“GEORGE JACOBS’S ANSWER TO NATHANIEL PUTNAM’S COMPLAINT.—­That I did follow some horses in our enclosure on the Royal Side, where they were trespassing upon us; that the end of my following them was to take them; but, rather than they would be taken, they took the water, and I did follow them no further; but straightway they turned ashore, and I did run to take them as they came out of the water, but could not:  and I can truly take my oath that since that time I did never follow any horses or mares; and I hope my own oath will clear me.”

The result of his attempt to drive off the horses was, that several valuable animals were drowned.  Their owner, Nathaniel Putnam, brought an action; but he could not recover damages.  The horses were evidently trespassing, and the Court did not seem to regard Jacobs’s conduct as a heinous matter.  It is not to be supposed, that Nathaniel Putnam harbored sentiments of revenge or resentment for eighteen years, or had any hand in prosecuting Jacobs in 1692.  There is every indication that he did not sympathize in the violent passions which raged on that occasion, although he was much under the power of the delusion.  But the affair of drowning the horses was probably for a long time a topic of gossip, and may have given to the author of the catastrophe a notoriety which nearly cost him his life.

The account that has been given of the elements of the population of the Salem Farms or Village, shows that, while there were the usual varieties entering into the composition of all communities, it is wholly inadmissible to suppose that the witchcraft delusion took place there because it was the scene of greater ignorance or stupidity or barbarism than prevailed elsewhere.  This will be made more apparent still by some general views of the state of society and manners.  The people of a remote age are in general only regarded as they are seen through prominent occurrences and public movements.  These constitute the ordinary materials of history.  Dynasties, reigns of kings, armies, legislative proceedings, large ecclesiastical synods, dogmatic creeds, and the like, are, as a general thing, about all we know of the past.  Portraits of individuals appear here and there; but, separated from the ordinary life of the times, they cannot be fairly or fully appreciated.  The public life of the past is but the outline, or, more strictly speaking, the mere skeleton, of humanity.  To fill up the outline, to clothe the skeleton with elastic nerves and warm flesh, and quicken it with a vital circulation, we must get at the domestic, social, familiar, and ordinary experience of individuals and private persons; we must obtain a view of the popular customs and the daily routine of life.  In this way only can history fulfil its office in making the past present.