The dust of martyrs was beneath
our feet. We stood on Gallows Hill.
For my own part, I have often courted the historic influence of the spot.
But it is singular how few come on pilgrimage to this famous hill; how
many spend their lives almost at its base, and never once obey the
summons of the shadowy past, as it beckons them to the summit. Till a
year or two since, this portion of our history had been very imperfectly
written, and, as we are not a people of legend or tradition, it was not
every citizen of our ancient town that could tell, within half a century,
so much as the date of the witchcraft delusion. Recently, indeed, an
historian has treated the subject in a manner that will keep his name
alive, in the only desirable connection with the errors of our ancestry,
by converting the hill of their disgrace into an honorable monument of
his own antiquarian lore, and of that better wisdom, which draws the
moral while it tells the tale. But we are a people of the present, and
have no heartfelt interest in the olden time. Every fifth of November,
in commemoration of they know not what, or rather without an idea beyond
the momentary blaze, the young men scare the town with bonfires on this
haunted height, but never dream of paying funeral honors to those who
died so wrongfully, and, without a coffin or a prayer, were buried here.
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