an action; but he could not recover damages. The horses were evidently
trespassing, and the Court did not seem to regard Jacobs's conduct as
a heinous matter. It is not to be supposed, that Nathaniel Putnam
harbored sentiments of revenge or resentment for eighteen years, or
had any hand in prosecuting Jacobs in 1692. There is every indication
that he did not sympathize in the violent passions which raged on that
occasion, although he was much under the power of the delusion. But
the affair of drowning the horses was probably for a long time a topic
of gossip, and may have given to the author of the catastrophe a
notoriety which nearly cost him his life.

The account that has been given of the elements of the population of
the Salem Farms or Village, shows that, while there were the usual
varieties entering into the composition of all communities, it is
wholly inadmissible to suppose that the witchcraft delusion took place
there because it was the scene of greater ignorance or stupidity or
barbarism than prevailed elsewhere. This will be made more apparent
still by some general views of the state of society and manners. The
people of a remote age are in general only regarded as they are seen
through prominent occurrences and public movements. These constitute
the ordinary materials of history. Dynasties, reigns of kings, armies,
legislative proceedings, large ecclesiastical synods, dogmatic creeds,
and the like, are, as a general thing, about all we know of the past.
Portraits of individuals appear here and there; but, separated from
the ordinary life of the times, they cannot be fairly or fully
appreciated. The public life of the past is but the outline, or, more
strictly speaking, the mere skeleton, of humanity. To fill up the
outline, to clothe the skeleton with elastic nerves and warm flesh,
and quicken it with a vital circulation, we must get at the domestic,
social, familiar, and ordinary experience of individuals and private