THE clouds of superstition still hung heavily over humanity when the first homes were made in Massachusetts. The settlers had that faith in God which could support them through the dangers and trials attendant upon the establishment of a home in the wilderness. They had an equally vivid belief in the existence not only of Satan, but of an innumerable host of imps who waited upon him to do his bidding. The first voyagers who approached our shore reported that they "saw Indians and devils sitting upon the rocks; "the settlers, sitting in their homes in the evening with the doors and windows tightly barred, while the forest choirs raised their nocturnal anthems, could distinguish the voices of devils mingling with the bark of the fox, the howl of the wolf, and the scream of the catamount. And even Obadiah Turner, one of the brightest and steadiest lights of the community, credited Satan with personal attentions rendered. He tells his own story best:
     It was somewhat within ye night when we came in sight of home. In coming oyer ye hillock near ye doore of our habitation, I descried a daintie white rabbit, as yt seemed, wch I deemed would make a savory dish for breakfast on ye morrow. Giving chase, I was soon almost vpon him, ,when, lo, he ,whisked up a bushy tail over his hinder parts, and then threw it towards me with a mighty rush; and yt shed upon me a liquor of such stinke yt nothing but ye opening of ye bottomless pit can equal. My eyes were blinded, and my breath seemed stopped forever. When I recovered, ye smell remained vpon me, insomuch yt they would fain drive me from ye house, saying yt they could not abide within while I remained. And I still carry yt about with me in a yet terrible degree. I am persuaded yt is another device of Satan; yt four-footed beast being an impe let to do ye Devil his baptism by sprinkling."
     Among a people thus ready to give the devil his due and more, it is little wonder that belief in witchcraft, which had held full sway in England and on the continent for two centuries, should be regarded almost as one of the tenets of their religion. Against an inherited superstition, reason and judgment are of little avail.
     The popular idea of a witch was grotesque; the theory being that in the constant endeavor of Satan to win back to himself those souls who had been redeemed by the death of Christ and baptized, many, probably most, would be faithful to their vows and the church, in which case he had no power over them; but that occasionally an individual would be found, who, yielding to his wiles, entered into a written compact whereby, in exchange for their souls, they received certain specified powers to work evil, such as to raise storms, blast crops, render men and beasts barren, inflict racking pains upon an enemy or cause him to waste away in sickness; and an evil spirit was appointed as a special attendant, which most often took the form of a cat, but could transform itself at will into the likeness of any other animal. It was believed that Satan made his conquests in the form of a beautiful man or maiden, with whom vows of love were plighted, and that at certain stated times were held meetings of witches and their satanic lovers, called witches' sabbaths, to which they rode through the air seated comfortably astride of a broomstick, making their exit by the chimney and returning in the same manner; and having sold themselves to Satan, as good subjects they must continually strive to induce others to similarly dispose of themselves. But with all the power thus conferred upon the deluded mortal, they could not exercise it to better their own condition.
     There were various methods of testing alleged witches, to ascertain if they were guilty of forbidden practices. One was, to confront them with their victims, and if the paroxysms or phenomena of the infliction were repeated, it was regarded as positive proof of guilt. Another method was, to search the body of tbe accused for the "devil's mark." When the compact with Satan was sealed, he was supposed to touch some part of the body, which at once lost the sense of touch. The delicate and humane method of finding this mark was to remove the witch's clothing, and examine every portion of the body, using sharp needles to locate the insensible part. Another method, and one which was deemed infallible, was to cast the accused into deep water. If she floated, it was infallible evidence of satanic assistance. If she sunk, she was as conclusively proved innocent; but the vindication usually came too late to be of much comfort to the accused. All these dark superstitions the settlers in these New England towns brought with them from England. For some years they had more tangible things to occupy their attention, but when the occasion served, the pent-up flames burst forth with redoubled fury.
     In those early days the New England towns were more closely bound together in a common interest than now, and though the earliest outbreaks of the witchcraft mania took place in Boston and Salem, the people of Lynn were as profoundly stirred by them as the dwellers in the localities named. The first person to be denounced as a witch and arrested, condemned and executed was Margaret Jones of Charlestown, this occurring in 1648. Seven years later Mrs. Ann Hibbins, of Boston, was charged with witchcraft and condemned. Her case attracted widespread attention, and there were many dissenters from the severity of her sentence. The charge against her consisted chiefly in the allegation that she possessed a crabbed temper, and the original accusation was doubtless caused by personal spite. She was executed on Boston Common. From that time until 1692 there were occasional and widely separated accusations and trials for witchcraft, not enough to cause great popular excitement, but sufficient to keep alive the fire of superstition, ready to burst into flame when the occasion should serve.
     The outbreak came in 1692, and so startlingly near our doors as to almost achieve the importance of a local eyent. Salem Village, now a portion of Danvers, is a quiet, unpretentious place, little suggestive of witchcraft or anything else so uncanny and weird. The quiet street still winds by the same old trees which stood there then, and the houses which were the homes of the principal actors in the bloody drama remain upon the old foundations. The parsonage was the scene of the first outbreak. Two children of the Rev. Samuel Parris were attacked with convulsions, and a black slave called Tituba was accused of having bewitched them, the accusation being made by a number of young girls who had been accustomed to meet at the parsonage at stated times during the winter. Tituba was promptly arrested, and in due course of justice put on trial. Nothing could be proyed against her that would justify summary proceedings, and the principal excuse for holding her in jail for nine months were certain boastful claims made by her at her trial which have a strong suggestion of modern spiritualism. She was finally sold for payment of jail fees. The excitement caused by this occurrence soon rose to a frenzy. As though encouraged by their success in the case mentioned, the circle of girls soon after made accusation against well-known and hitherto respected residents of the surrounding country, and when confronted with the victims in court, the girls would calmly make the most preposterous statements of things done by the accused, which were accepted by the learned jurists of the day as competent evidence. Several of the accused persons, in order to save their lives, confessed to having signed their names in the Devil's book, to having been baptized by him, and to have attended midnight meetings of witches, or sacraments held on the green near the parsonage, to which they came riding through the air. They admitted that he had sometimes appeared to them in the form of a black dog or cat, sometimes in that of a horse, and once as "a fine, grave man," but generally as a black man of severe aspect. But many would not so confess, and suffered the penalty. The trials were the merest farce, the judgment apparently being made before the evidence was in. Thirteen women and five men were hung, and two - Rev. George Burroughs and Giles Corey - were pressed to death beneath heavy weights because they would neither confess nor plead to their accusations. More than one hundred others were accused and imprisoned, of whom seven belonged in Lynn. Many of these persons were of advanced age, and the long months spent in Boston prison must have been a terrible hardship. It was a reign of terror indeed. No one was safe. The honored citizen of one day often found himself doomed upon the next, and many happy homes were, without a moment's warning, broken up, and the father or mother, and sometimes both, hurried off to prison and the mockery of a trial. The delusion finally furnished the cause of its downfall. The Rev. Jeremiah Shepherd of Lynn was denounced as a wizard. The charge was so manifestly absurd, and the friends of the worthy pastor made such demonstrations of opposition, that the judges called a halt. The excitement cooled as quickly as it had risen. Those confined in jail were released, and in many cases compensated for lost time; and most of the girls whose antics had caused the mischief, came before the church, humbly confessed their errors - the blame for which was duly laid upon Satan, who had possessed them - and pleaded for forgiveness. Thus ended this most weird and bloody chapter in the history of our city and vicinity. It reads little like a story of real life actually lived near the spot we call home; yet such it is. The superstitions of those old days are gone - or exchanged; but whether exchanged or gone will not be told until two more centuries have passed by. Perhaps, then, some poet will sing of the romance of these days as sweetly as Whittier has sung the requiem of the days gone by:

          " How has New England's romance fled,
          Even as a vision of the morning !
          Its rites foredone, - its guardians dead, -
          Its priestesses, bereft of dread,
          Waking the veriest urchin's scorning!
          Gone like the Indian wizard's yell,
          And fire-dance round the magic rock!
          Forgotten like the Druid's spell
          At moonrise by his holy oak!
          No more along the shadowy glen
          Glide the dim ghosts of murdered men;
          No more the unquiet churchyard dead
          Glimpse upward from their turfy bed,
          Startling the traveller, late and lone;
          As on some night of starless weather
          They silently commune together,
          Each sitting on his own headstone!
          The roofless house, decayed, deserted,
          Its living tenants all departed,
          No longer rings with midnight revel
          Of witch, or ghost, or goblin evil;
          No pale blue flame sends out its flashes
          Through creviced roof or shattered sashes! -
          The witch-grass round the hazel spring
          May sharply to the night-air sing,
          But there no more shall withered hags
          Refresh at ease their broomstick nags,
          Or taste those hazel-shadowed waters
          As beverage meet for Satan's daughters;
          No more their mimic tones be heard, -
          The mew of cat, -the chirp of bird, -
          Shrill blending with the hoarser laughter
          Of the fell demon following after!"

          "SHE stood upon a bare, tall crag
          Which overlooked her rugged cot -
          A wasted, gray and meagre hag,
          In features evil as her lot.
          She had the crooked nose of a witch,
          And a crooked back and chin;
          And in her gait she had a hitch,
          And in her hand she carried a switch
          To aid her work of sin -
          A twig of wizard hazel, which
          Had grown beside a haunted ditch."

      Whittier must have given his then youthful fancy loose rein in this wordpicture of our famous townswoman. Doubtless he described what, according to the popular fancy, a witch should resemble. But Moll Pitcher was no witch, though doubtless if she had lived in the days of the witchcraft frenzy, she would have been hanged as such with little ceremony. But it was less than three-quarters of a century ago that she lived in her little cottage, opposite the head of Pearl street, on the north side of Essex, where for fifty years she solved the doubts and mysteries which troubled her contemporaries. Her father, Capt. John Dimond, commanded a small vessel sailing out of Marblehead. She was born in 1738, and early married Robert Pitcher, a Lynn shoemaker - a man of no force of character - and the chief burden of the support of the little family, one son and three daughters, early fell on her. Her ancestors had borne a reputation as wizards of greater or less attainment, a favorite accomplishment of her grandfather having been to pace up and down among the graves in the churchyard during the most furious storms, and direct the course of vessels attempting to make the harbor, his voice plainly audible to the sailors, no matter, how loudly the storm might roar, or how far out the vessel might be. With such a reputation ready-made in the family, it is, perhaps, little wonder that young Mistress Pitcher sought to lighten the pressure of poverty by the exercise of her inherited gifts. But whatever was the motive that first impelled her to practice the art of soothsaying, her early success was great, and her fame spread until her musical name became a household word not only throughout this land and England, but in every port where the Yankee sailor spun his yarns, were related stories of the Lynn pythoness, which doubtless suflered no loss of embellishment or detail because of the inborn credulity of the sailor boys. Her powers lay in no special direction, but she was sought alike by the swain in doubt as to the feelings of his fair one; by the maiden anxious to know of the safety of her sailor lover; by the sailor, to know if he should have a safe return; by the merchant, solicitous of the success of his ventures; and by the noble, to learn the future course of the affairs of state. The well-worn path to her cottage was trodden by rich and poor, high and low, alike, No matter what their station in the outside world, within the brown cottage beneath the shadow of High Rock, in the presence of the renowned fortune-teller, they stood on a common level, and for a consideration could learn the whereabouts of lost property or friends, or get the merest peep behind the curtain of the future. 
     Lewis, who was familiar with her appearance, having known her, leaves a picture very diffrent from the fancy sketch of the Quaker bard: "She was of medium height and size for a woman, with a good form and agreeable manners. Her head, phrenologically considered, was somewhat capacious, her forehead broad and full, her hair dark brown, her nose inclining to be long, and her face pale and thin. Her countenance was intellectual, and she had the contour of face and expression which, without being positively beautiful, is nevertheless decidedly interesting, - a thoughtful, pensive, sometimes downcast look, almost approaching to melancholy, - an eye, when she looked at you, of calm and keen penetration, - and an expression of intelligent discernment half mingled with a glance of shrewdness." 
     What was the secret of the remarkable power of Moll Pitcher? Here she dwelt all the years of a long life, going in and out before the people, her life open before them; reputable, charitable, and given to no occult or mysterious rites other than scanning the bottom of a tea-cup or musing over the cards, and it is most likely that she had little regard for these ceremonies, but used them to gain time while cautiously watching her visitors for a clue to their history or desires; but more often she calmly looked her customers over and talked with them face to face. Yet her fame increased with her years. The stories that are told of her achievements, not only in piercing the secrets of the future, but in solving the mysteries of the current happenings, would rouse the smile of incredulity were they not recorded by persons of undoubted veracity and reliability. Possibly to great native shrewdness and tact in divining the hidden thoughts and desires of her visitors was added in a high degree the clairvoyant faculty; but probably most of her revelations could be accounted for without resort to this intangible quality. According to the proverb, "it is the unexpected that happens;" not that the occurrences of every day are not the natural outcome of antecedent acts, but because men, in forming their expectations, ordinarily think along the line of their desires, rather than according to the logic of the events of their past lives. If, therefore, the sibyl, having gained from the unsuspecting guest the main facts of his life to the time of their meeting, has the logical force to deduce from them their natural outcome in his after years, the "fortune" which she may tell him will very likely be vastly different from his anticipations, but will probably be the things which must inevitably result from his course of life. To a mind on the alert and trained by long experience, the slightest admission may be a sufficient clew to the secret of a life. Doubtless Moll Pitcher made a great many mistakes. These would be little heard of and soon forgotten. but a prediction verified under extraordinary circumstances was sure to be talked of as a wonder, and to lose nothing in each repetition; and among the thousands who sought her counsel, there could hardly fail of being many who would unconsciously furnish her with the data for a wonderfullv accurate "fortune." But even this supposition will not satisfactorily account for many of her achievements in her peculiar line, and it is easier to lay the secret of them at the door of clairvoyance than to trace them to their actual origin. Whatever was the secret of her power, she was the most successful fortune-teller of her day; she had no equal among her predecessors, and since she died there has been none like her. The home she lived in still stands near its old foundation, on Essex, at the head of Pearl street. If only its walls could he induced to tell the many strange things they have heard in their day, and the names of all the persons who crossed the sibyl's palm with the magic key to her knowledge of the future, what a wondrously interesting story could be written! She was married on the 2nd of October, 1760, and died April 9th, 1813.

          "Even she, our own weird heroine,
          Sole Pythoness of ancient Lynn,
          Sleeps calmly where the living laid her;
          And the wide realm of sorcery,
          Left by its latest mistress free,
          Hath found no gray and skilled invader."

     THIS strange wanderer of the seas can scarcely be classed as an exclusively Lynn institution, but in the early part of the present century he created a tremendous sensation here and hereabouts. That there was such a visitor to our shores and bay in the early summer of 1819 and several seasons after, is true past question; it was through attempts to describe him, and worse still, to estimate his length, that many reputations well established as to truth and veracity received a wrench from which they have never recovered. When Col. T. H. Perkins, a well-known resident of Boston, was asked by an English friend whether he had heard of the sea serpent, he replied: "Unfortunately I have seen it." He felt that a shadow had somehow closed in upon him from which he was unable to emerge.
     His snakeship's comings were as unannounced as his departures were unceremonious, and he was frequently seen taking his morning swim along the shores, his head elevated at a good sight-seeing distance above the waves. Whether the people he saw were too inquisitive, or the country not to his liking, is not known, but he declined to fix his residence here, though no doubt he could have made very advantageous terms as a permanent summer attraction. A recently published letter by a fellow townsman gives as good a description of him as any we have seen.

                                                                                                                                                            "LYNN, MASS., June 26, 1881.
MR. C. F. HOLDER.
     Dear Sir: - Yours of the 24th inst. came duly to hand, and, in reply to that part of it relating to the account given by myself of a strange fish, serpent, or some other marine animal called a sea serpent, I have to say that I saw him on a pleasant, calm summer morning of August, 1819, from Long Beach, Lynn, now Nahant. At this time he was about a quarter of a mile away; but the water was so smooth that I could plainly see his head and the motion of his body, but not distinctly enough to give a good description of him. Later in the day I saw him again off 'Red Rock.' He then passed along about one hundred feet from where I stood, with head ahout two feet out of the water, and his speed was ahout the ordinary of a common steamer. What I saw of his length was from fifty to sixty feet.
     It was very difficult to count the bunches or humps (not fins) upon his back, as, by the undulating motion, they did not all appear at once. This accounts, in part, for the varied descriptions given of him by different parties. His appearance upon the surface of the water was occasional and but for a short time. The color of his skin was dark, differing but little from the water, or the back of any common fish. This is the best description I can give of him from my own observation, and I saw the monster just as truly, although not quite so clearly, as I ever saw anything.
     This matter has been treated by many as a hoax, fish story, or a seaside phenomenon to bring trade and profit to the watering-places; but, nothwithstanding all this, there is no doubt in my mind that some kind of an uncommon or strange rover in the form of a snake or a serpent, called an ichthyosaurus, plesiosaurus, or some other long-named marine animal, has been seen by hundreds of men and boys in our own, if not in other waters. And five persons beside myself - Amos Lawrence, Samuel Cabot and James Prince, of Boston, Benjamin F. Newhall, of Saugus, and John Marston, of Swampscott - bore public testimony of having seen him at the time.

                                                                                                                                          Yours Truly,
                                                                                                                                                      NATHAN D. CHASE,"

     The gentlemen named were all interviewed at the time, and their testimony, to make it, if possible, more conclusive, was sworn to before a magistrate, and differed only in detail from that of Mr. Chase, except that Mr. Marston thought he might have been a hundred feet long. At various times and in various places, from Nahant to Nova Scotia, his serpentine majesty has suddenly raised his head above the waves, carrying wonder and affright to the hearts of all beholders. All tell about the same story of him with the exception of the crew of the bark "Pauline," of London. Their testimony, taken before a magistrate at Liverpool, was:
     "Borough of Liverpool, in the County Palatine of Lancaster, to wit: We, the undersigned, captain, officers and crew of the bark Pauline of Liverpool, in the County of Lancaster, in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, do solemnly and sincerely declare that on July 8th, 1875, in latitute 5 deg. S. and longitude 35 deg. W., we observed three large sperm whales, and one of them was gripped round the body with two turns of what appeared to be a huge serpent. The head and tail appeared to have a length beyond the coils of about thirty feet, and its girth eight or nine feet. The serpent whirled its victim round and round for about fifteen minutes, and then suddenly dragged the whale to the bottom head first. George Drevar, Master; Horatio Thompson, John Henderson Landells, Owen Baker, William Lewarn."
     That was quite a fish story, but it by no means measured their capacity in that line, for five days later three of the same ship's crew made affidavit that they had seen the serpent, his head "elevated some sixty feet in the air." What length of body and tail would be required to enable the serpent to elevate his head sixty feet in the air," we leave for others to figure out; but it seems a pity that they could not have been contented to let a good enough story alone. At intervals during these later years this strange wanderer of the seas has put in an appearance now here, now there; but those across whose path he has swum have become very guarded in their references to him, owing, possibly, to sundry unkind references to the unaqueous condition of their ship stores. But the local descriptions given of this king of the serpents have attracted wide attention in scientific circles, and eyen inspired one poet's muse:

          "Welter upon the waters, mighty one,
          And stretch thee in the ocean's trough of brine;
          Turn thy wet scales up to the wind and sun,
          And toss the billows from thy flashing fin;
          Heave thy deep breathings to the ocean's din,
          And bound upon its ridges in thy pride;
          Or dive down to its lowest depths, and in
          The caverns where its unknown monsters hide,
          Measure thy length beneath the gulf stream tide;
          Or rest thee on the navel of that sea
          Where, floating on the maelstrom, abide
          The Krakens, sheltering under Norway's lee
          But go not to Nahant, lest men should swear
          You are a great deal bigger than you are."
                                                                  - J. G. BRAINERD.