" Mr. Lawson, the minister, wrote with much simplicity that "these
things occurring in the time of public worship did something interrupt me
in my first prayer, being so unusual." But he braced himself up in spite
of Ann and the demoniacal yellow-bird, and finished the service. These
disorderly interruptions occurred on every Lord's Day, growing weekly
more constant and more universal, and must have been unbearable. Some few
disgusted members withdrew from the church, giving as reason that "the
distracting and disturbing tumults and noises made by persons under
diabolical power and delusions, preventing sometimes our hearing and
understanding and profiting of the word preached; we having after many
trials and experiences found no redress in this case, accounted ourselves
under a necessity to go where we might hear the word in quiet." These
withdrawing church-members were all of families that contained at least
one person that had been accused of practising witchcraft. They were thus
severely intolerant of the sacrilegious and lawless interruptions of the
shy young "victims," who received in general only sympathy, pity, and even
stimulating encouragement from their deluded and excited neighbors.
One very pleasing interruption,--no, I cannot call it by so severe a
name,--one very pleasing diversion of the attention of the congregation
from the parson was caused by an innocent custom that prevailed in many a
country community.
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