To the pastor’s house (as he wrote, “When these calamities first began, which was at my house”) the village maidens, by surreption, went under the tuition of Tituba. Those of us who have some remembrance of the rise of spiritualism, the phenomenon of table-tipping, and the slightly more refined practice of the élite with scribbling planchet, can picture in some degree Tituba’s pupils and how they got there. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: FIRST CHURCH EDIFICE AND PARSONAGE DANVERS HIGHLANDS ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Of those pupils (“children,” as the court called them) two were of the pastor’s family—Ann Williams, aged eleven, and his daughter, whom he quickly sent away; Ann Putnam, daughter of Ann and Sergeant Thomas, a precocious miss of only twelve, who easily became a leader; Mary Warren, domestic in John Proctor’s family, aged twenty; Susannah Sheldon and Elizabeth Booth, neighbors and eighteen; Sarah Churchill, helper to George Jacobs, senior; Elizabeth Hubbard, Mercy Lewis, former domestic for Mrs. Burroughs, and Mary Walcott, daughter of Deacon Jonathan, each of them eighteen. Had those “children,” the pioneers of the awfully fatal mischief, been scourged at the whipping post, “Or had been beaten till they’d know What wood the cudgel’s of by the blow,” if needful, and John and his Tituba been returned to their native soil, no doubt the horrible tragedy would have been averted. The Shafflin girl in Peabody was cured “when a timely whipping brought her to her senses.” So was Dinah Sylvester, of Mansfield, when given her choice of a whipping or owning and abandoning her error. CASTING OUT DEVILS “STILL THE WONDER GREW” But, instead, Mr. Parris, in fashion of the vaunted prowess of Cotton Mather and other pedantic, astute, aspiring ministers, to show their efficiency in “casting out devils,” called in the clergy, the deacons, and the elders, and held, February 11th, a day of fasting and prayer. “And still the wonder grew.” A PORTENTOUS LEAP DAY “THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH” It was high time, and some leading citizens took the initiative. A complaint was lodged against Tituba Feb. 25, 1692. The first warrants were issued the 29th, the leap day of the year, and Sarah Good, Sarah Osbun, and Tituba Indian were apprehended. They were examined March 1st and ordered to jail in Boston, to await the action of the higher court.