SALEM WITCHCRAFT (1692).--A strange delusion known as the Salem witchcraft, produced the most intense excitement. The children of Mr. Parris, a minister near Salem, performed pranks which could be explained only by supposing that they were under Satanic influence. Every effort was made to discover who had bewitched them. An Indian servant was flogged until she admitted herself to be guilty. Soon others were affected, and the terrible mania spread rapidly. Committees of examination were appointed and courts of trial convened. The most improbable stories were credited. To express a doubt of witchcraft was to indicate one's own alliance with the evil spirit. Persons of the highest respectability, clergymen, magistrates, and even the governor's wife were implicated. At last, after fifty-five persons had been tortured and twenty hung, the people awoke to their folly. [Footnote: A belief in witchcraft was at that time universal. Sir Matthew Hale, one of the most enlightened judges of England, repeatedly tried and condemned persons accused of witchcraft. Blackstone himself, at a later day, declared that to deny witchcraft was to deny Revelation. Cotton Mather, the most prominent minister of the colony, was active in the rooting out of this supposed crime. He published a book full of the most ridiculous witch stories. One judge, who engaged in this persecution, was afterward so deeply penitent that he observed a day of fasting in each year, and on the day of general fast rose in his place in the Old South Church at Boston, and in the presence of the congregation handed to the pulpit a written confession acknowledging his error, and praying for forgiveness.] * * * * * MAINE AND NEW HAMPSHIRE. THESE COLONIES were so intimately united with Massachusetts that they have almost a common history. Gorges (gor-jez) and Mason, about two years after the landing of the Pilgrims, obtained from the Council for New England the grant of a large tract of land which lay between the Merrimac and Kennebec Rivers. They established some small fishing stations near Portsmouth and at Dover. This patent being afterward dissolved, Mason took the country lying west of the Piscataqua, and named it New Hampshire; Gorges took that lying east, and termed it the province of Maine. [Footnote: To distinguish it from the islands along the coast, this country had been called the Mayne (main) land, which perhaps gave rise to its present name. New Hampshire was so called from Hampshire in England, Mason's home. The settlers of New Hampshire were long vexed with suits brought by the men into whose hands Mason's grant had fallen.]