When this vindication is made apparent, as in the case of Rebecca
Nurse, one of the most striking martyrs of the Salem witchcraft days of
1692, the cause of human progress seems assured. For it is thus seen
that truth has within itself a living seed which in its development
is destined to become man's guide to further knowledge and growth.
This idea was impressed upon me anew as I stood before the granite
monument, some eight and a half feet high, erected this past summer in
Danvers,--originally Salem,--to the memory of Mrs. Rebecca Nurse, by
her descendants. A carpet of green grass surrounded it, and a circle of
nearly twenty pine trees guarded it as sentinels. The pines were singing
their summer requiem as I read on the front of the monument these
words:--

REBECCA NURSE,
YARMOUTH, ENGLAND,
1621.
SALEM, MASS.,
1692.

O Christian martyr, who for Truth could die
When all about thee owned the hideous lie,
The world, redeemed from Superstition's sway,
Is breathing freer for thy sake to-day.

I lingered a moment over these fitting lines of Whittier, whose charming
home, "Oak Knoll," a short distance off, had just given me a restful
pleasure. Then I walked around to the other side of the monument, where
I read, with mingled feelings, the following words:--

Accused of witchcraft
She declared,
"I am innocent, and God will
clear my innocency."

Once acquitted yet falsely
condemned, she suffered
death July 19, 1692.

In loving memory of her
Christian character,
even then truly attested by
forty of her neighbors,
this monument is erected.

These last lines reminded me of the fact that the paper with its forty
signatures, testifying to the forty years' acquaintance of the good
character of Rebecca Nurse, was still in existence. Alas! why couldn't
such a testimony of neighbors and friends have saved her? But it was not
so to be. The government of the colony, the influence of the magistracy,
and public opinion elsewhere, overpowered all friendly and family help;
and on the 19th July, 1692, at the advanced age of seventy-one years,
Rebecca Nurse was hung on Gallows hill.

As I left the monument, which is in the old family burying-ground, and
wandered up the time-honored lane towards the homestead where she was
living when arrested, the March before, my thoughts would go back to
those dreadful days. I thought of this venerable mother's surprise and
wond