And, before very long, a regular "circle" of these and older girls was formed for the purpose of amusing and startling themselves with the investigation and performance of forbidden things.
At the present day this would not be so reprehensible.

We are comparatively an unbelieving generation; and what are called "spiritual circles" are common, though not always unattended with mischievous results.

But at that time when it was considered a deadly sin to seek intercourse with those who claimed to have "a familiar spirit," that such practices should be allowed to go on for a whole winter, in the house of a Puritan minister, seems unaccountable.

But the fact itself is undoubted, and the consequences are written in mingled tears and blood upon the saddest pages of the history of New England.
Among the members of this "circle" were Mary Walcott, aged seventeen, the daughter of Captain Walcott; Elizabeth Hubbard and Mercy Lewis, also seventeen; Elizabeth Booth and Susannah Sheldon, aged eighteen; and Mary Warren, Sarah Churchhill and Leah Herrick, aged twenty; these latter being the oldest of the party.

They were all the daughters of respectable and even leading men, with the exception of Mercy Lewis, Mary Warren, Leah Herrick and Sarah Churchhill, who were living out as domestics, but who seem to have visited as friends and equals the other girls in the village.