New England. By the fruit let the seed be judged. The State to whose
rough coast the _Mayflower_ came, and in which the Pilgrim spirit has
been most active, is to-day the chief of all human societies,
politically, morally, and socially. It is the community in which the
average of well-being is higher than in any State we know in history.
Puritan though it be, it is more truly liberal and free than any large
community in the world. But it had bleak beginnings. The icy shore,
the sombre pines, the stealthy savages, the hard soil, the unbending
religious austerity, the Scriptural severity, the arrogant virtues,
the angry intolerance of contradiction--they all made a narrow strip
of sad civilization between the pitiless sea and the remorseless
forests. The moral and physical tenacity which is wrestling with the
Rebellion was toughened among these flinty and forbidding rocks. The
fig, the pomegranate, and the almond would not grow there, nor the
nightingale sing; but nobler men than its children the sun never shone
upon, nor has the heart of man heard sweeter music than the voices of
James Otis and Samuel Adams. Think of Plymouth in 1620, and of
Massachusetts to-day! Out of strength came forth sweetness.

With some of the darkest passages in Puritan history this old town of
Salem, which dozes apparently with the most peaceful conscience in the
world, is identified, and while its Fourth of July bells were joyfully
ringing sixty years ago Nathaniel Hathorne was born. He subsequently
chose to write the name Hawthorne, because he thought he had
discovered that it was the original spelling. In the introduction to
_The Scarlet Letter_, Hawthorne speaks of his ancestors as coming from
Europe in the seventeenth century, and establishing themselves in
Salem, where they served the State and propitiated Heaven by joining
in the persecution of Quakers and witches. The house known as the
Witch House is still standing on the corner of Summer and Essex