At this point, if Mr. Parris, the ministers, and magistrates had done their duty, the mischief might have been stopped.  The girls ought to have been rebuked for their dangerous and forbidden sorceries and divinations, their meetings broken up, and all such tamperings with alleged supernaturalism and spiritualism frowned down.  Instead of this, the neighboring ministers were summoned to meet at Mr. Parris’s house to witness the extraordinary doings of the girls, and all they did was to indorse, and pray over, them.  Countenance was thus given to their pretensions, and the public confidence in the reality of their statements established.  Magistrates from the town, church-members, leading people, and people of all sorts, flocked to witness the awful power of Satan, as displayed in the tortures and contortions of the “afflicted children;” who became objects of wonder, so far as their feats were regarded, and of pity in view of their agonies and convulsions.

The aspect of the evidence rather favors the supposition, that the girls originally had no design of accusing, or bringing injury upon, any one.  But the ministers at Parris’s house, physicians and others, began the work of destruction by pronouncing the opinion that they were bewitched.  This carried with it, according to the received doctrine, a conviction that there were witches about; for the Devil could not act except through the instrumentality of beings in confederacy with him.  Immediately, the girls were beset by everybody to say who it was that bewitched them.  Yielding to this pressure, they first cried out upon such persons as might have been most naturally suggested to them,—­Sarah Good, apparently without a regular home, and wandering with her children from house to house for shelter and relief; Sarah Osburn, a melancholy, broken-minded, bed-ridden person; and Tituba, a slave, probably of mixed African and Indian blood.  At the examination of these persons, the girls were first brought before the public, and the awful power in their hands revealed to them.  The success with which they acted their parts; the novelty of the scene; the ceremonials of the occasion, the magistrates in their imposing dignity and authority, the trappings of the marshal and his officers, the forms of proceeding,—­all which they had never seen before; the notice taken of them; the importance attached to them; invested the affair with a strange fascination in their eyes, and awakened a new class of sentiments and ideas in their minds.  A love of distinction and notoriety, and the several passions that are gratified by the expression by others of sympathy, wonder, and admiration, were brought into play.  The fact that all eyes were upon them, with the special notice of the magistrates, and the entire confidence with which their statements were received, flattered and beguiled them.  A fearful responsibility had been assumed, and they were irretrievably committed to their position.  While they adhered to that