violent and hasty passions; he exerted his influence indecorously
and unjustifiably to compass the death of the enthusiasts; and
his whole conduct, in respect to them, was marked by brutal
cruelty. The Quakers, whose revengeful feelings were not less
deep because they were inactive, remembered this man and his
associates in after times. The historian of the sect affirms
that, by the wrath of Heaven, a blight fell upon the land in the
vicinity of the "bloody town" of Boston, so that no wheat would
grow there; and he takes his stand, as it were, among the graves
of the ancient persecutors, and triumphantly recounts the
judgments that overtook them, in old age or at the parting hour.
He tells us that they died suddenly and violently and in madness;
but nothing can exceed the bitter mockery with which he records
the loathsome disease, and "death by rottenness," of the fierce
and cruel governor.

. . . . . . . . .

On the evening of the autumn day that had witnessed the martyrdom
of two men of the Quaker persuasion, a Puritan settler was
returning from the metropolis to the neighboring country town in
which he resided. The air was cool, the sky clear, and the
lingering twilight was made brighter by the rays of a young moon,
which had now nearly reached the verge of the horizon. The
traveller, a man of middle age, wrapped in a gray frieze cloak,
quickened his pace when he had reached the outskirts of the town,
for a gloomy extent of nearly four miles lay between him and his
home. The low, straw-thatched houses were scattered at
considerable intervals along the road, and the country having
been settled but about thirty years, the tracts of original