Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/150



CHAPTER IX.

GOODY REBECCA NURSE.

"Daring to shake, with rude, irreverent hands, From Life's frail glass the last slow-ebbing sands."

Among the best known, most influential, and widely respected of all the families of Salem village was the large family of Francis Nurse.

"Goodman," or "Grandfather," or "Landlord Nurse," which were the several titles of respect usually accorded to him, as the honored head and patriarch of his numerous family of children and grandchildren, was then about seventy-six years of age.

He appears to have been a man of great and acknowledged respectability; a person of much energy and stability of character, and his judgment was much relied upon by his neighbors; he being frequently appoint