rolled down her face.

But she could not wipe them away, her arms being bound behind her.

The judge nearest her, he who wore his natural hair and the black cap, was moved to compassion. He leant forward, and with his kerchief wiped the tears and sweat from her face.

"You poor and pitiful child," he said, "estranged from God by reason of your great sin, confess, confess, while there is yet time, lest you be hanged in sin and your soul condemned to eternal burning.'

Deliverance comprehended but the merciful act and not the exhortation. She looked at him with the terror and entreaty of a last appeal in her eyes, but was powerless to speak.

Thus because she would not confess to the crime of which she had been proven guilty in the eyes of the law, she was sentenced to be hanged within five days, on Saturday, not later than the tenth nor earlier than the eighth hour. Also, owing to the fact of the confusion and almost ungovernable excitement among the people, it was forbidden any one to visit her, excepting of course the officers of the law, or the ministers to exhort her to confession.

At noon the court adjourned.

First, the judges in their velvet gowns went out of the meeting-house. With the chief justice walked Cotton Mather, conversing learnedly.

Following their departure, two soldiers entered and bade Deliverance rise and go out with them. So, amidst a great silence, she passed down the aisle.

THE WISE WOMAN.

BY MME. DARMESTETER (MARY ROBINSON).

[MARY ROBINSON: Born at Leamington, Feb. 27, 1857. An English poet. In 1888 she married M. Darmesteter, the French Orientalist. She has written: "A Handful of Honeysuckles" (1878), "The Crowned Hippolytus" (1880), a translation of Euripides (1881), "The End of the Middle Ages" (1889: a his torical work), etc.]

In the last low cottage in Blackthorn Lane

The Wise Woman lives alone;

The broken thatch lets in the rain,

And the glass is shattered in every pane

With stones the boys have thrown.

For who would not throw stones at a witch,

Take any safe revenge

For the father's lameness, the mother's stitch,
The sheep that died on its back in a ditch,
And the mildewed corn in the grange?

Only be sure to be out of sight

Of the witch's baleful eye!

So the stones, for the most, are thrown at night,
Then a scuffle of feet, a hurry of fright-
How fast those urchins fly!

And a shattered glass is gaping sore

In the ragged window frame,

Or a horseshoe nailed against the door,
Whereunder the witch should pass no more.
Were sayings and doings the same.

The witch's garden is run to weeds,
Never a phlox or a rose,

But infamous growths her brewing needs,
Or slimy mosses the rank soil breeds,
Or tares such as no man sows.

This is the house. Lift up the latch-
Faugh, the smoke and the smell!

A broken bench, some rags that catch

The drip of the rain from the broken thatch-..
Are these the wages of Hell?

Is it for this she earns the fear

And the shuddering hate of her kind?

To molder and ache in the hovel here,

With the horror of death ever brooding near,

And the terror of what is behind?

The witch-who wonders? is bent with cramp,

Satan himself cannot cure her,

For the beaten floor is oozing damp,

And the moon, through the roof, might serve for a lamp, Only a rushlight's surer.

And here some night she will die alone,

When the cramp clutches tight at her heart. Let her cry in her anguish, and sob, and moan, The tenderest woman the village has known Would shudder- but keep apart.

Should she die in her bed! A likelier chance
Were the dog's death, drowned in the pond.
The witch when she passes it looks askance:
They ducked her once, when the horse bit Nance;
She remembers, and looks beyond.

For then she had perished in very truth,

But the Squire's son, home from college, Rushed to the rescue, himself forsooth

Plunged after the witch. Yes, I like the youth
For all his new-fangled knowledge.

How he stormed at the cowards! What a rage
Heroic flashed in his eyes!

But many a struggle and many an age
Must pass ere the same broad heritage
Be given the fools and the wise.

"Cowards!" he cried. He was lord of the land,
He was mighty to them, and rich.

They let him rant; but on either hand
They shrank from the devil's unseen brand
On the sallow face of the witch.

They let him rant; but deep in each heart
Each thought of something of his own.
Wounded or hurt by the Wise Woman's art;
Some friend estranged, or some lover apart.
Each heart grew cold as stone.

And the Heir spoke on, in his eager youth,

His blue eyes full of flame;

And he held the witch, as he spoke of the Truth;
And the dead, cold Past; and of Love and of Ruth-
But their hearts were still the same.

Till at last- "For the sake of Christ who died,
Mother, forgive them," he said.

"Come, let us kneel, let us pray!" he cried.
But horror-stricken, aghast, from his side
The witch broke loose and fled!

Fled right fast from the brave amends
He would make her then and there,

From the chance that Heaven so seldom sends
To turn our bitterest foes to friends,
Fled at the name of a prayer.

Poor lad, he stared so; amazed and grieved.
He had argued nearly an hour;
And yet the beldam herself believed,
No less than the villagers she deceived,
In her own unholy power!

Though surely a witch should know very well
'Tis the lie for which she will burn.

She surely has learned that the deepest spell
Her art includes could never compel

A quart of cream to turn.

And why, knowing this, should one sell one's soul

To gain such a life as hers,

The life of the bat and the burrowing mole,-
To gain no vision and no control,

Not even the power to curse?

'Tis strange, and a riddle still in my mind

To-day as well as then.

There's never an answer I could find
Unless O folly of humankind!

O vanity born with men!

Rather it may be than merely remain
A woman poor and old,

No longer like to be courted again
For the sallow face deep lined with pain,
Or the heart grown sad and cold.

Such bitter souls may there be, I think,
So craving the power that slips,
Rather than lose it, they would drink
The waters of Hell, and lie at the brink
Of the grave, with eager lips.

Who sooner would, than slip from sight,

Meet every eye askance;

Whom threatened murder can scarce affright;

Who sooner would live as a plague and a blight Than just be forgotten: perchance.

INNATE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES NON-EXISTENT.

BY JOHN LOCKE.

(From the "Essay Concerning the Human Understanding.")

[JOHN LOCKE, one of the most celebrated of English philosophers, was a native of Wrington, Somerset, where he was born August 29, 1632. After several years of study at Oxford, he engaged in medical practice, and in this capacity made the acquaintance of Lord Ashley (later Earl of Shaftesbury), who appointed him confidential agent and secretary to the council of trade. In 1669 he drew up a constitution for the colonists of Carolina, of which Shaftesbury was one of the lords proprietors. After the fall of his patron Locke found it necessary to escape to Holland, and here he remained for several years, an object of suspicion to the government and a supposed accomplice in Monmouth's rebellion. After the Restoration he held various civil offices, and died at the residence of Sir Francis Masham in Essex, October 28, 1704. His "Essay concerning Human Understanding" (1690), met with rapid and extensive celebrity both in England and on the Continent. Also noteworthy are his letters "Concerning Toleration," "Thoughts on Education," and "The Reasonableness of Christianity."]

No MORAL principles so clear and so generally received as [some speculative maxims which yet are not assented to by all]. It will be hard to instance any moral rule which can pretend to so general and ready an assent as " What is, is"; or to be so manifest a truth as this, "that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be." Whereby it is evident that they are farther removed from the title to be innate; and the doubt of their being native impressions on the mind is stronger against those moral principles than the other. Not that it brings their truth at all in question: they are equally true, though not equally evident. Those speculative maxims carry their own evidence with them but moral principles require reasoning and discourse, and some exercise of the mind, to discover the certainty of their truth. They lie not open as natural characters engraven on the mind; which, if any such were, they must needs be visible by themselves, and by their own light be certain and known to everybody.

:

But this is no derogation to truth and certainty; no more than it is to the truth or certainty of the three angles of a triangle being equal to two right ones, because it is not so evident as "the whole is bigger than a part," nor so apt to be assented to at first hearing. It may suffice, that these moral rules are capable of demonstration; and therefore it is