rage in their afflicted and tortured persons.  A few, very few, distrusted; but the great majority, ninety-nine in a hundred of all the people, were completely swept into the torrent.  Nathaniel Putnam and Nathaniel Ingersoll were entirely deluded, and continued so to the end.  Even Joseph Hutchinson was, for a while, carried away.  The physicians had all given their opinion that the girls were suffering from an “evil hand.”  The neighboring ministers, after a day’s fasting and prayer, and a scrutinizing inspection of the condition of the afflicted children, had given it, as the result of their most solemn judgment, that it was a case of witchcraft.  Persons from the neighboring towns had come to the place, and with their own eyes received demonstration of the same fact.  Mr. Parris made it the topic of his public prayers and preaching.  The girls, Sunday after Sunday, were under the malign influence, to the disturbance and affrightment of the congregation.  In all companies, in all families, all the day long, the sufferings and distraction occurring in the houses of Mr. Parris, Thomas Putnam, and others, and in the meeting-house, were topics of excited conversation; and every voice was loud in demanding, every mind earnest to ascertain, who were the persons, in confederacy with the Devil, thus torturing, pinching, convulsing, and bringing to the last extremities of mortal agony, these afflicted girls.  Every one felt, that, if the guilty authors of the mischief could not be discovered, and put out of the way, no one was safe for a moment.  At length, when the girls cried out upon Good, Osburn, and Tituba, there was a general sense of satisfaction and relief.  It was thought that Satan’s power might be checked.  The selection of the first victims was well made.  They were just the kind of persons whom the public prejudice and credulity were prepared to suspect and condemn.  Their examination was looked for with the utmost interest, and all flocked to witness the proceedings.

In considering the state of mind of the people, as they crowded into and around the old meeting-house, we can have no difficulty in realizing the tremendous effects of what there occurred.  It was felt that then, on that spot, the most momentous crisis in the world’s history had come.  A crime, in comparison with which all other crimes sink out of notice, was being notoriously and defiantly committed in their midst.  The great enemy of God and man was let loose among them.  What had filled the hearts of mankind for ages, the world over, with dread apprehension, was come to pass; and in that village the great battle, on whose issue the preservation of the kingdom of the Lord on the earth was suspended, had begun.  Indeed, no language, no imagery, no conception of ours, can adequately express the feeling of awful and terrible solemnity with which all were overwhelmed.  No body of men ever convened in a more highly wrought state of excitement than pervaded that assembly, when