Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1912-10-27

tions that certain persons were endowed
with the power of conversins with evii
Salem in 1902 At that time persons were
put to death or imprisoned not only for be-
ing witches, but for asserting their I'M
belief in witchcraft Today the people
of the little Massacf usetts town still point
out Witches hill, where several innocent
women were executed The madness OF
the colony spared neither the weak
minded Indian maiden Tituba. who was
seen practicing the ceremonials of her
own heather RELIGION. nor such exemplary
women Sarah Cloyce and Rebecca
Nurse of their own number.
Even tottering old men We're convicted
for denying lat there was any such
thing as witchcraft, until at one time Il
hundred and fifty persons were cast into
prison to wait their fate Many others
were tortured into cOnfessing themselves
guilty of false accusations, while several
hundred other colOnists were suspected
of being a part of witChcraft and of ex-
erting their efforts to protect it. Fl
nally. when this fanaticism had spent it
SELF many of those who had taken active
parts in the prosecutions realized and
con essed the great Injustice they had
done their neighbors, but this was not
true of Cotton Mather, who was dissats-
fed that witch courts had been al shed.
He attempted to justify his actions of
cruelty before IL e world by issuing VOL
ume of thanks for the benefits he had
bestowed upon his people for having sent
so many witches to their doom. As this
treatise was received approx ngly at that
time by the president of Harvard Col
lege. the horrible delusion of witchcraft
must have obsessed even those who
should have been most enlightened.
AS ridiculous as these prosecutions We're.
they sank into insignifi,ance when COM
pared with the witch executions Of Great
Britain and Europe There one-half mil
lion is a modest estimate of the number
o. persons who We're killed for having
know, edge Of tie black art. Especially
between 1850 and 1870 were the fortunes
of innocent persons most numerous, for
thousands were then executed and treat
ed In the most horrifyng manner. For
three hundred years there was con-
tnual trial of persons accused of being
and most of them were tried by the codex
entitled "Mallus maleticarium." or the
witches hammer, produced by Sprengel
and his fanatical associates.
In Germany over 10000 persisted by
various prosecutions. One European Of
ficial after doing his part in sending 3d.
600 miserable wretches to the stake for
the forced confessions of deeds they were
known never to have committed, taught
ing service to the human race, for had
such persons lived they would have
brought utter ruin to the whole world.
An incident especially absurd in our
age was the Swiss execution of 17S2, when
d maidservant was accused of giving pin
seeds to a little boy. thus causing the
child to choke on pins as they came out
OF his mouth. AS late as the end of the
eighteenth century witch executions We're
practlced in Poland and Hungary, while
in Great Britain the last law relative to
wltchcraft was an Irish statute repealed
less than a hundred years ago.
As free as the civilized world is today
from this suspicious belief in witches
yet there is record that about fifteen years
aco an old woman in IRELAND was tortur-
ed TO death as a witch by her own kins-
men. Two years later a Mexican woman
accused of bewitching her neighbor was
killed by two angry men. 4 queer case
In our own land happened in North Car
DINA about ten years ago, when house
wife who could not make the butter come
accused her neighbor Of having used evil
powers over the cream. To break this
spell the churners husband shot a silver
bullet through the portrait of the per-
son suspected of practicing witchcraft.