And there is
no doubt that the astounding and meaningless freaks of these half-crazed
fanatics were provoked by the cruel persecutions which they endured from
our much loved and revered, but alas, intolerant and far from perfect
Puritan Fathers. These poor Quakers were arrested, fined, robbed, stripped
naked, imprisoned, laid neck and heels, chained to logs of wood, branded,
maimed, whipped, pilloried, caged, set in the stocks, exiled, sold
into slavery and hanged by our stern and cruel ancestors. Perhaps some
gentle-hearted but timid Puritan souls may have inwardly felt that the
Indian wars, and the destructive fires, and the earthquakes, and the dead
cattle, blasted wheat, and wormy peas, were not judgments of God for small
ministerial pay and periwig-wearing, but punishments for the heartrending
woes of the persecuted Quakers.
Others than the poor Quakers spoke out in colonial meetings. In Salem
village and in other witch-hunting towns the crafty "victims" of the
witches were frequently visited with their mock pains and sham fits in the
meeting-houses, and they called out and interrupted the ministers most
vexingly. Ann Putnam, the best and boldest actress among those cunning
young Puritan witch-accusers, the protagonist of that New England tragedy
known as the Salem Witchcraft, shouted out most embarrassingly, "There is
a yellow-bird sitting on the minister's hat, as it hangs on the pin in the
pulpit.
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