requires unlimited faith in Puritan probity, and confidence in Puritan
records to credit it, but believe it, ye who can, as I do! In Salem and in
Ipswich, in 1640, any man who brought a living wolf to the meeting-house
was paid fifteen shillings by the town; if the wolf were dead, ten
shillings. In 1664, if the wolf-killer wished to obtain the reward, he was
ordered to bring the wolf's head and "nayle it to the meeting-house and
give notis thereof." In Hampton, the inhabitants were ordered to "nayle the
same to a little red oake tree at northeast end of the meeting-house." One
man in Newbury, in 1665, killed seven wolves, and was paid the reward
for so doing. This was a great number, for the wary wolf was not easily
destroyed either by musket or wolf-hook. In 1723 wolves were so abundant
in Ipswich that parents would not suffer their children to go to and from
church and school without the attendance of some grown person. As late as
1746 wolves made sad havoc in Woodbury, Connecticut; and a reward of five
dollars for each wolf's head was offered by law in that township in 1853.

In 1718 the last public reward was paid in Salem for a wolf's head, but
so late as the year 1779 the howls of wolves were heard every night in
Newbury, though trophies of shrivelled wolves' heads no longer graced the
walls of the meeting-house.

All kinds of notices and orders and regulations and "bills" were posted on
the meeting-house, often on the door, where they would greet the eye of
all who entered: prohibitions from selling guns and powder to the Indians,
notices of town meetings, intentions of marriage, copies of the laws
against Sabbath-breaking, messages from the Quakers, warnings of "vandoos"
and sales, lists of the town officers, and sometimes scandalous and
insulting libels, and libels in verse, which is worse, for our forefathers
dearly loved to rhyme on all occasions. On the meeting-house green stood
those Puritanical instruments of punishment, the stocks, whipping-post,