In this chair, from one year’s end to another, sat that prodigious book-worm, Cotton Mather, sometimes devouring a great book, and sometimes scribbling one as big. In Grandfather’s younger days, there used to be a wax figure of him in one of the Boston museums, representing a solemn, dark-visaged person, in a minister’s black gown, and with a black-letter volume before him.
"It is difficult, my children," observed Grandfather, "to make you understand such a character as Cotton Mather’s, in whom there was so much good, and yet so many failings and frailties. Undoubtedly, he was a pious man. Often he kept fasts; and once, for three whole days, he allowed himself not a morsel of food, but spent the time in prayer and religious meditation. Many a live-long night did he watch and pray. These fasts and vigils made him meagre and haggard, and probably caused him to appear as if he hardly belonged to the world."
"Was not the witchcraft delusion partly caused by Cotton Mather?" inquired Laurence.
"He was the chief agent of the mischief," answered Grandfather; "but we will not suppose that he acted otherwise than conscientiously. He believed that there were evil spirits all about the world. Doubtless he imagined that they were hidden in the corners and crevices of his library, and that they peeped out from among the leaves of many of his books, as he turned them over, at midnight. He supposed that these unlovely demons were everywhere, in the sunshine as well as in the darkness, and that they were hidden in men’s hearts, and stole into their most secret thoughts."
Here Grandfather was interrupted by little Alice, who hid her face in his lap, and murmured a wish that he would not talk any more about Cotton Mather and the evil spirits. Grandfather kissed her, and told her that angels were the only spirits whom she had any thing to do with. He then spoke of the public affairs of the period.
A new war between France and England had broken out in 1702, and had been raging ever since. In the course of it, New England suffered much injury from the French and Indians, who often came through the woods from Canada, and assaulted the frontier towns. Villages were sometimes burnt, and the inhabitants slaughtered, within a day’s ride of Boston. The people of New England had a bitter hatred against the French, not only for the mischief which they did with their own hands, but because they incited the Indians to hostility.