. Such a howling abomination
could not be suffered to remain long unnoticed; it soon excited the fiery
indignation of those guardians of the commonwealth, who whilom had evinced
such active benevolence in the conversion of Quakers and Anabaptists. The
grand council of the league publicly set their faces against the crime,
and bloody laws were enacted against all "solem conversing or compacting
with the devil by the way of conjuracion or the like."[44] Strict search,
too, was made after witches, who were easily detected by devil's pinches;
by being able to weep but three tears, and those out of the left eye; and
by having a most suspicious predilection for black cats and broomsticks!
What is particularly worthy of admiration is, that this terrible art,
which has baffled the studies and researches of philosophers, astrologers,
theurgists, and other sages, was chiefly confined to the most ignorant,
decrepid, and ugly old women in the community, with scarce more brains
than the broomsticks they rode upon.

When once an alarm is sounded, the public, who dearly love to be in a
panic, are always ready to keep it up. Raise but the cry of yellow fever,
and immediately every headache, indigestion, and overflowing of the bile
is pronounced the terrible epidemic; cry out mad dog, and every unlucky
cur in the street is in jeopardy; so in the present instance, whoever was
troubled with colic or lumbago was sure to be bewitched; and woe to any
unlucky old woman living in the neighborhood.

It is incredible the number of offences that were detected, "for every one
of which," says the Reverend Cotton Mather, in that excellent work, the
History of New England, "we have such a sufficient evidence, that no
reasonable man in this whole country ever did question them; and it will
be unreasonable to do it in any other."[45]

Indeed, that authentic and judicious historian, John Josselyn, gent.,
furnishes us with unquestionable facts on this subject. "There are none,"
observes he, "that beg in this country, but there be witches too
many--bottle-bellied witches and others, that produce many strange
apparitions, if you will believe report, of a shallop at sea manned with
women--and of a ship and great red horse standing by the mainmast; the
ship being in a small cove to the eastward vanished of a sudden," etc.

The number of delinquents, however, and their magical devices, were not
more remarkable than their diabolical obstinacy. Though exhorte