PREFACE

MY SALEM friends will expect me to remind the reader that the great outbreak of 1692 occurred in Salem Village, now Danvers, though the trials were held at Salem.

In view of some recent works on witchcraft, it seems only prudent to declare that I have no belief in the black art or in the interference of demons in the daily life of mortals.

Three of my eighteen chapters have already been published: the first, in the American Historical Review for October 1917 (now reprinted by permission of the editor, Professor Jameson, and the publishers, the Macmillan Company); the seventeenth, in Studies in the History of Religions Presented to Crawford Howell Toy, 1912 (reprinted by permission of the Harvard University Press); the eighteenth, in the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 1907 (reprinted by permission of the Society). Each of these chapters has undergone some slight revision.

G. L. K.

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
December 28, 1928