>From The Devil in Massachusetts by Marion L. Starkey: pg. 49. " 'Bitch witches' was the word old George Jacobs had for the afflicted girls, one of whom was his own maidservant, Sarah Churchill. John Proctor, who had the prophesying Mary Warren on his hands, was reporting that he had cured her fits by plumping her down at her spinning wheel and promising her a thrashing if she stirred from it, in or out of possession. It irritated him that after he had thus "cured" her, the magistrates had sent for the girl over his protest to testify in court where, as Proctor drily remarked, "She must have her fits forsooth." Pg. 76. "John Proctor, coming to town Friday morning to pick up his 'jade,' Mary Warren, whom he had again been forced to let attend an examination, gave voice to some very strong and very public remarks about the girls. "They should be at the whipping post!" he said. "If they are let alone we should all be devils and witches." In his eyes the wrong people were being called to the stand. If one must have witches forsooth, look for them not among decent women of good reputations but among the obviously bedeviled, the girls themselves. "Hang them! Hang them!" shouted honest John Proctor. You can't say things like that. Not in public, not in Salem Village of 1692." Pgs. 82 - 85 "The first crying out had occurred on Monday, March 28, a few days after Rebecca Nurse's examination and John Proctor's outburst against the girls. "There's Goody Procter!" one of the latter had cried in Ingersoll's ordinary. "Old witch! I'll have her hang." For all John Procter's recent reckless talk about the girls, he and his family held a high place in the esteem of the community. Accordingly the several witnesses to this crying out responded with unwonted skepticism. They looked about them, remarked that there was nothing to see, and told the girl who had spoken that they believed she was lying. Had the girl run true to form she would have reacted to this reproof by going into convulsions. Instead she sheepishly came out of her trance. "It was for sport," she admitted. "I must have some sport." Later when Elizabeth Procter was taken anyway, Goody Ingersoll, Daniel Elliot, and William Raymond put the episode on record to present as testimony for the defense. They might have spared themselves the pains. The magistrates, committed to "spectral evidence," would waive as irrelevant and even frivolous any testimony based on the fact that other people could not see what the girls saw. One might as well in a modern court testify that water is free of bacilli on the grounds that it looks clear to the eye; the girls were the microscopes which God Himself had provided for the laboratory work of detecting witches. But though the magistrates would not honor such testimony, the fact that it had been offered did seem to have a chastening effect on the girls. When Elizabeth Procter took the stand they eyed her in silence. But for John Indian, Elizabeth might have left the place without a count against her. "There is the woman who came in her shift and choked me!" he yelled suddenly. The ice was broken. The girls began to mutter and moan and to go into the preliminary stages to their mediumistic trance, and then to produce the din that Sewall called "awful." Elizabeth was sighted on what was now the classic perch for a witch, the beam, and half a dozen said that she had been after them to sign the Book. "Did you not tell me that your maid had written?" cried little Abigail. The "maid" was Mary Warren, who significantly was not present. "Dear child, it is not so" said Elizabeth. "There is another judgment, dear child." It was as if she, the mother and stepmother of John Procter's brood, thought she could reason with one so young and tender. But there had never been anything tender about Abigail; today her demon was rampant; even after court it set her in a poltergeist frenzy in pursuit of her uncle, still laboring at his notes over the long table, until finally the poor man could only record that the demons loosed upon the girls were beyond control, and fold up his report unfinished. Thanks to this diabolic meddlesomeness, the contribution of John Procter to the situation is obscure. He had come unsummoned to stand by his wife. At one point, while he was raising his stentorian voice in order to make himself heard above the tumult, young Abigail turned on him with an air of pleased discovery. "Why he can pinch as well as she!" exclaimed Abigail, and she, unfortunately, was heard. Procter had never been given to holding his tongue in a crisis. Certainly his voice boomed out again and again during the scene that followed. But either Parris could not hear him through the uproar, or he considered everything he heard irrelevant. The magistrates, intent upon the reactions of the girls as their true source of information, turned to him only in reproof. "You see the devil will deceive you," one of them said. "The children could see what you was going to do before the woman was hurt. I would advise you to repentance, for the devil is bringing you out." Procter was learning that he had spoken more truly than he knew when he said that the girls if let alone would "make devils of us all." He must have accompanied his accused wife to Salem confident that now that some of the soberest minds in the colony, notably Danforth and Sewall, were investigating the witchcraft, common sense would prevail. Instead he now saw something like witchcraft of a most unexpected and disturbing nature. The common sense of these men had abdicated before the crazed fantasies of wenches in their teens. Had these men no eyes to see? Had they no daughters or sisters that they should not know how silly a female can be in the silly season of her teens, to what lengths she can go in her craving for attention? Procter knew how to handle the witches; look at Mary Warren, who knew better than to come to court today. Just give him a chance to demonstrate his therapy on the rest. But Procter's reasoning was like blasphemy to the magistrates. With them the devil had indeed taken over; this was his hour and the power of darkness; he came in the form of a stern mad logic, a closed circle which admitted no intrusion from the world of objectively observed reality. Or rather it was a logic which admitted of only one reality, the affliction of these girls and their testimony as to its cause. The girls had pointed out Procter as "a most dreadful wizard"; he must be put away with the rest. And so he was." More to follow................Bonnie