Cotton Mather came galloping down
All the way to Newbury town,
With his eyes agog and his ears set wide,
And his marvellous inkhorn at his side;
Stirring the while in the shallow pool
Of his brains for the lore he learned at school,
To garnish the story, with here a streak
Of Latin, and there another of Greek
And the tales he heard and the notes he took,
Behold! are they not in his Wonder-Book?
Stories, like dragons, are hard to kill.
If the snake does not, the tale runs still
In Byfield Meadows, on Pipestave Hill.
And still, whenever husband and wife
Publish the shame of their daily strife,
And, with mad cross-purpose, tug and strain
At either end of the marriage-chain,
The gossips say, with a knowing shake
Of their gray heads, "Look at the Double Snake
One in body and two in will,
The Amphisbaena is living still!"
1859.
MABEL MARTIN.
A HARVEST IDYL.
Susanna Martin, an aged woman of Amesbury, Mass., was tried and executed
for the alleged crime of witchcraft. Her home was in what is now known
as Pleasant Valley on the Merrimac, a little above the old Ferry way,
where, tradition says, an attempt was made to assassinate Sir Edmund
Andros on his way to Falmouth (afterward Portland) and Pemaquid, which
was frustrated by a warning timely given.
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