Illustration: AN OVATION IN THE WAY OF EGGS AND CODFISH.]

About 1684 the Colony of Massachusetts, which had dared to open up a
trade with the West Indies, using its own vessels for that purpose, was
hauled over the coals by the mother-country for violation of the
Navigation Act, and an officer sent over to enforce the latter. The
colonists defied him, and when he was speaking to them publicly in a
tone of reprimand, he got an ovation in the way of eggs and codfish,
both of which had been set aside for that purpose when the country was
new, and therefore had an air of antiquity which cannot be successfully
imitated.

As a result, the Colony was made a royal appendage, and Sir Edmund
Andros, a political hack under James II., was made Governor of New
England. He reigned under great difficulties for three years, and then
suddenly found himself in jail. The jail was so arranged that he could
not get out, and so the Puritans now quietly resumed their old form of
government.

This continued also for three years, when Sir William Phipps became
Governor under the crown, with one hundred and twenty pounds per annum
and house-rent.

From this on to the Revolution, Massachusetts, Maine, and Nova Scotia
became a royal province. Nova Scotia is that way yet, and has to go to
Boston for her groceries.

[Illustration: OPENING OF THE WITCH-HUNTING SEASON.]

The year 1692 is noted mostly for the Salem excitement regarding
witchcraft. The children of Rev. Mr. Parris were attacked with some
peculiar disease which would not yield to the soothing blisters and
bleedings administered by the physicians of the old school, and so, not
knowing exactly what to do about it, the doctors concluded that they
were bewitched. Then it was, of course, the duty of the courts and
selectmen to hunt up the witches. This was naturally difficult.

Fifty-five persons were tortured and twenty were hanged for being
witches; which proves that the people of Salem were fully abreast of the
Indians in intelligence, and that their gospel privileges had not given
their charity and Christian love such a boom as they should have done.

One can hardly be found now, even in Salem, who believes in witchcraft;
though the Cape Cod people, it is said, still spit on their bait. The
belief in witchcraft in those days was not confined by any means to the
colonists. Sir Matthew Hale of England, one of the most enlightened
judges of the mother-country, condemned a number of