The general purpose of any stated meetings "at Mr. Parris's house," naturally and almost necessarily had his approbation; and the presumption from his general character is, that he was neither the good-natured indolent man who let others take their own course, however wayward, nor the absent-minded one whom children or even bright adults could easily and repeatedly deceive and hoodwink. The probability seems excessively small that such a one as he would permit repeated gatherings under his own roof for the special purpose of acquiring knowledge of and skill in practicing tabooed arts. Whatever their authority for it, the writers referred to imply that the members of a circle of girls and misses, meeting statedly "_at Mr. Parris's house_," there very expeditiously qualified themselves to become not only most efficient actors of long-continued dissimulation, imposture, cunning, devilish trickery, and fiendish malice, but also to be _bona fide_ concoctors and successful executors of vastly complicated, deep, and broad schemes of hellish outrages upon parents, neighbors, and the country. Wiser heads and greater powers than those girls possessed were manifested by the acts they _seemed_ to perform. In a literary sense they were uncultured; but they, doubtless, had been subject to as good domestic, social, moral, and religious teachings and example as existed in any community. The literary deficiencies of the girls are indicated in the following extracts:-- Drake says, "They were generally very ignorant, for out of the eight but two could write their names. Such were the characters which set in motion that stupendous tragedy which ended in blood and ruin." In vol. i. p. 486, Upham says, "How those young country girls, some of them mere children, most of them wholly illiterate, could have become familiar with such fancies to such an extent, is truly surprising.... In the Salem witchcraft proceedings, the superstition of the middle ages was embodied in real action. All its extravagances, absurdities, and monstrosities appear in their application to human experience."