Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/65

 *dria, and nervous debility, which, if not met and counteracted by judicious care, has often tended to insanity, and

"The delicate chain Of thought, once tangled, never cleared again."

Let it be remembered, too, that these misguided young persons had been engaged for long months in studies of the most wild and exciting nature, unlawful and unholy, and in the practice of all forbidden arts—studies and practices under the unhallowed influences of which the strongest and most stolid of maturer minds might well have been expected to break down; that they had been in daily and hourly communication with John Indian and Tituba, the two Spanish West Indian slaves—creatures of the lowest type, coarse, sensual, and ignorant—who had been their companions, teachers, and leaders, indoctrinating them in all the pagan lore, hideous superstitions, and revolting ceremonials of their own idolatrous faith, and is it to be wondered at if their weak reason tottered and reeled in the fearful trial? If they were not mad would be the greater wonder.