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James Cox - My Native Land
were in torment, and that the very motion of the girl's lips caused them terrible pain. She was sentenced
to be hanged with eight other alleged witches two days later, and was carried back, fainting, to her cell.
In a few minutes the girl was delirious, and began to talk about her lover, and of her future prospects.
Even her sister was not allowed to remain with her during the night, and the frail young creature was left
to the tender mercies of heartless jailors.
A few hours before the time set for execution, young Orcutt sailed into the harbor, and before daybreak
he was at the house. Here he learned for the first time the awful calamity which had befallen his
sweetheart in his absence. At 7 o'clock he was allowed to enter the jail, with the convicted girl's sister. At
the prison door they were informed that the wicked girl had died during the night. Knowing that there
was no hope under any circumstances of the sentence being remitted, the bereaved ones regarded the
news as good, and although they broke down with grief at the shipwreck of their lives, they both realized
that, to use the devout words of the victim's sister, "The Lord had delivered her from the hands of her
enemies."
The record of brutality in connection with the witch agitation might be continued almost without limit,
for the number of victims was very great. Visitors to Danvers to-day are often shown by local guides
where some of the tragedies of the persecution were committed. The superstition was finally driven away
by educational enlightenment, and it seems astounding that it lasted as long as it did. Two hundred years
have nearly elapsed since the craze died out, and it is but charitable to admit, that although many of the
witnesses must have been corrupt and perjured, the majority of those connected with the cases were
thoroughly in earnest, and that although they rejoiced at the undoing of the ungodly, they regretted very
much being made the instruments of that undoing.
CHAPTER III. IN PICTURESQUE NEW YORK.
Some Local Errors Corrected - A Trip Down the Hudson River - The Last of the Mohicans - The Home
of Rip Van Winkle - The Ladies of Vassar and their Home - West Point and its History - Sing Sing
Prison - The Falls of Niagara - Indians in New York State.
Residents in the older States of the East are frequently twitted with their ignorance concerning the newer
States of the West, and of the habits and customs of those who, having taken Horace Greeley's advice at
various times, turned their faces toward the setting sun, determined to take advantage of the fertility of
the soil, and grow up with the country of which they knew but little.
It needs but a few days' sojourn in an Eastern city by a Western man to realize how sublimely ignorant
the New Englander is concerning at least three-fourths of his native land. The writer was, on a recent
occasion, asked, in an Eastern city, how he managed to get along without any of the comforts of
civilization, and whether he did not find it necessary to order all of his clothing and comforts by mail
from the East. When he replied that in the larger cities, at any rate, of the West, there were retail
emporiums fully up to date in all matters of fashion and improvement, and caterers who could supply the
latest delicacies in season at reasonable prices, an incredulous smile was the result, and regret was
expressed that local prejudice and pride should so blind a man to the actual truth.
Yet there was no exaggeration whatever in the reply, as the experienced traveler knows well. Neither
Chicago nor St. Louis are really in the West, so far as points of the compass are concerned, both of these
cities being hundreds of miles east of the geographical center of the United States. But they are both
spoken of as "out West," and are included in the territory in which the extreme Eastern man is apt to
think people live on the coarsest fare, and clothe themselves in the roughest possible manner. Yet the
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