ings quashed on the ground of an informality, the
higher court thus evading the question raised as to the
constitutionality of the law. An attempt to burn Miss Crandall's house
followed, and on the night of Sept. 9, 1834, it was made untenantable
under the assaults of a mob.

The subject of this bitter and relentless persecution, Mrs. Prudence
(Crandall) Philleo, is still living, and tardy justice comes forward to
recognize the wrong of a half century ago. The children of her
persecutors unite with others in a petition to the lawmaking power which
was induced to brand her as a criminal, to atone for past wrongs by
present relief.

It is safe to say that the Canterbury of to-day would gladly blot from
history this story of the Canterbury of a half century ago.

It is equally safe to say that the Quitman of fifty years to come (and
much sooner) will gladly bury in oblivion the story of the burning
school-house and frightened and helpless females and children, which the
Quitman of to-day has put upon the page of current history.

There is a very patent moral to this "Canterbury tale." It reads about
as follows: Twenty-five years after the Canterbury persecution, its
repetition would have been an impossibility. Twenty-five years after the
Quitman persecution--or any other acts, in any southern state, of like
character--what?

Let us, who are only fifty years away from similar deeds at our own
doors, go our way, doing the works of charity, humanity, patriotism, and
wait and see.

For present wrongs atonement comes in bitter tears,
By children shed for deeds of sires in other years;
Brute passion rules but for a day, then hides its head,
And justice, born of love and mercy, rules instead.

* * * * *

Archdeacon Farrar, in a recent article in the _North American Review_,
pays a tribute to the virtues of the founders of New England which has
been rarely excelled in fervor of rhetoric and laudatory statement by
the most gifted of after-dinner orators among the sons of Puritans and
Pilgrims.

"Those virtues," he says, "gave to James Otis and to Patrick Henry the
prophet's tongue of flame. They nerved the arm of Washington in battle,
and kindled the embattled farmers to fire 'the shot heard round the
world.' They kindled the eloquence of Phillips and the song of
Longfellow. They gave to Abraham Lincoln the faith at whose bidding a
hundred thousand men sprang to their feet