embrasures and its impregnable easemates they reared their families, they
met in love or wrath, they twined together in family knots, they hissed
defiance in hostile clans, they fed, slept, hibernated, and in due time
died in peace. Many a foray had the towns-people made, and many a
stuffed skin was shown as a trophy,--nay, there were families where the
children's first toy was made from the warning appendage that once
vibrated to the wrath of one of these "cruel serpents." Sometimes one of
them, coaxed out by a warm sun, would writhe himself down the hillside
into the roads, up the walks that led to houses,--worse than this, into
the long grass, where the barefooted mowers would soon pass with their
swinging scythes,--more rarely into houses, and on one memorable
occasion, early in the last century, into the meeting-house, where he
took a position on the pulpit-stairs,--as is narrated in the "Account of
Some Remarkable Providences," etc., where it is suggested that a strong
tendency of the Rev. Didymus Bean, the Minister at that time, towards the
Arminian Heresy may have had something to do with it, and that the
Serpent supposed to have been killed on the Pulpit-Stairs was a false
show of the Daemon's Contrivance, he having come in to listen to a
Discourse which was a sweet Savour in his Nostrils, and, of course, not
being capable of being killed Himself. Others said, however, that,
though there was good Reason to think it was a Damon, yet he did come
with Intent to bite the Heel of that faithful Servant,--etc.

One Gilson is said to have died of the bite of a rattlesnake in this town
early in the present century. After this there was a great snake-hunt,
in which very many of these venomous beasts were killed,--one in
particular, said to have been as big round as a stout man's arm, and to
have had no less than forty joints to his rattle,--indicating, according
to some, that he had lived forty years, but, if we might put any faith in
the Indian tradition, that he had killed forty human beings,--an idle