the infected region, and his senses resumed their natural functions.  It was several days before his nervous agitations ceased.  Altogether, this is a remarkable case of hallucination:  showing that the wildest fancies brought before the mind in dreams may be paralleled in waking hours; and that mental excitement may, even then, close the avenues of the senses, exclude the perception of reality, and substitute unsubstantial visions in the place of actual and natural objects.

There may be an interest in some minds to know who the “little maid at the door” was.  The elder children of John Procter were either married off, or lived on his farm at Ipswich, with the exception of Benjamin, his oldest son, who remained with his father on the Salem farm.  Benjamin had been imprisoned two days before Bayley passed the house.  Four days before, Sarah, sixteen years of age, had also been arrested, and committed to jail.  This left only William, eighteen years of age, who, three days after, was himself put into prison; Samuel, seven; Abigail, between three and four years of age; and one still younger.  No female of the family was then at the house older than Abigail.  This poor deserted child was “the little maid.”  Curiosity to see the passing strangers, or possibly the hope that they might be her father and mother, or her brother and sister, brought her to the door.

In the terrible consequences that resulted from the mischievous, and perhaps at the outset merely sportive, proceedings of the children in Mr. Parris’s family, we have a striking illustration of the principle, that no one can foretell, with respect either to himself or others, the extent of the suffering and injury that may be occasioned by the least departure from truth, or from the practice of deception.  In the horrible succession of crimes through which those young persons were led to pass, in the depth of depravity to which they were thrown, we discern the fate that endangers all who enter upon a career of wickedness.

No one can have an adequate knowledge of the human mind, who has not contemplated its developments in scenes like those that have now been related.  It may be said of the frame of our spiritual, even with more emphasis than of our corporeal nature, that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.  In the maturity of his bodily and mental organization, health gliding through his veins, strength and symmetry clothing his form, intelligence beaming from his countenance, and immortality stamped on his brow, man is indeed the noblest work of God.  In the degradation and corruption to which he can descend, he is the most odious and loathsome object in the creation.  The human mind, when all its faculties are fully developed and in proper proportions, reason seated on its rightful throne and shedding abroad its light, memory embracing the past, hope smiling upon the future, faith leaning on Heaven, and the affections diffusing through all their gentle warmth, is worthy of its source, deserves