194
PARTISAN REVIEW
once she had a fit of choking and her throat swelled until she was
threatened with strangulation. Mather held her and stroked her
throat until the fit' passed. Whenever the fits returned, he could
always cure her with this stroking, a remedy in common use by
the lower order of witches.
For several months the Mather household lived in tumult.
Martha was the center of attraction, and she repaid the attentions
given her.
A
dozen times a day Mather forced her to her knees to
pray with her. She clapped her hands over her ears and declared
They were raising such a clamor she could not hear a word. At
times she walked with a heavy limp, and she explained that They
had clamped Bridget Glover's chain on her leg. Mather would
strike at the invisible chain and it would fall away. In his head·
long battle with the Devil, he used with precision the methods of
witchcraft described by those professional witchfinders Perkins,
Gaule, Bernard; and Martha responded properly. She surmised
hidden silver in the well, and it was found there. She spoke
in
strange languages, and "her belly would on a sudden be puft
up
strangely," one of the marks of diabolical possession as quoted
by Increase Mather in his useful table; now, I believe, noted as
one of the common symptoms of intestinal worms; and she did all
these things with high dramatic effect.
She was forever getting into states where Cotton Mather must
hurry to her rescue, and at times his. powers of exorcism were
tried severely. Mter a while, her mood would change into a
charming gayety. For days she would talk, "never wickedly,"
wrote Mather with affectionate admiration, "but always wittily and
b~yond
herself." He loved wit and gayety, and he dared not con·
fess this taste to the society he lived in; but he could not deny
himself the perverse joy he took in Martha's youth and spirits.
She was so entertaining in these moods he could not reprove her.
His role of religious guardian and exorcist forbade him to playa
foil to her, and her spirits flashed themselves away in empty air,
unsatisfied. Relapsing into her dark mood, she would say, "I want
to steal, or be drunk-then I would get well."
Martha was the first, and the most imaginative, of all the
girls who were to follow her
in
a blind destructive rebellion against
the perversion of life through religion, in the theocratic state.
Revolt was working in all directions; it was fermenting in politics,
