The Salem Witchcraft, the Planchette Mystery, and Modern Spiritualism: With Dr. Doddridge's DreamStowe, Harriet Beecher
History
The Salem Witchcraft, the Planchette Mystery, and Modern Spiritualism: With Dr. Doddridge's Dream
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Spiritualism; Upham, Charles Wentworth, 1802-1875. Salem witchcraft; Witchcraft -- Massachusetts -- Salem
Mr. Parris' parsonage soon went to ruin, as did some of the dwellings
of the "afflicted" children, who learned and practiced certain things
in his house which he afterward pronounced to be arts of Satan, and
declared to have been pursued without his knowledge and with the
cognizance of only his servants (John and Tituba, the Indian and the
negress). Barn, and well, and garden disappeared in a sorry tract of
rough ground, and the dwelling became a mere handful of broken bricks.
The narrative of the pastor's struggles and devices to retain his pulpit
is very interesting; but they are not related to our object here; and
all we need say is, that three sons and sons-in-law of Mrs. Nurse
measured their strength against his, and, without having said an
intemperate or superfluous word, or swerved from the strictest rules of
congregational action, sent him out of the parish. He finally opined
that "evil angels" had been permitted to tempt him and his coadjutors on
either hand; he admitted that some mistakes had been made; and, said
he, "I do humbly own this day, before the Lord and his people, that God
has been righteously spitting in my face; and I desire to lie low under
all this reproach," etc.; but the remonstrants could not again sit
under his ministry, and his brethren in the Province did not pretend to
exculpate him altogether. He buried his wife--against whom no record
remains--and departed with his children, the eldest of whom, the
playfellow of the "afflicted" children, he had sent away before she
had taken harm in the "circle." He drifted from one small outlying
congregation to another, neglected and poor, restless and untamed,
though mortified, till he died in 1720. Mr. Noyes died somewhat earlier.
He is believed not to have undergone much change, as to either his views
or his temper. He was a kind-hearted and amiable man when nothing came
in the way; but he could hold no terms with Satan; and in this he
insisted to the last that he was right.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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