Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 10.djvu/365

 The First New

��England Witch.

��349

��to be an old and infu-in man, he was made to figin'o iiiilia|)i)ily in tlio first le<j:al investigation of New England witclieraft. This was in 1679-'81, or more than ten years before tlie Salem witchcraft, and it constitutes a page of liilherto unpnblisJK'd Massachnsetts history. INIr. and JNIrs. Morse resid- ed in a plain, wooden house, that still stands at the head of Mariiet street, in what is now Newburyport. William had been a farmer, but his sons had now taken the liomestead, and he was supporting himself and wife by shoe-making. His age was almost three score years and ten, and he was a reputably worthy man, then just in the early years of his dotage. His wife, the ''goody Elizabeth," was a Newbury woman, and appar- ently some few years her husband's senior.

I think I see the worthy old couple there in the old square room of a winter's night. On one side of the fire-place sits the old man in his hard arm-chair, his hands folded and his spectacles awry, as he sonorously snores awa\' the time. Opposite him sits the old lady, a little, toothless dame, with angular features half-hid- den in a stiffly-starched white cap, her fingers flying over her knitting-work, as precisely and perseveringly she " seams," " narrows," and " widens." At the old lady's right hand stands a cherry table, on which burns a yellow tallow candle that occasionally the dame proceeds to snuff. On the floor is no carpet, and the furniture is poor and plain. A kitchen chair sets at the other side of the table, and in it, or on it, sits a half-grown boy, a ruddy, freckled country boy, who wants to whistle, and prefers to go out and

��play, but who is required to stay in the house, to sit still, and to read from out the leather-covered Bible that lies open on the table before him.

" But I would like to go out and slide down hill ! " begs the boy.

" Have you read yer ten chapters yit?" asks the old dame.

"N-no!"

'^ AVal, read on."

And the lad obeys. He is reading aloud ; he is not a good reader ; the chapters are in Deuteronomy ; but that stint must be performed every evening — ten chapters after six o'clock ; and at eight he must go to bed. If he moves uneasily in his chair, or stops to breathe, he is rep- rimanded.

The boy was the grandson of the old couple, and resided with them. Under just such restrictions he was kept. Bright, quick, and full of bo}' life, he was restless under the en- forced restraint.

In the neigborhood resided a Yan- kee school-master named Caleb Pow- ell, a fellow who delighted in inter- fering with the affairs of his neigh- bors, and in airing his wisdom on al- most every known subject. He no- ticed that the Puritan families kept their boys too closely confined ; and, influenced by surreptitious gifts of cider and cheese, he interceded in their behalf. He was regarded as an oracle, and was listened to with re- spect. Gran'ther Morse was among those argued with, and being told that the boy was losing his health, etc., etc. by being " kept in " so much, he at once consented to give him a rest from the Bible readings and let him play out of doors and at the houses of the neighbors. Once re-

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