Left page
Page number: 646
Title: A SALEM WITCH
Column one:
How different was this meeting from that which he had expected but a few hours ago, as he swung lightly over the turf! A few hours ago—it seemed long years since that happy sunrise! A frightful sense of the cruelty and hardness of it all filled his heart, and a made desire for revenge mad his brain for a moment reel; only for a moment, —then the thought that there was still a duty which he could perform roused him as nothing else could have done. It was not hard to obtain permission to carry away the body, and his plans were quickly made. He left Dorcas in charge and hurried back to his ship. As he went on board, the men observing the grief depicted on his face, saluted him gravely and stood silent as he passed to his cabin. He stayed there a few minutes with the mate, who presently returned to the deck, leaving him alone. Soon, he too returned, and stepped into the midst of the little group.
“Mates,” said he, “you have heard me speak of her who was to have voyaged with us, and you have heard now what has come. One last duty I can do for my poor girl, and I would like those that love me to help me to do it.”
“Anything we can do to help you, lad, shall be done,” said the old boatswain, forgetting the captain and thinking only of the man who might have been his son.
“Aye, aye,” said the others.
And when the town had followed the other unhappy creatures to the place of their execution, another procession left the jail, and walked towards the cottage by the sea. First came Rafe, with Dorcas
Column two:
On his arm, then an improvised bier carried by six sailors, and then two by two the rest of the crew of the Oliver. They buried her under the trees in the little orchard where she had played as a child, and where she and Dorcas had sewed in the early summer. Rafe thanked them in simple, tender speech when all was done; and he instructed the mate to meet him in Boston with the vessel, when her cargo was discharged and her accounts settled, bringing such things from the cottage as Dorcas wished to preserve. Then he took Dorcas by the hand and turned his back on Salem forever.
[******]
In a little cottage on the bleak Cornish coast dwelt for many years in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, a white-haired woman and a man who was prematurely old and broken. They addressed each other as “brother” and “sister.” They were known far and near for deeds of charity and sympathy to those in sorrow and need. The good people of the village in which they lived were not a little curious at first about these “new folk”; but they never spoke of their past, and after a time it seemed as if they had always been there. To them, too, came a measure of peace, as it comes to those who have drunk deepest of the cup of sorrow. Pursuing the tenor of their way, they saw the renewal of the years and seasons, while in far-off land the winds made requiem and drifted in turn the apple-blossoms and the snow over the lowly grave in the garden by the sea.
[illustration of a dockyard, signature William Tuilen Herry]
Right Page
[illustration of a woman writing on her lap in a rocking chair by a barred window. Illustrator’s Signature: J. H. Hatfield]
Caption: “I am sitting by the Window in this Atrocious Nursery.”
THE YELLOW WALL-PAPER.
By Charlotte Perkins Stetson.
Column one:
[illuminated letter I] T is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be asking too much of fate!
Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.
Column two:
Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?
John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.
John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.
John is a physician, and perhaps— (I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind—) perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.
You see he does not believe I am sick!
And what can one do?