Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/64

 had originally been intended, we have no information; but their ultimate purpose seems to have been to practice sleight of hand, legerdemain, fortune-telling, sorcery, magic, palmistry, necromancy, ventriloquism, or whatever in more modern times is classed under the general name of Spiritualism.

During the course of the winter, they had become very skillful and expert in these unholy arts. They could throw themselves into strange and unnatural attitudes; use strange exclamations, contortions, and grimaces; utter incoherent and unintelligible speech. They would be seized with fearful spasms or fits, and drop as if lifeless to the ground; or, writhing as if in agony of insufferable tortures, utter loud screams and fearful shrieks, foaming at the mouth or bleeding from the nose.

It should be borne in mind that the actors in these terrible scenes were for the most part young girls, at the most nervous and impressible period of life—a period when a too rapid growth, over-study, over-exertion, or various other predisposing causes, are often productive of hysteria, hypochon