While Cotton Mather was fighting off the devil in Bos-
ton, Salem Village was pulling itself together after its
ordeal.

It was not altogether unlike returning to a community
which has been sacked by Indians and trying to pick up
life again, except that it was in some ways more difficult.
The moral effect of a purely physical disaster may be
cleansing; when men unite against nature or a common
enemy they may keep their dignity even in ruin.

But though this thing which had passed had left the
houses standing and the fields untouched, it had brought
division and a sore sickness of spirit on the people. Hus-
band had "broken charity" with wife and wife with hus-
band, mother with child and child with mother. Even
worse had been the tattling of neighbor against neighbor.
Relationships in so small a community are organic; no
matter what the petty jars of day-to-day collisions, there
must be in a crisis a community of sympathy and under-
standing else there is no health. And here was little
health; not in a generation would it be forgotten how
neighbor had responded with spite to a neighbor's need.

Even the many who had kept their integrity, who had
spoken out for a friend in danger, had little peace of
mind. What they had seen had been corrosive of their

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