After thus thinking over this interesting history of the old place,
as I reclined under the shade of its trees, I was better prepared to
enjoy the kind hospitality which it then offered me. I felt a peculiar
pleasure in stepping into the same little front porch which Townsend
Bishop had built so many years ago. And upon ascending the stairs I
found myself lingering a while by the old original balusters, the
building of which Roger Williams had perhaps viewed with interest. Upon
reaching the attic it was a pleasure, indeed, to see in this new world
the frame-work of a house which for two hundred and fifty years had
stood so well the test of nature in all her moods. No saw was used in
shaping those oaken timbers. They knew only the broad-axe. From this
attic I descended to the sitting-room, to spend a while under the same
low beams which had greeted the first visitors of the house. Here I
imagined the Nurse family living in quiet and peace. Here I pictured the
son Samuel, as, later, he wondered over and over again how he could
remove the reproach which was on his mother's name. And I thought that
to him his descendants owed much, for it was mainly to his pleadings
that the General Court exonerated her in 1710, and the Church in 1712.

While sitting there I learned of some alterations which had been made
from time to time: how the front of the house, before which the old
roadway used to be, had been widened by extending the western end beyond
the porch.

As I came out of the house upon the green grass around it, I enjoyed
again the grand outlook over the surrounding country,--the same which in
the days of agony had strengthened human souls,--and then walked down
the hill, by the family burying-ground, out through the entrance-gate
into Collins street, the public thoroughfare.

I left the monument and its interesting associations that August day of
1885 (it was dedicated only the July 30 before) with the feeling that as
the present descendants of Rebecca Nurse owe much to her son Samuel, so
their future descendants will be indebted to them for the appropriate
manner in which they have still further striven to vindicate before the
world the innocence of a much-wronged ancestor.

* * * * *

THE PRESENT RESOURCES OF MASSACHUSETTS.

BY H.K.M.

Massachusetts is a busy state. The old time factory bell has not
entirely given way to the steam whistle, nor the simple village spire to
t