Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern Spiritualism Part 7

Though perceiving the meagerness and improbability of Hutchinson's solution, Upham, ignoring what he avowed to be the only historical "clew we have" to a correct one, which led directly to the woman's own wit, was pleased to find the exciting cause of her persecution not in _her_, but in other people, and dogmatically said, "The _truth_ is, the tongue of slander was let loose against her." Such a.s.sumption--and it is bold a.s.sumption, even if it be in accordance with facts--fails--entirely fails--to meet the fair demands of our common-sense requirements. What started, and extended, and intensified that tongue if it did wag? If its utterances were _slanderous_, they were a mixture of _falsehood_ and _malice_. What _lies_ were or could be fabricated against such a woman, the nature of which the common sagacity of society there and then would not detect? What _lies_ which the truthfulness of society there and then would not decline to repeat against her? What malice against that lady of high connections could so pervade society there as to generate a public sentiment that demanded and obtained her life? The people of Boston were not wicked enough to let falsehood and malice triumph in their highest court of justice. Something different from _slander_ was needed to awaken and sustain the popular clamor against this woman, and to cause the court to pa.s.s sentence of death upon her. We granted to Upham the faculties of a fictionist, and he used them when he declared that "the truth is, the tongue of slander was let loose upon her." "The truth is," neither he nor any other one among us at this day, knows whether that woman was slandered or not. She may have been, but it is only matter of conjecture, and should not be put forth as _truth_. Something more than slander in its utmost expandings and accretions was needful to the tragic results which ensued.

We recur again to the only historical cause of excitement against this lady, viz., Norton's hint that she possessed such marvelous wit for guessing, as Upham supposes the people around her considered "proof positive of her being possessed, _by the aid of the devil_, of supernatural insight." That hint unlocks a door behind which may be found a more adequate and philosophical cause of her arraignment and condemnation than has. .h.i.therto been a.s.signed. Since many persons now possess, she too may have possessed const.i.tutional faculties, which, at times, enabled her to _sense_, comprehend, and enunciate facts and truths which it was impossible for her to learn by man's ordinary processes.

Admit simply that she may have possessed intuitive faculties which read the thoughts of others or sensed afar the spirit of sounds, and solution of all mysteries about her is made. Wide awake, keen-sighted, good people may have seen in her the exercise of such powers as were clearly, distinctly, and beyond all question, extraordinary,--yes, supermundane.

What then? Why, by all fair logic from Christendom's faith at that time, the devil must be her teacher, and she must be his covenanted servant.

Such a helper of Satan, however high in character or station, must be deprived of power to work for him. Very wonderful revelations, such as disclosures of the secret thoughts and private conversations of other and distant persons, being a few times repeated by her, what could people, true to their G.o.d and their creed, do less than demand her execution?

Nothing--nothing less. Their infatuated but sincere belief about the devil plainly and with mighty force called for her blood. And this not because of any crabbedness in her--not because of any lies about her--not because of malice toward her--not because of the tongue of slander--but because of facts, unquestionable facts, outwrought through her, which the tongue of truth might dutifully publish and republish throughout the town. The trouble, the murderous impulses, sprang from the _creed_, and especially from those parts of it which made any and all mysterious and disturbing outworkings devilish in their source, and which taught that the devil could act through no human beings but such as had made a voluntary compact to serve him. Those who had covenanted with him must die. Mrs. Hibbins was born with mediumistic faculties, and because of her legitimate use of these, the faith of her times conscientiously took her life.

It gladdens the heart to find a view which legitimately permits Mrs.

Hibbins to have been a bright, refined, high-toned, and most estimable lady; and at the same time lessens the blackness of the cloud which has long hung over her judges and executioners. They were not so weak and wicked as to doom one to die because of temper, nor so villainous as to slander away a lady's life. Stern religious adherence and application of an honest, though deluded _faith_, made them executioners of all such as had exhibited powers which in the dim light of their philosophy and science seemed supernatural. Their weakness consisted of such strong faith as could, and in emergencies must, put in abeyance the kindlier sentiments of their hearts. Their great infirmity, which was then a general one throughout Christendom, was solely infatuation _devil-ward_.

We charge our ancestors with _infatuation_. People in all ages and nations have, no doubt, been subject to its influence. Perhaps every individual man and woman is more or less swayed by it. Each one in respect to some things may act without his usual good judgment, and contrary to the dictates of reason. The people of Boston were obviously debarred, by their infatuation devil-ward, from perceiving that Mrs. Hibbins might have received extraordinary gifts from some other giver than the great evil devil. And is it _impossible_ that infatuation influenced her recent historian first to reject the historic wit, and subst.i.tute for it fancied slander, as cause for the excitement against her, and then put his subst.i.tution forth as the _truth_; though both common sense and sound philosophy see at a glance, first, that it is only a conjecture, and secondly, that it is entirely inadequate to produce the effects which it was fabricated to account for? In doing this _he_ seemingly acted without _his_ usual good judgment, and contrary to the appropriate dictates of his enlightened reason--was infatuated.

Both of the two historians above quoted, virtually a.s.sumed that there never occurred here any phenomena, either mental or physical, which were not wrought out by agents, forces, and faculties purely mundane. Therefore the facts of history necessarily pushed them up to make implied, and often explicit, allegation that whole communities of resolute, wide-awake, energetic people, were possessors of external senses which were pitifully and superlatively deludible--possessors of enormous general credulity--of perceptions and judgments woefully warped and benighted in matters generally, excepting only a few of their girls and old women, who manifested cunning and deviltry supreme in making high sport out of the weaknesses of their elders and betters. Having driven stakes beyond which nature and natural forces must not go under forfeiture of historic recognition, anything not explainable by forces recognized within those stakes, is accounted for by the sage exclamation, "But that was a time of great credulity;" or "in the blind infatuation of the time," things were thus and so. We are willing to grant the existence of much credulity and infatuation both of old and now, but are not willing to allow that the facts of seeing what some other persons have not seen, and knowing the existence and partial operations of some forces in nature which some people have not paid attention to, are proof of either "great credulity"

or "blind infatuation." Had the later historian been free from all infatuation, he could have learned from pa.s.sing developments that Mrs.

Hibbins probably, at times, was essentially a liberated spirit, hearing what Swedenborg calls "cogitatio loquens"--speaking thought--and that her repet.i.tion of what she thus learned took her life.

Hers was not a case of necessary spirit co-operation, was perhaps only one of uncommon liberation of the internal perceptive faculties. Because highly illumined, her brilliancy was judged to be diabolical, and therefore must be extinguished.

ANN COLE.

Manifestations differing widely from any noticed in the preceding cases, were observed in the presence of a Connecticut girl named Ann Cole.

American witchcraft history has transmitted no distinct account of the use of human organs of speech by intellect that was foreign to the legitimate owner of the vocals used, prior to the instance described by Hutchinson in the following extract. The history of Ann Cole involves all that we know of the Greensmiths, husband and wife, mentioned therein, and who were executed for witchcraft.

"In 1662, at Hartford, Conn., one Ann Cole, a young woman who lived next door to a Dutch family, and, no doubt, had learned something of the language, was supposed to be possessed with demons, who sometimes spoke Dutch, and sometimes English, and sometimes a language which n.o.body understood, and who held a conference with one another. Several ministers, who were present, took down the conference in writing, and the names of several persons mentioned in the course of the conference as actors or bearing parts in it; particularly a woman, then in prison upon suspicion of witchcraft, one Greensmith, who, upon examination, confessed, and appeared to be surprised at the discovery. She owned that she and the others named had been familiar with a demon, who had carnal knowledge of her; and although she had not made a formal covenant, yet she had promised to be ready at his call, and was to have had a high frolic at Christmas, when an agreement was to have been signed. Upon this confession she was executed, and two more of the company were condemned at the same time."

Hutchinson also credits to Goffe's diary the statement that "after one of the witches was hanged, the maid was well."

Another account of this Ann's case, furnished by an eye-witness and personal hearer when she was in her trances, has been transmitted. The writer of it promptly made, but afterward lost, minutes of what he heard from her lips, and about twenty years afterward wrote his remembrances of the manifestations, and forwarded the following account to Increase Mather:--

"Anno 1662. This Ann Cole (living in her father's family) was taken with strange fits wherein she (or rather the devil, as 'tis judged, making use of her lips) held a discourse for a considerable time. The general substance of it was to this purport, that a company of familiars of the evil one (who were named in the discourse that pa.s.sed from her) were contriving how to carry on their mischievous designs against some, and especially against her; mentioning sundry ways they would take to that end, as that they would afflict her body, spoil her name, hinder her marriage, &c.... The conclusion was, 'Let us confound her language; she may tell no more tales.'... The discourse pa.s.sed into a Dutch tone, ...

and therein was given an account of some afflictions that had befallen divers, among the rest a young Dutch woman ... that could speak but very little, had met with great sorrow, as pinchings of her arms in the dark, &c.... Judicious Mr. Stone being by, when the latter discourse pa.s.sed, declared it, in his thoughts, impossible that one not familiarly acquainted with the Dutch (which Ann Cole had not at all been) should so exactly imitate the Dutch tone in the p.r.o.nunciation of English....

Extremely violent bodily motions she many times had, even to the hazard of her life, ... and very often great disturbance was given in the public wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d by her and two other women who had also strange fits....

The consequence was, that one of the persons presented as active in the forementioned discourse (a lewd, ignorant, considerably aged woman), being a prisoner upon suspicion of witchcraft, the court sent for Mr. Haynes and myself to read what we had written.... She forthwith and freely confessed these things to be true: (that she and other persons named in the discourse) had familiarity with the devil. Being asked whether she had made an express covenant with him, she answered, she had not, only as she promised to go with him when he called (which she had accordingly done sundry times).... Amongst other things, she owned that the devil had frequent use of her body with much seeming (but indeed horrible, h.e.l.lish) delight to her. This, with the concurrent evidence, brought the woman and her husband to their death as the devil's familiars.... After this execution ... the good woman had abatement of her sorrows, which had continued sundry years, and she yet remains maintaining her integrity.

"Ann Cole was daughter of John Cole, a G.o.dly man among us. She hath been a person esteemed pious, behaving herself with a pleasant mixture of humility and faith under very heavy sufferings, professing (as she did sundry times) that _she knew nothing_ of those things that were spoken by her, but that her tongue was improved to express what never was in her mind."--_John Whiting to Increase Mather. Feb. 1682._

The source of Hutchinson's information is not known. Rev. Mr. Whiting, of Hartford, was an eye and ear witness to what he relates, and therefore is the better authority. Some great discrepancies are obvious in the two accounts. One hundred years after her day the historian said Ann no doubt had learned something of the Dutch language. But the better authority, because it is that of one who both saw and beard the young woman when under control, and continued to obtain knowledge of her for twenty years subsequently, says she "had not at all been acquainted with" that language. The former says "the supposed demons" spoke through her sometimes in English and sometimes in Dutch; while the latter "judged"

that the devil alone was speaker, and implies that the language always was English, though the tones sometimes were very exactly Dutch. The devil was "judged" to be there divulging the malicious purposes of "a company of his familiars" toward certain human beings. Here is manifested a propensity, common to all describers of witchcraft scenes, to impute to the great devil himself whatever was projected forth from the realm of mysteries.

A careful reading of the two accounts excites conjecture that Hutchinson may have drawn his facts mainly from Whiting's letter, and yet failed to regard and adhere to opinions therein presented as to the actual speaker through Ann Cole's lips. Whiting says, that "she, or rather the _devil_, as 'tis judged, making use of her lips, held a discourse" in which sundry living persons were named as being familiars of the Evil One, and plotters of mischief against some of their neighbors, and especially against this Ann herself. This personal observer says, that "_she, or rather the devil_," described Mrs. Greensmith and her a.s.sociates, and disclosed their evil purposes toward Ann and some other mortals. But the historian greatly metamorphosed the matter; he writes, that she "was supposed to be possessed with demons, who sometimes spoke Dutch and sometimes English,"

and that the persons who took notes (Mr. Whiting, Mr. Haynes, and Mr.

Stone) mentioned the names of several persons "_as being actors or bearing parts in the conference, ... particularly one Greensmith_."

Wrong--entirely wrong: these mortals were the subjects of a discourse; were not speakers, but persons spoken of. Thus Hutchinson converted certain low-lived mortals into such demons as took possession of a human form, and through it, in varying languages, held a dialogue in which they openly told to mortal ears their own malicious purposes, and what mortals they were intending to injure. Stupid. Whiting makes the devil, in varied tones and a.s.sumed characters, speak out the names of the embodied culprits, and tell of harms they had done, and more that they intended to do. Sensible. The devil or his alias often acts well the part of a detective and informer; in this case he managed to bring Mrs. Greensmith to confession.

_Possibly_, and only possibly, that devil was only an influx of auras which found entrance to Ann's inner perceptives, put in abeyance her outer consciousness and outer senses, and let her inner ones sense and give expression to the thoughts and purposes of some low-lived and lewd mediumistic persons in her neighborhood, whose inner selves, she, as a relatively freed spirit, could thoroughly read. Occult intelligences sometimes actuate the physical organs, while yet the mortal's consciousness fails to perceive either the action or the will that prompts it.

The account of her life makes it apparent that Ann, as a woman, had no affinity with the base and lewd, but, being mediumistic, was caused, either by design or by the out-workings of unconscious natural forces, to disclose the baseness and lewdness of others. She apparently experienced entrancement to absolute unconsciousness, so that she became, for the time being, literally a tool--no more self-acting, and therefore no more responsible, than a pen, a pencil, or a speaking-trumpet. Condition like hers in that respect is experienced by many persons at the present day.

Some utterances made by her lips when she was entranced were successfully used in court, either as proofs, or as helps for obtaining proof, that certain other persons in her neighborhood were in league with Satan--were the devil's familiars. Presentation in court of accusations that had come forth from her vocal organs brought a woman, then on trial for witchcraft, to prompt confession that the allegations were true, and both she and her husband were condemned and executed.

Similar resorts for obtaining clews by which to trace crimes to their authors are extensively resorted to now, and frequently with success; but the statements of the entranced and the clairvoyant are not adduced in court, nor should they be, because our world has not yet attained to reliable skill for testing their accuracy; nor are high-minded and trustworthy spirits often willing to expose any guilty mortals to punishment by this world's tribunals and executioners.

How far the novel annunciation of their names and some of their practices contributed to the condemnation of the Greensmiths, husband and wife, or whether it did at all, is only matter for conjecture. But that either some influences went out from them and acted upon Ann, or that some went forth from Ann and acted upon them, or that there was reciprocal action back and forth, is only a fair inference from what is stated above, taken in connection with that foot-note of Hutchinson, which is credited to "Goffe the Regicide's Diary," and reads thus: "After one of the witches was hanged, the maid was well." No mention has been met with of any sickness about Ann, excepting the strangely induced _fits_ in which she was used as the mouthpiece of the strange occupant or occupants of her form. Her becoming _well_ may mean no more than a cessation of her fits, or obsessions. That these should cease after the execution of a person or persons with whom she had been in distressing and uncongenial rapport, was perhaps only a natural result from the action of universal laws. Drafts may have been made from her system by forces not her own, which helped invisible beings to act upon the condemned Greensmiths for good or for harm. Occasion for such use of her elements or properties may have ceased as soon as the gallows had finished its work. The fits ceased, perhaps, solely because drafts of special properties from her were discontinued.

"After one of the witches was hanged, the maid was well." The execution of one person and the restoration of health to another were viewed by Goffe as cause and effect.

The Greensmith woman's confession of the use of her form by her familiar--revolting as the isolated fact would be to us, and will be to the reader--was the controlling reason which influenced us to adduce the case of Ann Cole. We get from the old woman Greensmith an ancient indication, which is paralleled by many unproclaimed modern ones, that astounding possibilities reside within the scope and sway of forces interacting between the realms of matter and of spirit, which possibly and probably may be availed of for elevation as well as for debas.e.m.e.nt of the human race. Many whispered facts of human experience are to-day indicating that the old woman may have made true statement of her personal experiences. If degradation and fatuity permit the leaking out of some momentous facts of human experience which conscious vessels of fair soundness and delicacy will retain within themselves, and hide from a profaning world's knowledge, that world, nevertheless, may be ent.i.tled to hints at the existence of occult, though only rarely perceptibly operative forces and permissions of nature, through the only channels which have let them flow forth for the world's free observation. The Greensmith woman's fact may be regarded as representative of very many others of a like nature.

I know a man who once visited a married couple, both of whom are intelligent and refined, both estimable in character, the husband being a highly respected member of one of the learned professions. This couple, at their own dining-table, where they and the visitor were the only occupants of the room, united in stating that once, when they had just finished taking their midday meal, and were sitting at the table opposite to each other, the lady's chair, with herself sitting in it, was moved back by some invisible power, and forthwith she, by palpable but invisible arms, was taken from her seat, laid upon the carpet, and there made to experience all the sensations of actual and pleasurable nuptial coition.

While such were her positions and sensations, her husband remained on the other side of the table, and they two were the only flesh-clad persons in the room. One accomplished and truthful lady had such experience while her consciousness and all her mental faculties were fully alert. Nature enfolds astounding possibilities. The human race, in coming times, may possibly be improved rapidly and extensively, by designed infusions of supernal elements into fetal germs.

No evidence has come to us, and no apprehension is entertained, that such experiences ever eventuate in physical conception; yet there are seen, now and then, glimmerings of evidence that supernal beings can and do inflow some of their own properties into the very marrow of some susceptible mortals of either gender, or of both simultaneously and conjointly, so as to modify physical systems in such manner and to such extent, that their offspring receive, at the very moment of conception, such properties as will ever afterward render them either better or worse because of injections through the parents by intelligences whose presence and operations elude perception by our external senses. Possibly both the most beneficent and the most malignant of our race--both those whose moral hues most illumine, and those whose shades most blacken the pages of history--were conceived while supernal beings held the parents either under strong psychological control or in deep unconscious trance.

The mother of the rough, l.u.s.tful, and murderous Samson was visited by a spirit being "very terrible."

The mother of Jesus was visited by the bright and glorious Gabriel, and enwrapped in an abnormally sound, helpful, or holy aura.

Far away from Charlestown and Boston, where the two women noticed in the preceding pages had their homes and met their fate, Ann Cole was the _unconscious_ mouthpiece through which invisible beings carried on dialogues, partly in languages, or, at least, in tones, which she had never learned. The manifestations through her were no imitations of anything before known on this continent, so far as history shows. Her reputed doings were unlike any for which Ma.s.sachusetts had hanged two of her daughters.

From whom came the tones, if not the words, of languages which this possessed girl had never learned? From whom came the things put forth through her which "she knew nothing of"? And especially who "improved her tongue to express what was never in her mind"? Any satisfactory explanation of witchcraft must point out distinctly, and must admit the action of some force competent to all such performances; a force controllable and controlled by intelligence. The facts in the case were set forth by a personal witness of many of them, who wrote at a time when he was not under any excitement or hallucination which their novelty might at first produce, but twenty years subsequent to their occurrence, when their recorder should have been, and no doubt was, calm and cautious, and when, too, the girl's own good character had been confirmed by good Christian deportment through twenty years succeeding the marvels manifested through her organs. If any history is worth reading, Ann Cole's lips were used by intelligences not her own "to express what never was in her mind." Either embodied intelligences--the Greensmiths and their a.s.sociates whose bodies were not present with her--used her vocal organs, as Hutchinson's account implies that they did, or demons--spirits, as Whiting supposed--spoke through her form.

ELIZABETH KNAP.

At Groton, Ma.s.s., in 1671, Elizabeth Knap was more singularly beset than most others of that century who were deemed bewitched. The authority transmitting an account of her is exceptionally good, having been written by Rev. Samuel Willard, minister then at Groton, in the prime and vigor of life. He had graduated at Harvard College twelve years before, afterward became minister at the Old South Church in Boston, and was for several years at the head of Harvard College. The girl in question was his pupil, residing in his family during the earlier portion of her affliction, and was under his watch till its close. His opportunities for observing the case in its rise and progress were certainly very good, and he made a journalistic account of its phases and progress under many specific dates from October 30, 1671, to January 15, 1672, a s.p.a.ce of eleven weeks or more. He was an attentive observer and close questioner of the girl, and also a cautious and intelligent chronicler.

She was at first subjected to extraordinary mental moods and violent physical actions, which came on rather gradually, showing themselves in marked singularities of conduct, for which she, when questioned, would give little if any account. Strange, sudden shrieks, strange changes of countenance, appeared first. These were soon followed by the exclamations, "O, my leg!" which she would rub; "O, my breast!" and she would rub that, it seeming to be in pain. Her breath would be stopped. She saw a strange person in the cellar, when her companions there were unable to see any such. She cried out to him, "What cheer, old man?" Afterward came fits, in which she would cry out sometimes, "Money, money!" offered her as inducements to yield obedience; and sometimes, "Sin and misery!" as threats of punishment for refusal to obey the wishes of her strange visitant. She said the devil appeared to her, and that she had seen him at times for three years. He often talked with her, and urged her to make a covenant with him, which she refused to do. November 26, six persons could hardly hold her. The physician, who for about four weeks had considered and treated the malady as a natural one, now p.r.o.nounced it diabolical.

She barked like a dog, bleated like a calf, and seemed at times to be strangled. At length distinct utterances came out. "A grum, low, audible voice" said to Mr. Willard himself, "You are a great rogue--a great rogue;" and yet "her vocal organs did not move." The voice was replied to as being that of Satan himself, and its author responded, "I am not Satan; I am a pretty black boy; this is my pretty girl; I have been here a great while." "When he said to me" (Mr. Willard), "O, you black rogue, I do not love you," I replied, "Through G.o.d's grace I hate thee." He rejoined, "You had better love me." The strength shown through the girl, the writer and witness says, "is beyond the force of dissimulation, and the actings of convulsions are quite contrary to these actings." Through all her sufferings "she did not waste in body or strength." Speech came from her without motion of the organs of speech. Also "we observed, when the voice spoke, her throat was swelled formidably, at least as big as one's fist."

She said she "saw more devils than any one there ever saw men in the world."

No attendant sacrifice of life gave intensification of interest to this Groton case, and it failed to become prominently conspicuous among witchcraft events. Still it is more instructive on some points than almost any other one of them. Here first have we found in colonial history any statement that an intelligence speaking through a borrowed or usurped form disclosed _who_ he was.

Mr. Willard, to whose care this girl was intrusted, and in whose family she had been a resident, was convinced that some other being than the girl herself was giving utterance through her lips, and in harmony with a necessary inference from the general faith of his times, addressed the unknown one under supposition that he was veritably _The Devil_. The being thus accosted promptly said, "I am not _Satan_; I am a pretty black boy."

The girl said she had been accustomed to see her visitant, at times, during three preceding years, and that she saw more devils than any one there ever saw men in the world. Her notions in reference to the proper application of words were obviously just as loose as the prevalent ones in community then, which deemed any spirit visitant whatsoever a devil, or the devil. An observer of such beings as she saw would to-day call them spirits. When she perceived and called out to some personage invisible to her companions, saying, "What cheer, old man?" she plainly indicated that the being thus hailed was apparently neither more nor less than an old man, and he, judged by her address to him, was by no means austere or repulsive; and yet he doubtless was one of those whom she, or whom the reporter of her utterances, was accustomed to call _devils_. There is no indication that she ever saw one specially huge, malformed, malignant personality, or that she ever intended to indicate perception of such a one.

The purposes and moods of Mr. Willard's interlocutor seem to have been playful and kindly, rather than morose and satanic. Temporarily reincarnated spirits are often p.r.o.ne to smile at the long-faced and cringing thoughts which their advent evokes in persons not accustomed to interviews with them. "You are a great rogue--a great rogue," and "you had better love me," can hardly be deemed ill-timed or inappropriate expressions from a lively boy, whatever his hue, who, on being mistaken for the devil, would naturally banter the sedate clergyman whose creed forced him to regard such a visitant as the Prince of Evil. He said truly, and in better spirit than the minister's, it would be better for you to love than to "hate" me.

Common fairness asks all men to regard any speaker's account of himself as true, until some reason appears for distrusting him. No word or deed ascribed to this pretty black boy, who said he was not Satan, renders the accuracy of his statement doubtful. Distrust of him, if it spring up, will probably be the offspring of prejudices, combined with ignorance of spirit methods of opening ways to reach man's cognizance, and win him to seek communings with his preceding kindred who possess more experience and consequent greater wisdom than pertains to any dwellers in mortal forms.

Our incrustations of ignorance and prejudice withstand every gentle appliance, and yield only to sledge-hammer blows.

Sensations, conditions, and various powers attendant on Elizabeth Knap were emphatically extraordinary. Detailed journalistic account of them having come down from a sagacious, cautious, truthful, and cultured man--from one of the eminently trustworthy men of his generation--demands credence. He says the strength of her body was "beyond the force of dissimulation;" that "six persons could hardly hold her;" and that "the actings were contrary to those of convulsions."

Another point is, that through the eleven weeks of such rough exploits, "she did not waste in body or strength." Cotton Mather speaks of some who were so preserved through similarly tortured states, that, "at the end of one month's wretchedness, they were as able still to undergo another."