Calef imputes to her a subsequent position which may be so construed as to indicate that she declined to stand by her previous statements. He says, “her master refused to pay her” jail “fees,” and thus liberate her from prison, “unless she would stand to what she had said.” In that quotation is involved all that we find in the older records which wears even a semblance of impeaching her testimony, or suggests any reason why we should distrust its intentional accuracy in any particular. The master did not pay the fees. She “lay in jail thirteen months, and was then sold to pay her prison charges.” (Drake. Annals, 190.) But what did her master require her to “stand to”? Calef says he beat her “to make her confess, and accuse [such as he called] her sister witches; and that whatsoever she did by way of confessing or accusing others, was the effect of such usage.” What she may have confessed to having done, or what she may have accused others of doing, at other times than when she was under examination, we do not know. Her statements then, as she then meant, and as we now understand them, fell far short of confessing familiarity with the devil, or of laying that crime to any others; therefore she neither made herself nor her companions witches. Still her master, no doubt, as did the recorder Ezekiel Cheever and the court, understood her as meaning devil when she said “the man,” though she herself did not so mean. Even Corwin, apparently, as judge, put the prevalent construction upon her words, though his fidelity as a recorder caused him to write “the man” when she said “the man.” This general habit of understanding devil, when some other personage was both named and meant, enables us to see that there may have been subsequent dispute between her and her master as to her real meaning, and that he made it a condition for her liberation that she should put his construction upon what she had said, rather than her own. It is an open question whether she ever refused to stand by her own meaning, or the true meaning of her own words. Perhaps she did refuse to stand by construction which the faith and habit of the day led most minds to put upon her words unjustifiably; but we doubt whether she refused to stand by the literal and intended meaning of what she had said.
Poor Tituba! Because of your forced connection with a scheme and works which entirely baffled your comprehension, because of your forced disclosure of things you had witnessed and experienced behind the vail of flesh, your own body was imprisoned thirteen months, and two innocent women were doomed to death. Guileless and innocent, so far as connected with witchcraft, you was borne on by mighty forces to seem to act voluntarily, though in fact unwillingly and perforce, a prominent part in one of the most fearful scenes in human history. Man’s ignorance of spiritual agents and forces in your day, together with the prevalent hallucination devil-ward, made you a humble and pitiable martyr to simple truth-telling. Some seeds in your simple story now gathered from out the chaff that has covered them for nine-score years, may soon be scattered over New England soil, from which, we trust, you above, and men below, may gather wholesome fruits of justice and truth.
Sarah Good.
Tituba’s sister witch, as that slave’s master called Sarah Good, may not have been regarded in her generation as possessor of any large amount of such qualities as her name is commonly used to designate. Still her neighbors doomed her to lasting fame by selecting her as the first person to be put under examination on suspicion of being a producer of Salem witchcraft. As a facile tool in supernal hands she may have been, and probably was, good in quality as well as name.
Indications that her spirit-form was susceptible of either easy elimination or wide radiations from its material counterpart, are contained in the facts that on January 20, 1692, the inner eye of Tituba saw this Sarah; on February 25, Ann Putnam, and on the 28th, Elizabeth Hubbard saw her apparition, or her spirit-form.
Man’s “natural” or physical optics do not discern a spirit. Spirit, when not materialized, is discernible only by our inner or spirit-eyes; spirit is “spiritually discerned.” The spirit forms, however, of embodied, living men and women, are not all equally discernible by clairvoyants. Generally, only such among flesh-clad spirits are readily seen by inner optics as are able to slip, or are liable to be drawn, or to radiate out, from one’s ordinary integuments of flesh, or, at least, those only whose integuments are transparent of spirit-light. Only few, relatively, can either see or be seen readily and frequently by spiritual eyes. Eagles exist as well as owls and bats. And clear perception of objects by the former amid light that blinds the latter, is no proof either that the vision of eagles is perverted, or that the objects they behold are but creatures of fancy.
Mediumistic Sarah Good, because she was highly mediumistic, would naturally be a brilliant and attractive object in the field of vision which the inner eyes of other mediumistic ones might be able and attracted to survey. Distance is of little or no account in connection with vision by the inner eye. Persons and objects, scores and hundreds of miles away, are practically near to the inner optics. Spirit-forms are, perhaps, thought-forms, and, like thought, can traverse oceans and continents in the twinkling of an eye.
It is not our purpose to multiply pages by largely quoting minute accounts of what transpired at the examinations and trials of those who were suspected of witchcraft; and yet it may be well to present rather fully one sample of the proceedings of the courts. This first case which the civil authorities gave attention to may serve that purpose as well as any other.
The arrest of Sarah Good was made February 29, and on the next day, Tuesday, March 1, 1692, her examination was commenced, and was continued, in connection with that of Sarah Osburn and Tituba, through the remainder of that week. On Monday, the 7th, these three were sent to jail in Boston. On the 30th of June Mrs. Good was put upon trial, which resulted in her conviction, and on the 19th of July she, together with others, was executed.