hat came of it?" asked Rebecca. "Did the Evil Spirit whom they
thus called upon testify against himself, by telling who were his
instruments in mischief?"
The girl said she had never heard of any discovery of the poisoners, if
indeed there were such. She told us, moreover, that many of the best
people in the tribe would have no part in the business, counting it
sinful; and that the chief actors were much censured by the ministers,
and so ashamed of it that they drove the Powahs out of the village, the
women and boys chasing them and beating them with sticks and frozen
snow, so that they had to take to the woods in a sorry plight.
We gave the girl some small trinkets, and a fair piece of cloth for an
apron, whereat she was greatly pleased. We were all charmed with her
good parts, sweetness of countenance, and discourse and ready wit, being
satisfied thereby that Nature knoweth no difference between Europe and
America in blood, birth, and bodies, as we read in Acts 17 that God hath
made of one blood all mankind. I was specially minded of a saying of
that ingenious but schismatic man, Mr. Roger Williams, in the little
book which he put forth in England on the Indian tongue:--
"Boast not, proud English, of thy birth and blood,
Thy brother Indian is by birth as good;
Of one blood God made him and thee and all,
As wise, as fair, as strong, as personal.
"By nature wrath's his portion, thine, no more,
Till grace his soul and thine in Christ restore.
Make sure thy second birth, else thou shalt see
Heaven ope to Indians wild, but shut to thee!"
March 15.
One Master O'Shane, an Irish scholar, of whom my cousins here did learn
the Latin tongue, coming in last evening, and finding Rebecca and I
alone (uncle and aunt being on a visit to Mr. Atkinson's), was exceeding
merry, entertaining us rarely with his stories and songs. Rebecca tells
me he is a learned man, as I can well believe, but that he is too fond
of strong drink for his good, having thereby lost the favor of many of
the first families here, who did formerly employ him. There was one
ballad, which he saith is of his own making, concerning the selling of
the daughter of a great Irish lord as a slave in this land, which
greatly pleased me; and on my asking for a copy of it, he brought it to
me this morning, in a fair hand. I copy it in my Journal, as I know
that Oliver, who
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