spectresmitten

Updated: May 5, 2025

All this is pleasant enough now; we can laugh at the Doctor and his demons; but little matter of laughter was it to the victims on Salem Hill; to the prisoners in the jails; to poor Giles Corey, tortured with planks upon his breast, which forced the tongue from his mouth and his life from his old, palsied body; to bereaved and quaking families; to a whole community, priest-ridden and spectresmitten, gasping in the sick dream of a spiritual nightmare and given over to believe a lie.

John Greenleaf Whittier - The Conflict with Slavery and Others, Complete, Volume VII,: The Works of Whittier: the Conflict with Slavery, Politics: and Reform, the Inner Life and Criticism