His _Diary_ runs with some breaks from 1673 to 1729, the year before his
death. Good diaries are scarce in any literature. Those who keep them
seldom commit to writing many of the most interesting events and secrets of
their lives. This failing makes the majority of diaries and memoirs very
dry, but this fault cannot be found with Samuel Sewall. His _Diary_ will
more and more prove a mine of wealth to the future writers of our
literature, to our dramatists, novelists, poets, as well as to our
historians. The early chronicles and stories on which Shakespeare founded
many of his plays were no more serviceable to him than this _Diary_ may
prove to a coming American writer with a genius like Hawthorne's.

In Sewall's _Diary_ we at once feel that we are close to life. The
following entry brings us face to face with the children in a Puritan
household:--

"Nov. 6, 1692. Joseph threw a knop of brass and hit his sister Betty on
the forehead so as to make it bleed and swell; upon which, and for his
playing at Prayer-time, and eating when Return Thanks, I whipped him
pretty smartly. When I first went in (called by his Grandmother) he
sought to shadow and hide himself from me behind the head of the cradle:
which gave me the sorrowful remembrance of Adam's carriage."

Sewall was one of the seven judges who sentenced nineteen persons to be put
to death for witchcraft at Salem. After this terrible delusion had passed,
he had the manliness to rise in church before all the members, and after
acknowledging "the blame and shame of his decision," call for "prayers that
God who has an unlimited authority would pardon that sin."

Sewall's _Diary_ is best known for its faithful chronicle of his courtship
of Mrs. Catharine Winthrop. Both had been married twice before, and both