and the entire muscular and nervous organization of their bodies; so that they could at will, and on the instant, go into fits and convulsions, swoon and fall to the floor, put their frames into strange contortions, bring the blood to the face, and send it back again.  They could be deadly pale at one moment, at the next flushed; their hands would be clenched and held together as with a vice; their limbs stiff and rigid or wholly relaxed; their teeth would be set; they would go through the paroxysms of choking and strangulation, and gasp for breath, bringing froth and blood from the mouth; they would utter all sorts of screams in unearthly tones; their eyes remain fixed, sometimes bereft of all light and expression, cold and stony, and sometimes kindled into flames of passion; they would pass into the state of somnambulism, without aim or conscious direction in their movements, looking at some point, where was no apparent object of vision, with a wild, unmeaning glare.  There are some indications that they had acquired the art of ventriloquism; or they so wrought upon the imaginations of the beholders, that the sounds of the motions and voices of invisible beings were believed to be heard.  They would start, tremble, and be pallid before apparitions, seen, of course, only by themselves; but their acting was so perfect that all present thought they saw them too.  They would address and hold colloquy with spectres and ghosts; and the responses of the unseen beings would be audible to the fancy of the bewildered crowd.  They would follow with their eyes the airy visions, so that others imagined they also beheld them.  This was surely a high dramatic achievement.  Their representations of pain, and every form and all the signs and marks of bodily suffering,—­as in the case of Ann Putnam’s arm, and the indentations of teeth on the flesh in many instances,—­utterly deceived everybody; and there were men present who could not easily have been imposed upon.  The Attorney-general was a barrister fresh from Inns of Court in London.  Deodat Lawson had seen something of the world; so had Joseph Herrick.  Joseph Hutchinson was a sharp, stern, and sceptical observer.  John Putnam was a man of great practical force and discrimination; so was his brother Nathaniel, and others of the village.  Besides, there were many from Boston and elsewhere competent to detect a trick; but none could discover any imposture in the girls.  Sarah Nurse swore that she saw Goody Bibber cheat in the matter of the pins; but Bibber did not belong to the village, and was a bungling interloper.  The accusing girls showed extraordinary skill, ingenuity, and fancy in inventing the stories to which they testified, and seemed to have been familiar with the imagery which belonged to the literature of demonology.  This has led some to suppose that they must have had access to books treating the subject.  Our fathers abhorred, with a perfect hatred, all theatrical exhibitions.  It would have filled them with horror to propose going to a play.  But unwittingly, week after week, month in and month out, ministers, deacons, brethren, and sisters of the church rushed to Nathaniel Ingersoll’s, to the village and town meeting-houses, and to Thomas Beadle’s Globe Tavern, and gazed with wonder, awe, and admiration upon acting such as has seldom been surpassed on the boards of any theatre, high or low, ancient or modern.