"The reverend and worthy author having, at the direction of his Excellency the governor, so far obliged the public as to give some account of the sufferings brought upon the country by witchcrafts, and of the trials which have passed upon several executed for the same:
"Upon perusal thereof, _we find the matters of fact and evidence truly reported_, and a prospect given of the methods of conviction used in the proceedings of the court at Salem.
Manifestation of one class of phenomena presented at those trials has not been noticed in the preceding pages; viz., the appearance of the spirits of particular departed ones to many of the accusing girls. It is obviously true that those clairvoyants were very much oftener beholders of the spirits of those still dwelling in mortal forms than of those who had escaped from thralldom to the flesh. Still there were then some cases in which the spirits of some who had been known in that vicinity, and whose bodies were moldering beneath its soil, were both seen and heard. Among others, two former wives of Burroughs were named. Mather says (p. 282), "Several of the bewitched had given in their testimony that they had been troubled with the apparitions of two women, who said they were G. B.'s two wives; and that he had been the death of them.... Now, G. B. had been infamous for the barbarous usage of his two successive wives, all the country over. (p. 286.) ... 'Twas testified, that, keeping his two successive wives in _a strange kind of slavery_, he would, when he came home from abroad, pretend to tell the talk which any had with them; that he has brought them to the point of death by his harsh dealings with his wives, and then made people promise that, in case death should happen, they would say nothing of it; that he used all means to make his wives write, sign, seal, and swear to a covenant _never to reveal any of his secrets_; that his wives had privately complained unto the neighbors about _frightly apparitions_ of evil spirits, with which their house was sometimes infested," &c.
Some of these allegations probably rested on firmer bases of facts than have generally been perceived. Though we regard Burroughs as having been one of the kindest and best of men, we do not entirely withhold credence from the general import of such allegations regarding him. They point both to extraordinary unfoldments within him, and to probable handlings and control of his outer form at times by some intelligence not his own. "_Strange kind of slavery_" would naturally result, in those days, from a husband's telling his wife, on returning to his home, what conversation she had held with others during his absence, _if his statements were true_; but if not true, the wife would only laugh at his pretensions, and make no complaints to neighbors. If both true and oft repeated, such mysterious utterances might well enslave, worry, and bring close to death's door a sensitive wife; and the husband, however affectionate and kind, may at times have been as powerless to shape his course of procedure as is the dried leaf when whirled onward by strong autumnal breezes. Acts not his own the world would hold him responsible for; and no wonder that, in his age, a spiritualistically unfolded, an illumined man, and one also whose form might be moved, as was that of Agassiz, by will not his own, should strive in all possible ways to prevent wives, and any other people who knew them, from revealing any of his peculiar and marvelous _secrets_; no wonder that he sought to make his wives "write, sign, seal, and swear" never to do it; because the noising abroad of such powers as he possessed, and such performances as were attendant upon him, if publicly known, would be profaned, would destroy his usefulness, and endanger, if not take, his life. Thanks that, in our day, danger of a hangman's rope does not threaten one because of his high spiritual illumination.