intellect and forces above what any community has often witnessed. Notwithstanding the inherent and insuperable incompetency of such persons to voluntarily devise and perform what has been ascribed to them, those females have been earnestly set forth as the actual and almost impromptu devisers and enactors of as intricate and effective a scheme for inflicting tortures and misery upon a vast multitude of human beings as has rarely been found in the annals of the race. If it be admitted that they, through frequent meetings at the parsonage, became fitted to conjure up and control the devastating monster that had his lair and foraging-grounds at Salem Village, the presumption amounts closely to certainty that those gatherings were ostensibly held for some laudable object. Meetings for some purpose may possibly have been held when and where the historians assume them to have occurred. But if so, it is our privilege to assume the possibility that the meetings were availed of by unseen intelligences of some grade, for developing into facile mediums such members of the circle as were constitutionally impressible and controllable by spirits; and, if so, the meetings may have become productive of results widely different from any contemplated by either the members themselves or the master of the house in which they met.
In his general history of Salem Village, introductory to that of its witchcraft, Upham, giving us the geographical positions of their several residences, and also their relations and positions in domestic life, furnishes ample grounds for very strong presumption that frequent attendance upon sportive meetings at the parsonage must have been so inconvenient and onerous to several of those girls, that they would not have been present many times in the short space of two months. Ann Putnam, a sensitive girl only twelve years old, and Mercy Lewis, a servant girl, or “the maid,” in the family of Ann’s father, two of the most efficient pupils in that necromantic school, resided together in a home situated not less than two and a half miles distant, in a north-westerly direction from the specified place of the meetings. Elizabeth Hubbard, an important member, lived about the same distance off, on a different road at the east. On a still different road, and equally as far away at the south-east, resided Sarah Churchill; and quite as remote, at the south, was the home of Mary Warren; and the last two must take divergent roads when they had gone only a little more than half way home. Each one of these five was very conspicuous amid the ostensible accusers, and the genuinely “afflicted ones.” Excepting Ann Putnam, each was old enough to be an efficient helper in household labors, and each, unless we except Elizabeth Hubbard,—and such exception is hardly needful, because, though a niece of his wife, she is mentioned as Dr. Griggs’s “maid,” which probably implies that she was compensated for services she rendered,—excepting Ann Putnam, each of them was “out at service.”