CHAPTER VI.
A Disorderly Scene in Church.
If anything were needed to add to the excitement which the condition of the "afflicted children," as they were generally termed, naturally produced in Salem village and the adjoining neighborhood, it was a scene in the village church one Sunday morning.
The church was a low, small structure, with rough, unplastered roof and walls, and wooden benches instead of pews.

The sexes were divided, the men sitting on one side and the women on the other, but each person in his or her regular and appointed seat.
It was the custom at that time to select a seating committee of judicious and careful men, whose very important duty it was to seat the congregation.

In doing this they proceeded on certain well-defined principles.
The front seats were to be filled with the older members of the congregation, a due reverence for age, as well as for the fact that these were more apt to be weak of sight and infirm of hearing, necessitated this.

Then came the elders and deacons of the church; then the wealthier citizens of the parish; then the younger people and the children.
The Puritan fathers had their faults; but they never would have tolerated the fashionable custom of these days, whereby the wealthy, without regard to their age, occupy the front pews; and the poorer members, no matter how aged, or infirm of sight or hearing are often forced back where they can neither see the minister nor hear the sermon.
And one can imagine in what forcible terms they would have denounced some city meeting-houses of the present era where the church is regarded somewhat in the light of an opera house, and the doors of the pews kept locked and closed until those who have purchased the right to reserved seats shall have had the first chance to enter.
The Reverend Master Lawson, a visiting elder, was the officiating minister on the Sunday to which we have referred.

The psalm had been sung after the opening prayer and the minister was about to come forward to give his sermon, when, before he could rise from his seat, Abigail Williams, the niece of the Reverend Master Parris, only twelve years old, and one of the "circle" cried out loudly:--"Now stand up and name your text!" When he had read the text, she exclaimed insolently, "It's a long text." And then when he was referring to his doctrine, she said:--"I know no doctrine you mentioned.