Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II: With an Account of Salem Village and a History of Opinions on Witchcraft and Kindred SubjectsUpham, Charles Wentworth
History
Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II: With an Account of Salem Village and a History of Opinions on Witchcraft and Kindred Subjects
Upham, Charles Wentworth
Salem (Mass.) -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775; Witchcraft -- Massachusetts -- Salem -- History -- 17th century
After some time, Cotton Mather took her into his own family, to see
whether he could not exorcise her.[i.456] His account of her conduct,
while there, is highly amusing for its credulous simplicity. The
cunning and ingenious child seems to have taken great delight in
perplexing and playing off her tricks upon the learned man. Once he
wished to say something in her presence, to a third person, which he
did not intend she should understand. He accordingly spoke in Latin.
But she had penetration enough to conjecture what he had said: he was
amazed. He then tried Greek: she was equally successful. He next spoke
in Hebrew: she instantly detected the meaning. At last he resorted to
the Indian language, and that she pretended not to know. He drew the
conclusion that the evil being with whom she was in compact was
acquainted familiarly with the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, but not with
the Indian tongue.
It is curious to notice how adroitly she fell into the line of his
prejudices. He handed her a book written by a Quaker, to which sect it
is well known he was violently opposed: she would read it off with
great ease, rapidity, and pleasure. A book written against the Quakers
she could not read at all. She could read Popish books, but could not
decipher a syllable of the Assembly's Catechism. Dr. Mather was
earnestly opposed to the order and liturgy of the Church of England.
The artful little girl worked with great success upon this prejudice.
She pretended to be very fond of the Book of Common Prayer, and called
it her Bible. It would relieve her of her sufferings, in a moment, to
put it into her hands. While she could[i.457] not read a word of the
Scriptures in the Bible, she could read them very easily in the
Prayer-book; but she could not read the Lord's Prayer even in this her
favorite volume. All these things went far to strengthen the conviction
of Dr. Mather that she was in league with the Devil; for this was the
only explanation that could be given to satisfy his mind of her
partiality to the productions of Quakers, Catholics, and Episcopalians,
and her aversion to the Bible and the Catechism.
She exhibited the most exquisite ingenuity in beguiling Dr. Mather by
the force of a charm, the power of which he could not resist for a
moment,—flattery. He thus describes, with a complacency but thinly
concealed under the veil of affected modesty, the part she played, in
order to give the impression—which it was the great object of his
ambition to make upon the public mind—that the Devil stood in special
fear of his presence:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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