PAGE The Place 7 The Salemite of Forty Years Ago 8 How the Subject was opened 9 Careful Historiography 10 The Actors in the Tragedy 12 Philosophy of the Delusion 12 Character of the Early Settlement 13 First Causes 15 Death of the Patriarch 16 Growth of Witchcraft 17 Trouble in the Church 18 Rev. Mr. Burroughs 19 Deodat Lawson 20 Parris--a Malignant 20 A Protean Devil 21 State of Physiology 22 William Penn as a Precedent 22 Phenomena of Witchcraft 23 Parris and his Circle 25 The Inquisitions--Sarah Good 26 A Child Witch 27 The Towne Sisters 28 Depositions of Parris and his Tools 31 Goody Nurse's Excommunication 35 Mary Easty 36 Mrs. Cloyse 38 The Proctor Family 40 The Jacobs Family 41 Giles and Martha Corey 42 Decline of the Delusion 44 The Physio-Psychological Causes of the Trouble 45 The Last of Parris 47 "One of the Afflicted"--Her Confession 49 The Transition 50 The Fetish Theory Then and Now 51 The Views of Modern Investigators 53 Importance of the Subject 55
PAGE. What Planchette is and does (with review of Facts and Phenomena) 63 The Press on Planchette (with further details of Phenomena) 67 Theory First--That the Board is moved by the hands that rest 70 upon it Theory Second--"It is Electricity or Magnetism" 71 Proof that Electricity has nothing to do with it 78 Theory Third--The Devil Theory 79 Theory of a Floating Ambient Mentality 81 "_To Daimonion_"--The Demon 83 "It is some principle of nature as yet unknown" 85 Theory of the Agency of Departed Spirits 85 PLANCHETTE'S OWN THEORY 89 The Rational Difficulty 92 The Medium--The Doctrine of Spheres 93 The Moral and Religious Difficulty 98 What this Modern Development is, and what is to come of it 102 Conclusion 105 How to work Planchette 106
History of Spiritualism 107 Scriptural Views 110 Communion of Saints 112
The name of the village of Salem is as familiar to Americans as that of any provincial town in England or France is to Englishmen and Frenchmen; yet, when uttered in the hearing of Europeans, it carries us back two or three centuries, and suggests an image, however faint and transient, of the life of the Pilgrim Fathers, who gave that sacred name to the place of their chosen habitation. If we were on the spot to-day, we should see a modern American seaport, with an interest of its own, but by no means a romantic one. At present Salem is suffering its share of the adversity which has fallen upon the shipping trade, while it is still mourning the loss of some of its noblest citizens in the late civil war. No community in the Republic paid its tribute of patriotic sacrifice more generously; and there were doubtless occasions when its citizens remembered the early days of glory, when their fathers helped to chase the retreating British, on the first shedding of blood in the war of Independence. But now they have enough to think of under the pressure of the hour. Their trade is paralyzed under the operation of the tariff; their shipping is rotting in port, except so much of it as is sold to foreigners; there is much poverty in low places and dread of further commercial adversity among the chief citizens, but there is the same vigorous pursuit of intellectual interests and pleasures, throughout the society of the place, that there always is wherever any number of New Englanders have made their homes beside the church, the library, and the school. Whatever other changes may occur from one age or period to another, the features of natural scenery are, for the most part, unalterable. Massachusetts Bay is as it was when the Pilgrims cast their first look over it: its blue waters--as blue as the seas of Greece--rippling up upon the sheeted snow of the sands in winter, or beating against rocks glittering in ice; in autumn the pearly waves flowing in under the thickets of gaudy foliage; and on summer evening the green surface surrounding the amethyst islands, where white foam spouts out of the caves and crevices. On land, there are still the craggy hills, and the jutting promontories of granite, where the barberry grows as the bramble does with us, and room is found for the farmstead between the crags, and for the apple-trees and little slopes of grass, and patches of tillage, where all else looks barren. The boats are out, or ranged on shore, according to the weather, just as they were from the beginning, only in larger numbers; and far away on either hand the coasts and islands, the rocks and hills and rural dwellings, are as of old, save for the shrinking of the forest, and the growth of the cities and villages, whose spires and school-houses are visible here and there.