Mr. Parris apprehended that this extensive diabolism was inaugurated through the making of a peculiar cake by his Indian man John. Either a sneer or a smile will probably drape the reader's face when he perceives that a clergyman in a former age deemed it probable that a compound offensive to refined taste (a cake made of meal mixed with urine from the suffering children) was so appetizing to the devil that it drew him from his wonted distance into close affinity with mortal forms, and increased his power to afflict them. Perhaps that clergyman had read what the reader may peruse by turning to the concluding portion of chap. iv. of Ezekiel, where preparation of food was prescribed for that prophet's use while he was in process of being trained for pliancy under manipulations by some unseen intelligence--such preparation of food as was not less offensive than such a cake as John Indian furnished. We do not find a great producing cause of the _amazing feats_ where Mr. Parris did, and are not prepared to regard Mary Sibley's prescription as having been very efficacious. Still we might admit the possibility that the real author of the feats was present when John kneaded that cake, leavened it with supermundane yeast, and made use of it as an instrumentality for coming into closer contact than before with the human bodies from which part of the ingredients of the cake had been derived. Both spirits and unfolded mediums often either prescribe or apply--as Jesus did when he treated a blind patient by application of a plaster composed of his own spittle and street dust--things which mankind at large would regard as either offensive or inert. Human mediums may be, and the observations of thousands now living indicate that they often are, made to prepare strange compounds, and prescribe them for the sick, the suffering, and for unpliant mediums. Who was "my Indian man"? Yes; who that baker whose cake raised the devil, and caused apparitions to become exceeding plenty? Mr. Parris, prior to being a minister of the gospel, had been a merchant in Barbadoes, and at the commencement of the strange feats alluded to, had in his family some servants, whom he called Indians; but they probably were natives either of some one of the West India islands or of the neighboring coast of South America, whom he had brought thence, and who were, doubtless, by nature less firm and self-reliant than our northern Indians usually are. Two of these servants, or slaves, viz., John Indian, the cake-baker, and his wife, Tituba, were among the first, if they were not the very first, persons there to succumb, and yield subjection to the peculiar influences which developed the terrible events we are considering. Those two humble, ignorant, weak-minded slaves may have been, and we regard them as having been, though unintentionally and unconscious of it, very efficient aids in the outward manifestation of what their master properly termed "amazing feats."