THE LAST OF PARRIS.

Mr. Parris’ parsonage soon went to ruin, as did some of the dwellings of the “afflicted” children, who learned and practiced certain things in his house which he afterward pronounced to be arts of Satan, and declared to have been pursued without his knowledge and with the cognizance of only his servants (John and Tituba, the Indian and the negress). Barn, and well, and garden disappeared in a sorry tract of rough ground, and the dwelling became a mere handful of broken bricks. The narrative of the pastor’s struggles and devices to retain his pulpit is very interesting; but they are not related to our object here; and all we need say is, that three sons and sons-in-law of Mrs. Nurse measured their strength against his, and, without having said an intemperate or superfluous word, or swerved from the strictest rules of congregational action, sent him out of the parish. He finally opined that “evil angels” had been permitted to tempt him and his coadjutors on either hand; he admitted that some mistakes had been made; and, said he, “I do humbly own this day, before the Lord and his people, that God has been righteously spitting in my face; and I desire to lie low under all this reproach,” etc.; but the remonstrants could not again sit under his ministry, and his brethren in the Province did not pretend to exculpate him altogether. He buried his wife—against whom no record remains—and departed with his children, the eldest of whom, the playfellow of the “afflicted” children, he had sent away before she had taken harm in the “circle.” He drifted from one small outlying congregation to another, neglected and poor, restless and untamed, though mortified, till he died in 1720. Mr. Noyes died somewhat earlier. He is believed not to have undergone much change, as to either his views or his temper. He was a kind-hearted and amiable man when nothing came in the way; but he could hold no terms with Satan; and in this he insisted to the last that he was right.

Cotton Mather was the survivor of the other two. He died in 1728; and he never was happy again after that last batch of executions. He trusted to his merits, and the genius he exhibited under that onslaught of Satan, to raise him to the highest post of clerical power in the Province, and to make him—what he desired above all else—President of Harvard University. Mr. Upham presents us with a remarkable meditation written by the unhappy man, so simple and ingenious that it is scarcely possible to read it gravely; but the reader is not the less sensible of his misery. The argument is a sort of remonstrance with God on the recompense his services have met with. He has been appointed to serve the world, and the world does not regard him; the negroes, and (who could believe it?) the negroes are named Cotton Mather in contempt of him; the wise and the unwise despise him; in every company he is avoided and left alone; the female sex, and they speak basely of him; his relatives, and they are such monsters that he may truly say, “I am a brother to dragons;” the Government, and it heaps indignities upon him; the University, and if he were a blockhead, it could not treat him worse than it does. He is to serve all whom he can aid, and nobody ever does anything for him; he is to serve all to whom he can be a helpful and happy minister, and yet he is the most afflicted minister in the country; and many consider his afflictions to be so many miscarriages, and his sufferings in proportion to his sins. There was no popularity or power for him from the hour when he stood to see his brother Burroughs put to death on the Hill. He seems never to have got over his surprise at his own failures; but he sank into deeper mortification and a more childish peevishness to the end.

“ONE OF THE AFFLICTED”—HER CONFESSION.

Of only one of the class of express accusers—of the “afflicted”—will we speak; but not because she was the only one reclaimed. One bewildered child we have described as remorseful, and brave in her remorse; and others married as they would hardly have done if they had been among the “profligate.” Ann Putnam’s case remains the most prominent, and the most pathetic. She was twelve years old when the “circle” at Mr. Parris’ was formed. She had no check from her parents, but much countenance and encouragement from her morbidly-disposed mother. She has the bad distinction of having been the last of the witnesses to declare a “vision” against a suspected person; but, on the other hand, she has the honor, such as it is, of having striven to humble herself before the memory of her victims. When she was nineteen her father died, and her mother followed within a fortnight, leaving the poor girl, in bad health and with scanty means, to take care of a family of children so large that there were eight, if not more, dependent on her. No doubt she was aided, and she did what she could; but she died worn out at the age of thirty-six. Ten years before that date she made her peace with the Church and society by offering a public confession in the meeting-house. In order to show what it was that the accusers did admit, we must make room for Ann Putnam’s confession:

“‘I desire to be humbled before God for that sad and humbling providence that befell my father’s family in the year about ’92; that I, then being in my childhood, should, by such a providence of God, be made the instrument for the accusing of several persons of a grievous crime, whereby their lives were taken away from them, whom now I have just grounds and good reason to believe they were innocent persons; and that it was a great delusion of Satan that deceived me in that sad time, whereby I justly fear that I have been instrumental with others, though ignorantly and unwittingly, to bring upon myself and this land the guilt of innocent blood; though what was said or done by me against any person I can truly and uprightly say, before God and man, I did it not out of any anger, malice, or ill-will to any person, for I had no such thing against one of them; but what I did was ignorantly, being deluded by Satan. And particularly, as I was a chief instrument of accusing Goodwife Nurse and her two sisters, I desire to lie in the dust, and to be humbled for it, in that I was a cause, with others, of so sad a calamity to them and their families; for which cause I desire to lie in the dust, and earnestly beg forgiveness of God, and from all those unto whom I have given just cause of sorrow and offense, whose relations were taken away or accused. (Signed) Ann Putnam.’

“This confession was read before the congregation, together with her relation, August 25, 1706; and she acknowledged it.

“J. Green, Pastor.” (Vol. ii. p. 510.)