ternity as the eternity of the
confession.... This world so full of flowers and sunshine and the
laughter of children is not a cursed lost world, and the 'endless
torment' of the confession is not God's, nor Christ's, nor the Bible's
idea of future punishment."

What should constitute the true faith of a Christian, and set him apart
from his fellowmen in duties and observances, was one of the crucial
questions in the everyday life of the early New England colonists, and
the hanging and discipline of witches was one of its necessary
incidents.

It was the same spirit of intolerance and of religious animosity that
was written in the treatment of the Quakers and Baptists at Boston; in
the experience of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson; and of "The
Rogerenes" in Connecticut, for "profanation of the Sabbath," told in a
chapter of forgotten history.

In the sunlight of the later revelation, is not the present judgment of
the men and women of those far off times, "when the wheel of prayer was
in perpetual motion," when fear and superstition and the wrath of an
angry God ruled the strongest minds, truly interpreted in the solemn
afterthoughts which the poet ascribes to the magistrate and minister at
the grave of Giles Corey?

HATHORNE

"This is the Potter's Field. Behold the fate
Of those who deal in witchcrafts, and when questioned,
Refuse to plead their guilt or innocence,
And stubbornly drag death upon themselves.

MATHER

"Those who lie buried in the Potter's Field
Will rise again as surely as ourselves
That sleep in honored graves with epitaphs;
And this poor man whom we have made a victim,
Hereafter will be counted as a martyr."

_The New England Tragedies._

HISTORICAL NOTE

ROGER LUDLOW

The Connecticut historians to a very recent date, in ignorance of the
facts, and despite his notable services of twenty-four years to the
colonies, left Ludlow to die in obscurity in Virginia or elsewhere, and
some of the traditions, based on no record or other evidence, have been
recently repeated. It is therefore proper to state here in few words who
Ludlow was, what he did both in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and after
his "return into England" in 1654.

Ludlow came of an ancient English family, which gave to history in his
own time and generation such illustrious kinsmen as Sir Henry Ludlow, a
member of the Long Parliament and one of the Puritan leaders, and Sir
Edmund Ludlow,