t is a mere
ditch, indeed, and almost a dry one. Going a little farther, I came to a
graveyard by the roadside,--not apparently a public graveyard, but the
resting-place of a family or two, with half a dozen gravestones. On two
marble stones, standing side by side, I read the names of Benjamin
Foster and Anstiss Foster, the people whom I used to be brought to
visit. He had died in 1824, aged seventy-five; she in 1837, aged
seventy.

* * * * *

A young woman in England, poisoned by an East Indian barbed dart, which
her brother had brought home as a curiosity.

* * * * *

The old house on Browne's Hill was removed from the summit to the plain,
at a short distance from the foot of the hill. Colonel Putnam, of the
Custom-House, recollects it there, standing unoccupied, but with the
furniture still in it. It seems to have been accessible to all who
wished to enter. It was at that time under the care of Richard Derby, an
ancestor of the present Derbys, who had a claim to the property through
his wife, who was a Browne. The owner of the house had fled during the
Revolution, and Richard Derby seems to have held the estate as it was
when the refugee left it, in expectation of his eventual return. There
was one closet in the house which everybody was afraid to open, it being
supposed that the Devil was in it. One day, above fifty years ago, or
threescore it may have been, Putnam and other boys were playing in the
house, and took it into their heads to peep into this closet. It was
locked, but Putnam pried open the door, with great difficulty and much
tremor. At last it flew open, and out fell a great pile of family
portraits, faces of gentlemen in wigs, and ladies in quaint
head-dresses, displaying themselves on the floor, startling the urchins
out of their wits. They all fled, but returned after a while, piled up
the pictures again, and nailed up the door of the closet.

The house, according to the same authority, was not tenanted after the
earthquake of 1775; at least, it was removed from the summit of the hill
on that occasion, it having been greatly shaken by the earthquake.

The house formerly inhabited by Rev. Mr. Paris, and in which the
witchcraft business of 1692 had its origin, is still standing in the
north parish of Danvers. It has been long since removed from its
original site. The workmen at first found great difficulty in removing
it; and an old ma