Delusion; or, The Witch of New England

by Eliza Buckminster Lee

The faults of our ancestors were the faults of their age. It is not now understood—and how wide from it was the conviction then!—that even toleration implies intoleration. Who is to judge what opinions are to be tolerated? He whom circumstance has invested at the moment with power?

The scene I wish to describe was on the borders of one of the interior villages of New England,—a mountain village, embosomed in high hills, from which the winter torrents, as they met in the plain, united to form one of those clear, sparkling rivers, in whose beautiful mirror the surrounding hills were reflected. The stream, "winding at its own sweet will," enclosed a smooth meadow. At the extremity of the meadow, and shadowed by the mountain, nestled one of the poorest farm-houses, or cottages, of the time.

It was black and old, apparently containing but two rooms and a garret. Attached to it were the common out-houses of the poorest farms: a shed for a cow, a covering for a cart, and a small barn were all. But the situation of this humble and lonely dwelling was one of surpassing beauty. The soft meadow in front was dotted with weeping elms and birches; the opposite and neighboring hills were covered to their summits with the richest wood, while openings here and there admitted glimpses of the distant country.

A traveller coming upon this solitary spot, and seeing the blue smoke curling against the mountain side, would have rejoiced. There is something in the lonely farmhouse, surrounded with its little garden, and its homely implements of labor, that instantly touches our sympathy. There, we say, human hearts have experienced all the changes of life; they have loved and rejoiced, perhaps suffered and died.

The interior consisted of only two rooms. In the ample chimney of that which served for the common room, was burning a bright flame of pine knots; for, although it was the middle of summer, the sun sank so early behind the hills, and the evenings were so chilly, that the warmth was necessary, and the light from the small window cheered the laborer returning late from his work.

An old man sat by the chimney, evidently resting from the labors of the day. He was bent by time, but his brilliant eye and his flowing gray locks gave a certain refinement to his appearance, beyond that which his homely garments would warrant.

A woman, apparently as aged as himself, sat by the little window, catching the last rays of evening, as they were reflected from her white cap and silvery hair. Before her was a table on which lay a large Bible. She had just placed her spectacles between the leaves, as she closed it and resumed her knitting.

These two formed a picture full of the quiet repose of old age. But there was another in the room,—a youth, apparently less than twenty, kneeling before the flaming pine, over the leaves of a worn volume that absorbed him wholly.

The ruddy flame imparted the glow of health to a countenance habitually pale. Over his dark, enthusiastic eye was spread a clear and noble brow, so smooth and polished that it seemed as if at seventy it would be as unwrinkled as at seventeen. His piercing eye had that depth of expression that indicates dark passions or religious melancholy. He was slender in form, and very tall; but a bend in the shoulders, produced by agricultural labor, or by weakness in the chest, impaired somewhat the symmetry of his form.

They had been silent some moments. The young man closed his worn volume, an imperfect copy of Virgil, and walked several times, with hurried steps, across the little room.