charged as a principal culprit in the Salem witchcraft.  The accusing girls were evidently delighted to get hold of such a notable and doughty character; and their tongues were released, on the occasion, from all restraints of decorum and decency.  When the ring was formed around him “in the street,” in front of Deacon Ingersoll’s door, his sword unbuckled from his side, and such foul and vulgar aspersions cast upon his good name, he felt, no doubt, that it would have been better to have fallen into the hands of savages of the wilderness or pirates on the sea, than of the crowd of audacious girls that hustled him about in Salem Village.  It was a relief to his wounded honor, and gave leisure for the workings of his indignant resentment, to escape from them into Boston jail.  Not only his old shipmate, Bartholomew Gedney, but, as will be seen, the learned attorney-general, who was present, and witnessed the whole affair, was fully convinced of his guilt.

The wife of an honest and worthy man in Andover was sick of a fever.  After all the usual means had failed to check the symptoms of her disease, the idea became prevalent that she was suffering under an “evil hand.”  The husband, pursuant of the advice of friends, posted down to Salem Village to ascertain from the afflicted girls who was bewitching his wife.  Two of them returned with him to Andover.  Never did a place receive such fatal visitors.  The Grecian horse did not bring greater consternation to ancient Ilium.  Immediately after their arrival, they succeeded in getting more than fifty of the inhabitants into prison, several of whom were hanged.  A perfect panic swept like a hurricane over the place.  The idea seized all minds, as Hutchinson expresses it, that the only “way to prevent an accusation was to become an accuser.”—­“The number of the afflicted increased every day, and the number of the accused in proportion.”  In this state of things, such a great accession being made to the ranks of the confessing witches, the power of the delusion became irresistibly strengthened.  Mr. Dudley Bradstreet, the magistrate of the place, after having committed about forty persons to jail, concluded he had done enough, and declined to arrest any more.  The consequence was that he and his wife were cried out upon, and they had to fly for their lives.  They accused his brother, John Bradstreet, with having “afflicted” a dog.  Bradstreet escaped by flight.  The dog was executed.  The number of persons who had publicly confessed that they had entered into a league with Satan, and exercised the diabolical power thus acquired, to the injury, torment, and death of innocent parties, produced a profound effect upon the public mind.  At the same time, the accusers had everywhere increased in number, owing to the inflamed state of imagination universally prevalent which ascribed all ailments or diseases to the agency of witches, to a mere love of notoriety and a passion for general sympathy, to a desire to be secure against the charge of bewitching