Tituba’s sister witch, as that slave’s master called Sarah Good, may not have been regarded in her generation as possessor of any large amount of such qualities as her name is commonly used to designate. Still her neighbors doomed her to lasting fame by selecting her as the first person to be put under examination on suspicion of being a producer of Salem witchcraft. As a facile tool in supernal hands she may have been, and probably was, good in quality as well as name.

Indications that her spirit-form was susceptible of either easy elimination or wide radiations from its material counterpart, are contained in the facts that on January 20, 1692, the inner eye of Tituba saw this Sarah; on February 25, Ann Putnam, and on the 28th, Elizabeth Hubbard saw her apparition, or her spirit-form.

Man’s “natural” or physical optics do not discern a spirit. Spirit, when not materialized, is discernible only by our inner or spirit-eyes; spirit is “spiritually discerned.” The spirit forms, however, of embodied, living men and women, are not all equally discernible by clairvoyants. Generally, only such among flesh-clad spirits are readily seen by inner optics as are able to slip, or are liable to be drawn, or to radiate out, from one’s ordinary integuments of flesh, or, at least, those only whose integuments are transparent of spirit-light. Only few, relatively, can either see or be seen readily and frequently by spiritual eyes. Eagles exist as well as owls and bats. And clear perception of objects by the former amid light that blinds the latter, is no proof either that the vision of eagles is perverted, or that the objects they behold are but creatures of fancy.

Mediumistic Sarah Good, because she was highly mediumistic, would naturally be a brilliant and attractive object in the field of vision which the inner eyes of other mediumistic ones might be able and attracted to survey. Distance is of little or no account in connection with vision by the inner eye. Persons and objects, scores and hundreds of miles away, are practically near to the inner optics. Spirit-forms are, perhaps, thought-forms, and, like thought, can traverse oceans and continents in the twinkling of an eye.

It is not our purpose to multiply pages by largely quoting minute accounts of what transpired at the examinations and trials of those who were suspected of witchcraft; and yet it may be well to present rather fully one sample of the proceedings of the courts. This first case which the civil authorities gave attention to may serve that purpose as well as any other.

The arrest of Sarah Good was made February 29, and on the next day, Tuesday, March 1, 1692, her examination was commenced, and was continued, in connection with that of Sarah Osburn and Tituba, through the remainder of that week. On Monday, the 7th, these three were sent to jail in Boston. On the 30th of June Mrs. Good was put upon trial, which resulted in her conviction, and on the 19th of July she, together with others, was executed.

We copy first Ezekiel Cheever’s account of her examination. Cheever was temporary clerk or scribe employed by the examining magistrates to take minutes of the testimony.

“‘Sarah Good, what evil spirit have you familiarity with?’ Ans. ‘None.’ ‘Have you made no contract with the devil?’ Good answered, ‘No.’ ‘Why do you hurt these children?’ Ans. ‘I do not hurt them. I scorn it.’ ‘Who do you employ, then, to do it?’ Ans. ‘I employ nobody.’”

This question was doubtless based on belief then held, that one who was in covenant with the devil had, by the terms of the covenant, received power to command the devil and his imps to execute any desired mischief.

“‘What creature do you employ, then?’ Ans. ‘No creature, but I am falsely accused.’”

Her statement that she employed nobody, seems not to have covered all classes of possible servants in such business. Therefore she was asked what creature she employed. This question suggests the probable supposition by the magistrate that such dogs, cats, birds, and hairy nondescripts as Tituba saw, might be subservient to the commands of a witch.

“‘Why did you go away muttering from Mr. Parris’s house?’ Ans. ‘I did not mutter; but I thanked him for what he gave my child.’ ‘Have you made no contract with the devil?’ Ans. ‘No.’”

The magistrate then “desired the children, all of them, to look upon her and see if this were the person that had hurt them; and so they all did look upon her, and said that this was one of the persons that did torment them. Presently they were all tormented.”

“‘Sarah Good, do you not see now what you have done? Why do you not tell us the truth? Why do you thus torment these poor children?’ Ans. ‘I do not torment them.’ ‘Who do you employ, then?’ Ans. ‘I employ nobody. I scorn it.’ ‘How came they thus tormented?’ Ans. ‘What do I know? You bring others here, and now you charge me with it.’ ‘Why, who was it?’ Ans. ‘I do not know but it was some you brought into the meeting-house with you.’ Response. ‘We brought you into the meeting-house.’ Reply. ‘But you brought in two more.’ ‘Who was it, then, that tormented the children?’ Ans. ‘It was Osburn.’ ‘What is it you say when you go muttering away from persons’ houses?’ Ans. ‘If I must tell, I will tell.’ ‘Do tell us then.’ Reply. ‘If I must tell, I will tell. It is the commandments. I may say my commandments, I hope.’ ‘What commandment is it?’ Ans. ‘If I must tell, I will. It is a psalm.’ ‘What psalm?’ Statement by reporter. ‘After a long time she muttered over some part of a psalm.’ ‘Who do you serve?’ Ans. ‘I serve God.’ ‘What God do you serve?’ Ans. ‘The God that made heaven and earth.’”

Comments by the reporter. “She was not willing to mention the word God. Her answers were in a very wicked, spiteful manner, reflecting and retorting against the authority with base and abusing words, and many lies she was taken in. It was here said that her husband had said that he was afraid that she either was a witch or would be one very quickly. The worshipful Mr. Hathorne asked him his reason why he said so of her; whether he had seen anything by her. He answered, no, not in this nature; but it was her bad carriage to him; and indeed, said he, I may say with tears that she is an enemy to all good.”

Reason for asking the children to look upon the accused, Cheever says, was, that they might “see if this was the person that hurt them.” That statement fails to cover the whole ground. According to Cotton Mather, belief then prevailed that “when the party suspected looks on the parties supposed to be bewitched, and they are thereupon struck down into a fit ... it is a proof that the accused is a witch in covenant with the devil.”

In many subsequent examinations and trials, these magistrates required the accused to look upon the afflicted ones, and special note was taken of the apparent action of the supposed evil eye upon the sensitive children. Belief was held and acted upon by these examiners, that, if the accused were guilty, the guilt might be revealed by observable effects of emanations from the witch’s eye upon those whom she had been bent upon tormenting. Possibly human experience and observation had gained knowledge of facts which furnished substantial foundation for such belief. The eye of the powerful mesmerist is very potent in action upon those whom he has been accustomed to subdue to his will. If the children quailed and suffered under the gaze of the accused, inference might be drawn that they had previously been brought into servitude by imperceptible forces proceeding from that person. Forces of that nature probably go forth more profusely from the eye than any other part of man, though that is not their only point of egress. Any part of the body may let them out. This fact, no doubt, was assumed of old by would-be witch detectors, for they often required the accused to touch their accusers, or the reverse. And generally the contact was attended by convulsions, spasms, pains, or other distress, or by cessation of annoyances. Such results are moderate evidence that forces pertaining to departed spirits were then operating upon the disturbed ones; for emanations from such source are frequently more agitating and agonizing, or more calming and pleasurable, than any that come forth from the simple mesmerizer. One reason for this augmented effect, as given through mediumistic lips, is, that the greater remove of properties of freed spirits from homogeneousness with those of flesh-robed ones, than exists between the properties of any two mortals, naturally causes either greater commotion or greater calmness when the disembodied ones effect contact with those robed in flesh, than ever occurs upon the confluence of streams exclusively mundane. It should be remembered that spirits, when in rapport with mortal forms, have power not only to will agonies and motions therein, but also to command and efficiently use appliances needful to produce them. Where Tituba’s tall man with white hair was controller of performances, all such sufferings and antics as history describes may have occurred at trials for witchcraft, and yet few of them may have been willed to come forth by any mortal. Vailed from external perceptions, that powerful operator shaped the speech, the actions, and the sufferings of all the impressible ones, whether accused or accusers, at his sole pleasure. What his object and his motives were are not matters for consideration at this stage of our investigations.

The examining magistrates, John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin, subscribed to the following account of this examination.

“Sarah Good upon examination denieth the matter of fact, viz., that she ever used any witchcraft, or hurt the above-said children, or any of them.

“The above-named children, being all present, positively accused her of hurting them sundry times within this two months, and also this morning.

“Sarah Good denied that she had been at their houses in the said time, or near them, or had done them any hurt. All the above-said children then present accused her face to face, upon which they were all tortured and tormented for a short space of time; and the afflictions and tortures being over, they charged said Sarah Good again that she had so tortured them, and came to them and did it; although she was then kept at a considerable distance from them.

“Sarah Good being then asked, if that she did not hurt them, who did it? And the children being again tortured, she looked upon them and said that it was one of them we brought into the house with us. We asked her who it was. She then answered and said it was Sarah Osburn; and Sarah Osburn was then under custody, and not in the house. And the children, being quickly after recovered out of their fits, said that it was Sarah Good and also Sarah Osburn that then did hurt and torment or afflict them, although both of them at the same time at a distance or remote from them personally.”

The Italicized lines show that the magistrates attached importance to the children’s statement that the two women had access to them and hurt them, even while the outer forms of the women were remote from the girls. Precisely how Hathorne and Corwin viewed such facts we do not know. Perhaps they deemed them strong evidence that the women were helped by the devil. The fact, if it be a fact,—and it probably is,—that those girls actually received painful sensations from forces coming to them from out the forms of those two women whose bodies were at the time distant from their own, was marvelous when it occurred, and remains so now to all such as are unacquainted with some instructive things which modern Spiritualism has been bringing into view. To entranced persons, to the spiritually illumined, to the clairvoyant, distance and material objects become nearly obliterated. Between such, also between spirits and such, when their inner powers are in the ascendant, mind acts directly upon mind, without aid from external senses and organs, and whatever then is done to the mind or spirit of the incarnated, whether it be painful or pleasing, reaches and affects the body of the earth-clad one from within, and thence works outwardly. All sensation pertains to the mind or spirit. The body, when life leaves it, at once becomes absolutely insensible. All hurts of the body, come whence and as they may, are felt by the spirit only—never by the body. Therefore when the spirit from within is pinched by a spirit directly, the hurt, though the physical body has not been touched from without, is felt precisely as it would be if fingers had nipped the flesh. One’s bruised spirit acting outwardly may discolor portions of the body precisely as would an external pinch, grip, or blow. The accusing girls may have actually perceived and positively known that pain-producing forces issuing from the forms of the accused women, were distorting and convulsing their own bodies and the bodies of other sensitive ones, while yet the women’s wills may not have sent the forces forth; those accused ones may have been but the wearers of bodies, or possessors of God-bestowed organisms and temperaments through which either Tituba’s tall man or some other spirit, or even some impersonal natural force, gained access to the spirits of the girls, and, through their spirits, caused their bodies to manifest signs of intense sufferings. Spiritualism is inviting physiologists and psychologists into new and interesting fields for exploration.

The foregoing facts and views invite to very lenient judgments, whether pertaining to the accused women or to their youthful accusers.

Many things during the examination of Sarah Good were culled from Tituba’s statements, and used with design to show that Sarah Good was a witch. Tituba charged that woman with hurting the children, and of being one of five who urged her to do the same. Good rode on a pole with the latter to Mr. Putnam’s, and then told the slave that she must kill somebody. She came and made Tituba deaf at prayers. She had a yellow bird which sucked her between her fingers; also she had a cat, and she appeared like a wolf to Hubbard. Tituba saw Good’s name in the book, and the devil (no, the tall man), “told Good made her mark.” Even her own little daughter, Dorothy Good, testified that her mother “had three birds, one black, one yellow, and that these birds hurt the children and afflicted persons.”

Deliverance Hobbs saw Good at the witch’s sacrament.

Abigail Hobbs was in company with, and made deaf by her, and knew her to be a witch.

Mary Warren had the book brought to her by Sarah Good.

Elizabeth Hubbard, Mary Walcott, Ann Putnam, Mercy Lewis, Sarah Vibber, and Abigail Williams (all of them members of the necromantic circle), were afflicted by Sarah Good, and saw her shape.

Richard Patch, William Allen, John Hughes, had her appear to them apparitionally.

This long array of names of impressibles existing in the Village at so early a time as the very first attempt to find a witchcraft-worker there, indicates that Tituba’s visitant had been an expert selector of a spot for operation. He began his work in the midst of abundant and fit materials with which to carry out a purpose to obtain close approach to, and to put forth startling action upon and among embodied mortals. It may be learned in the hereafter that he was suggester of the visible as well as of the invisible Circle which met at the parsonage; and learned, also, that his forces magnetized the members of each. That so many mediumistic ones, a large proportion of them wonderfully facile and plastic, were hunted up in “the short space of two months,” among the five hundred scattered inhabitants of that Village, is surprising. Only keen eyes and active search could have found thus many in so short a time. Germs of prophets must have been abundant there, and must have developed rapidly under the culture of the supernal gardener who discovered their abundance and quality, and took them under his special watch and care.

While under examination, Sarah Good said, “None here see the witches but the afflicted and themselves;” that is, none but the afflicted and the accused; none but the clairvoyant. By witches she meant spirits and semblances of mortals and spirits; and she said in substance none others but we who behold with our internal eyes see the hovering and operating intelligences and forms. This unschooled woman then announced a great and instructive truth. She taught that the two classes—the tortured accusers and the accused both—possessed powers of vision which other people did not; that they possessed such clairvoyance and other fitful capabilities and susceptibilities as pertained to only a quite limited number of persons, and that these physical peculiarities were the source of the existing mysteries.

It should be ever borne in mind that the powers which Mrs. Good had reference to are generally very fitful in their operations. Those who sometimes see spirits and spirit scenes are seldom able to do it at will, or with any very long continuance without interruption. The most of them might, every few minutes, say with Tituba, “I am blind now, I cannot see.”

Having stated that the accusers and accused, and only they and others constituted like them, could see the hidden persons and forces which were there acting, acted upon, or being employed in putting forth mysterious inflictions upon the distressed girls, Sarah Good forthwith charged her fellow-prisoner, Sarah Osburn, with then “hurting the children.” The fair inference is, that she saw the spirit or the apparition of her companion then seemingly at work upon the sufferers; and Mrs. Good may only have described what her inner optics were then beholding. Virtually she was confessing that she was herself clairvoyant, and consequently very near kin to a witch, if not actually one in that dreaded sisterhood. But clairvoyance pertained to the accusers also, and both sets of clear seers, if their powers were a crime, deserved like treatment.

“Looking upon them” (the afflicted children) “at the same time and not being afflicted, must consequently be a witch.” The above is from the records of her examination. Apparently she was looking upon the children while alleging that the then absent Sarah Osburn was there present and was occasioning their sufferings, while yet Mrs. Good was not herself afflicted; this was deemed proof that she was a witch. What unstated premises led to that conclusion we do not know. Our fathers had many notions pertaining to witchcraft that are now buried in oblivion, and it is often very difficult to find the reasons for their inferences. We are baffled here, and can say only that indication is furnished that under some circumstances a woman’s failure to become bewitched was proof that she was herself a witch—because she did not catch a special disease, she must already be having it.

Constable Braybrook, who had charge of her during the night between the first two days of her examination, deposed that he set three men as a guard to watch her at his own house; and that in the morning the guard informed him that “during the night Sarah Good was gone some time from them, both barefoot and barelegged.” From another source he learned that on “that same night, Elizabeth Hubbard, one of the afflicted persons, complained that Sarah Good came and afflicted her, being barefoot and barelegged, and Samuel Sibley, that was one that was attending (courting) of Elizabeth Hubbard, struck Sarah Good on the arm, as Elizabeth Hubbard said.”—Woodward’s Historical Series, No. I, p. 27.

Braybrook’s statement presents a side incident at a time when none of the performers who had been trained in the historian’s famous high school for girls were present—an incident which rivals in marvelousness anything in the main tragedy they are charged with enacting. When the tricksy girls were all absent, when men alone stood guard over and were with this prisoner, she became invisible by them. No one of the magic-working band of girls and women was then at hand. Testimony that she disappeared is distinct; the guards reported in the morning that “she was gone some time from them.” The constable so stated, and the statement was supported by two assistant guards, Michael Dunnell, and Jonathan Baker. We shall not stop to ask them how they knew that she was “barefoot and barelegged” when she was invisible. They perhaps saw her stockings and shoes when she was not to be seen. Also she was without such garments when seen that night by Elizabeth Hubbard and her lover in that girl’s distant home.

An intelligent, sagacious, and reliable man, Dr. H. B. Storer, of Boston, whom we know and have long known personally, and whom we respect as being distinctly high-minded, honorable, and adherent to facts and truths, gave, in the Banner of Light, January 9, 1875, an instructive account of his recent observations at the residence of Mrs. Compton, a medium, at Havana, N. Y. We extract the following from his statements. He says that on Monday morning, December 28, 1874,—

“By my request, Mrs. Compton acquiescing without a murmur, my lady friends, entering her bedroom, saw her completely divested of clothing, with the exception of two under garments, and then had her draw on a pair of her husband’s pantaloons. The basque of her alpaca dress, without the skirt, was then put on, after careful search to render it certain that no extra clothing could be secreted. Then, in my presence, the basque was sewed by its points on each side to the pantaloons, and a ribbon, which I tied with two knots closely around her neck, was sewed through the knots, and each end of the ribbon sewed to the collar of the basque. So she had on a closely-fitting coat and pantaloons sewed together, and so attached by a ribbon around the neck that the clothing could not be drawn up or down. A pair of black gloves were then drawn upon the hands and sewed tightly around the wrists. I then put around her waist a piece of cotton twine, tying it in two hard knots behind, and the same piece of twine was tied by double knots to the back of the chair in which she sat.”

On Saturday Dr. Storer had seen come forth from the cabinet, as Dr. F. L. H. Willis also had on a former occasion, “a weird phantom, bearing the semblance of a woman, and clothed in a flowing costume of white. Over her head was thrown a vail of delicate texture, and in one hand she carried a handkerchief that looked like a bit of a fleecy cloud. Her dress was exceedingly white and lustrous, without a wrinkle or a fold in it.” That description by Willis is called by Storer “perfect,” and is adopted by him. This “weird” personage was called Katie. Dr. Storer, after fixing the medium in the cabinet on Monday, as above described, says,—

“Very slowly the door [of the cabinet] opened, and soon her [Katie’s] entire form was seen dressed exactly as before—trailing skirts, vail, and mantle, but with a belt which she gathered in her hands and rubbed together that we might hear its silken rustle. Standing by the door, she addressed me, saying that when she had walked entirely away from the cabinet, she wished me to go in quickly, and, without moving the chair, feel after the medium, and all about the cabinet, and see if I could find her. She stepped out about five feet into the room, and at once I sprang into the cabinet, felt in the chair, swept the floor and walls thoroughly with my hands—but—not a vestige of medium or anything remained.”

The italicizing is ours. We design to imitate the doctor in both frankness and wisdom—to restate and accept his facts—but make no attempt at explanation of them. We adduce the case because it parallels in marvelousness the statements of Braybrook. What happens now may have had its like before to-day. The modern case out-marvels, perhaps, the ancient one; for we know not whether the guards felt for their prisoner or only failed to see her. How they ascertained that she was gone is not told. Dr. Storer felt the chair into which he had bound Mrs. Compton, felt the floor and the ceiling all over, and could find nobody in the little cabinet, which was but a triangle partitioned off at the corner of the room, whose inner sides were only five feet each in length, so that a man, without changing his position, might touch any part of it, unless the ceiling overhead was above the man’s reach. Shortly afterward, says Dr. Storer, “the cabinet door was opened, and in the chair, tied as we had left her, without the breaking of a thread, or the apparent movement of her person, or in any respect differing from her appearance when last seen, sat the medium, in that fearfully lifeless trance, from which nearly a half hour was required to arouse her. I will not give any speculations of my own upon this most marvelous exhibition. I submit the facts and vouch for their entire accuracy.”

Were Braybrook’s statements true as to the main fact? They may have been. If they were, we do not apprehend that the physical body of Sarah Good was either removed from the vicinity of her guards, or seen by Elizabeth Hubbard that night. Invisibility may have been wrapped around her body, and yet not around her shoes and stockings; perhaps her spirit-form was the only one seen by the distant observer. We hesitate to fix limits to possibilities. Spirits to-day frequently manage, as they say, and as results indicate, to render particular material objects lying within the embrace of auras or emanations of some mediums, invisible temporarily by the keenest of keen external eyes, even when such eyes are surrounded by light sufficient for seeing other objects in the vicinity with distinctness. That which is done now may have been done formerly. And since such phenomena now seldom occur excepting in the near vicinity of persons susceptible to spirit influences, the fair conclusion is, that Sarah Good was a medium. Elizabeth Hubbard saw the spirit-form of Sarah Good; which fact argues that Elizabeth was a clairvoyant, unless Sarah Good’s spirit was then materialized. Each and every one of the afflicted girls is so repeatedly reported to have described perception of what external sight could not see, external ear hear, nor external touch feel, that the mediumistic susceptibilities of each and all of them are manifest.

The susceptibilities and endowments of both accusers and accused were exceptional and yet alike in kind. The spiritual perceptive faculties and the receptive capabilities of both classes could be brought into such action as would out-work results perceptible by the external senses of common people. Also, and especially, each class could be made to serve as mere tools of invisible beings. As such they were handled, their users employing them severally as afflictor or as afflicted, at their pleasure, within the permissions of psychological laws.

The choice, which selected certain ones to be implements by which to afflict, and others to be the subjects of afflictions, was made by dwellers in spirit spheres, familiar with psychological laws, and competent to determine in which capacity each impressible one could be most serviceable in advancing the ends of the supernal operators. Such a view, when its correctness shall have been confirmed, will work out vast amelioration in the world’s judgment of that band of girls and women in Salem Village who have long borne its scorn and detestation, and will thrill every kindly heart with joy. When it shall become apparent that some inborn physical peculiarities involved the controlling reasons why certain persons rather than others were charged with being Satan’s devotees, then none can fail to see that it was not roguery, not artifice, not malice, not grudges, not family or neighborhood or parochial quarrels, not disputes about property, nor any social, moral, or religious eminence or debasement,—no, not any one of those base motives of the normal intellect and heart which lively fancy has pleased itself with conjuring up and imputing,—no, it was not any one of those reprehensible and damning motives, but was innate susceptibility of being easily controlled by psychological forces; especially it was a constitutional liability to be more readily seen, heard, and felt by persons similarly endowed than was the great mass of people around them.

Ann Putnam, Jr., the keen-sighted pioneer of the clairvoyant witch-detectors, saw the apparition, and felt the distressing influences of Sarah Good, on the 25th of February. Her depositions were numerous; there were but few of the accused whose apparitions had not met her vision, but few who had not harmed her in ways and by forces unperceived by external senses. The character and general purport of her testimony, and also of most of the testimony from members of The Circle, is well presented by the first deposition we find on record; which is as follows:—

That deposition furnishes a fair specimen of the kind of evidence sought for, admitted, and applied to prove probable compact with the devil. All of the above pertains to the first examination made at Salem, and it reveals the opinions then prevalent relating to covenantings with the Evil One, to powers and dispositions thence derived, and to then existing legal methods for proving such compacts. There is little indication that experiences at Salem, during the spring and summer of 1692, gave either the examining magistrates, or the court, much, if any, new light or any increase of wisdom or humaneness. Whatever modification of processes of procedure subsequently took place, and whatever change of decisions as to the value and admissibility of spectral evidence occurred, was for the worse rather than the better. The creeds and laws conformed to then were not formed and adopted for that occasion, but had prior existence, and were here applied with strenuous vigor by firm hearts and clear heads. Amid all the excitement, frenzy, infatuation, delusion, and credulity then abounding, logic retained its power and guidance, and held courts and juries to the requirements of the wholesome statutes of the English Parliament, pertaining to witchcraft and to Christendom’s witchcraft creed. Old laws and faiths were here tested by strong men. They held for a time, and wrought woeful effects, but finally were broken.

Sarah Good was wife of an inefficient husband, “William Good, laborer.” The family was very poor, having at times no home excepting such as charity granted them temporarily. She is spoken of by Calef as having “long been accounted a melancholy or distracted woman.” Upham says that “she was a forlorn, friendless, and forsaken creature, broken down by wretchedness of condition and ill repute.” We find no reason for dissenting from that writer’s statement when he says elsewhere, that “she was an unfortunate and miserable woman in her circumstances and condition;” but we doubt the fitness of calling her “forlorn” and “broken down.” She may have been so; but the spirit and energy generally manifested by her words and acts indicate the probability that she was rather a heedless, bold woman, free and harsh in the use of her tongue, and not very sensitive to or regardful of public opinion, but yet strong and not despondent. That she may have long been deemed, as Calef says she was, a “distracted” woman, is very probable, for many simply mediumistic persons, and even more of us who at this day solely because we believe in the advent of spirits, both good and less good, have long been accounted crazy.

We have met with no indication that she was physically weak or mentally despondent. She seems to have borne up well under long, tedious horseback rides daily to and from Ipswich jail, nine or ten miles distant, whither she was nightly sent ever after the time of her becoming invisible to her guards. Her keeper on the way says, “she leaped off her horse three times, railed at the magistrates, and endeavored to kill herself.” That attempt, if she made one, to take her own life, was scarcely less likely to spring from the angry mental mood then prompting her to rail against the magistrates, than from despondency or forlornness.

When under examination, her answers were about as direct, explicit, and to the point, as most other suspected ones were able to give to the perplexing questions which were put; and some of hers have more snap than we usually find in words from lips of the “forlorn and broken down.”

It is not probable that her previous life had won much public favor; yet no evidence has been met with that her neighbors generally cherished hostile feelings towards her, or possessed sentiments which would prompt them to rejoice at her prosecution. We, as has already been made apparent, ascribe her arrest to other causes than the lowness of her character and condition. That was not the primal incentive to her being “cried out upon.” Her organization, and the then existing condition of her faculties, made her either a convenient channel through which to transmit, or a fountain from which to draw, forces into the systems of certain other sensitives, which forces might act therein for either the annoyance and suffering, or the pleasure and relief of the recipients, according to either inherent properties of the forces themselves, or to the purpose of some intelligence who should inflow and manipulate them. The sensitive girls might, and, if well unfolded mediumistically, would unerringly trace back such forces as acted upon themselves to their mundane point of emanation, and in good conscience and good faith accuse the person from whom the forces issued of being their tormentor; if clairvoyant they could see, if clairaudient could hear, and, if not specially unfolded for seeing with the inner eye and hearing with the inner ear, could sense the person from whom the foreign and disturbing influences came forth.

A bold spirit and prophetic glance pertained to this woman at the close of her mortal life. When near the gallows, and about to be executed, Mr. Noyes, the clergyman at Salem proper, told her “she was a witch, and she knew that she was a witch.” She promptly retorted, “You are a liar. I am no more a witch than you are a wizard; and if you take away my life, God will give you blood to drink.” Subsequently that man “died of an internal hemorage, bleading profusely at the mouth.” (Hist. of Witchcraft, vol. ii. p. 270.) Gleamings of what will be often meet internal or mediumistic eyes; and such probably did those of Sarah Good at that instant, and authorized her prophetic utterance.