The Arkansaw traveler., 1889-11-09

only Tn ana trAnsceudental exclusiveness of the inner circles, but among the plain everyday people whose cult is simplicity and whose creed has been voiced by poet of the people:
 ""God bless me. and my wife.
 No more"
 But the "four" includes generations and Bos- ton child who prays goes back at least two centu- res 10 remember the great great great grandmother of the ancestral spinning wheel part of its peti- ton. This reverence for family traditions was illustrated at Salem a few days ago when l was introduced to Rebeeca Noursc who was hanged for A witch. It rather remarkable that her pamesake and ineal descendant should herself show with family pride the pins which had pierced the tender flesh of that other Rebecca by order Of the thorities These pins the ordinary brass headed "pound pins' ot the time and are now black with age. They shown at the Salem court house with volume of great size, which contains the cient documents the death warrants of Rebecca Nourse and others who were hanged by the legal luminaries of those days, the testimony and pondence. Our ancestors did not know how to "spel' any better than did Josh Billings Tn their testimony they speak of "aparrishuns" and of child who "aAicted with ftts;" said child caused the death of sn innocent woman by these same "fitts," being generouslie afflicted" The doc tor could not help the child, who died iu convul- sons after five hours of great suffering, from being bewitched by an evil eye.
 The spirit of witchcraft still seems to brood Salem. It is mdewy with age and its roofs are green with moss and lchens grow on its walls It is said that the oldest church in Massachusetts can be seen here. 1t is old enough certainly, for its beams are crumbling to powder It is a small building set back between the Essex Institute and another building. We obtained the key-it was an immense bit of wrought iron with log of wood attached to 1t by & chan-and went in 1t was like entering & vault. The first Puritan church in America was certainly & very small modest building. One ancient with mildewed walls and sn ancient movable pew was where the lads and asses of 1884 knelt in worship. The back of the seat four feet high and stily upright the backs of our dear, bgoted ancestors It was afterward used as & "skoole house." The object In 1t of most interest to me old wooden desk which Nathaniel Hawthorne used in the Salem custom house. 1t had his name cut in the wood by his own hand, and covered with rude arabefques of unwritten thought, caprices of imagery when the cunning hand revolted against figures and in- voices and cut deep into the sensitive wood, making idle marks that the future pilgrim should read and interpret.
 From this point we went 10 the "witch- house," the honse of Roger Williams, with its great white chimney and dark trial room where those miserable women sat and actually helped to read their own doom by assenting to every charge made against them. Must and mildew covered everything and there was dampness of death. Not even the hot fire in the "A. r. O. T. H. K. K. A. R. "" shop, in the fthe old building, could warm up its old bones.
 I went to the "House of the Seven Gables" because 1t is really not the house, but Hawthorne lived and wrote there. I sat on the old wooden settee and looked out the water with its neet of white winged ships and tried to feel the inspira-