We return to little Dorcas Good. The creed devil-ward had hoodwinked all eyes. All things were in a terrific and bewildering whirl. Calm reflection and deliberate reasoning upon anything new were impossible. If perchance a mind asked itself whether an infant was competent to bargain with the devil and thence become a witch, it had no time to respond to its own inquiry. In open court, mysterious bitings were perpetrated by the teeth of this little girl, because the marks fitted her set and none other. The marks were made by the accused girl’s teeth. Ocular demonstration, therefore, was proving her to be the devil’s instrument; for otherwise she could not invisibly bite, nor could her teeth be made to bite, those who were off beyond her reach.
Standing upon what we said in the last chapter relating to the passing of hurts through the spirit to its outer body, we hold that spirits may have so applied the spirit teeth of little Dorcas to the spirit limbs of the afflicted girls, as to have left the marks of her teeth upon their flesh.
Woefully did the creed of that time not only permit, but call for the arrest of that infantile girl, solely because, under the operation of natural laws of generation, she inherited properties or capabilities which rendered her, from the time when she was conceived, ever onward, very susceptible to psychological influences. The judges, observing what were but legitimate and necessary outworkings of her inborn properties, being ignorant of their true source and nature, deemed them such a crime that the court sent her to Boston jail a prisoner, there to keep company with the mother from whom her peculiar properties had been derived, by whose milk they had been nourished, and in whose magnetisms they had unfolded. The present century is learning facts which teach that inborn properties and susceptibilities, and not compacts with the devil, constitute witches—some of whom are very lovely. An infantile witch is no great marvel now. Such can be found in many a family, “through whose lips angels speak” to-day, as they did through Emanuel Swedenborg’s when but a child, and who, born in January, 1688, was precisely a contemporary of Dorcas Good.
Sarah Osburn
was companion prisoner of Sarah Good and Tituba on the memorable first week in March, 1692. Thirty years before, she had been married to Thomas Prince, and at the time of her arrest was wife of Alexander Osburn; consequently she was well advanced in years. She also had long been an invalid, confined during long periods to her bed. Her worldly circumstances were comfortable—she and her family were neither poor nor rich—were neither very low nor very high on the social scale. But she had heard words coming forth from unseen lips. And on February 25, her apparition appeared to and annoyed Ann Putnam. Nothing has been noticed in the records which indicates that Ann ever spoke of any perceptions by her inner senses prior to that date, or that any member of the circle, excepting Tituba, preceded Ann in having opened vision. The latter saw “the tall man, with white hair and serge coat,” as early as January 15. But Tituba’s voice, had she have spoken, would have been powerless. Ann’s position in society was high; she belonged to a family of wealth, culture, influence, and high respectability. Her mystical words were potent. In four days subsequent to her first reported vision of apparitions, three women were under arrest for witchcraft, and Ann’s father was one of the very efficient advocates of prosecutions for that crime. Feeble, “bed-ridden” Sarah Osburn, of whom Upham speaks as one whose “broken and disordered mind was essentially truthful and innocent,” and whose residence was at least a mile and a half north from Mr. Parris’s home, and quite distant east from Ann’s, on a road not likely to be often traveled by her, was among the marked and blasted three. Why? None now, perhaps, can tell with certainty. Probabilities alone can be adduced. Our supposition is, that at the moment when Ann’s keen and far-sweeping inner sight was opened, and spirit substance, instead of material light, became her medium of vision, the most brilliant objects to meet her gaze, in all the region far around, would be one or more of the mediumistically unfolded persons dwelling there. From those among that class whose systems were fountains of emanations which at the time impinged upon her sensibilities, and did not harmoniously coalesce with her elements, and therefore acted as quasi acids upon her alkalies, or as alkalies upon her acids, produced painful effervescences which might ensue naturally, apart from the aid of any manipulating intelligence; or, if some intelligent being were observant of the currents and conditions of spirit magnetisms or forces then, and disposed to either intensify, abate, or modify their natural action, he might do so, and also could manipulate them to furtherance of his own ends, whether beneficent or malignant. Then and there, even high benevolence in one whose vision swept the far future, might take such primal steps as short-sighted mortals must look upon as necessarily altogether harmful in both immediate and remote results.
Such natural laws as reign supreme in spirit-realms may have led to the selection of secluded, inoffensive, “essentially truthful, and innocent” Sarah Osburn, as one of the tormentors of the girls, who were either schooled in magic by their own elected study and practice of it, or were constitutionally fitted for fitful enfranchisement of their inner perceptive organs while yet dwellers in their mortal forms, and whose bodies could become tools for other minds to use. If she was simply the voluntary actor out of her own “cunning or imposture,” little Ann Putnam, twelve years old, brightest among the bright, and member of one of the most intelligent and religious families of the Village, she also must have been herself a devil, and so devilishly a devil, that even Cloven-foot might feel it a duty to pass his scepter into her hands. But grant that she was a medium through whose form other minds and wills could act, as she in fact was, and then we can regard her physical form as simply an instrument through which an intelligence other than herself manifested action to human senses; and thus we can deem her guiltless, whatever shall be our judgment of the intruding performer upon her “harp of a thousand strings.”
Parts of the testimony in the case of Mrs. Osburn reveal her possession of mediumistic susceptibilities. As with Joan of Arc and many others, so with this woman; the inner ear could hear voices from some source impalpable by external senses.
“(It was said by some in the meeting-house that she had said that she would never be tied to that lying spirit any more.)
“Q. ‘What lying spirit is this? Hath the devil ever deceived you and been false to you?’