Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/9



PREFACE.

The requirements of literary conventionality seem to demand a preface as a necessary adjunct of a book—we had nearly written a necessary evil; and as the beaten path is acknowledged to be the safest, we yield in cheerful acquiescence—although to call that a preface which is usually written after the book is completed, would seem to unassisted reason very like a misnomer.

In giving the accompanying pages to the public, we would only say that it has seemed well to us that the widespread and terrible delusion, which so nearly made shipwreck of our infant colony at the close of the sev