This was
in 1679-81, or more than ten years before the Salem witchcraft, and
it constitutes a page of hitherto unpublished Massachusetts history.
Mr. and Mrs. Morse resided in a plain, wooden house that still stands
at the head of Market Street, in what is now Newburyport. William had
been a farmer, but his sons had now taken the homestead, and he was
supporting himself and wife by shoe-making. His age was almost
three-score-years-and-ten, and he was a reputably worthy man, then just
in the early years of his dotage. His wife, the "goody Elizabeth," was
a Newbury woman, and apparently some few years her husband's senior.
I can easily imagine the worthy couple there in the old square room of
a winter's night. On one side of the fire-place sits the old man in
his hard arm-chair, his hands folded, and his spectacles awry, as he
sonorously snores away the time. Opposite him sits the old lady, a
little, toothless dame, with angular features half hidden in a stiffly
starched white cap, her fingers flying over her knitting-work, as
precisely and perseveringly she "seams," "narrows," and "widens." At the
old lady's right hand stands a cherry table, on which burns a yellow
tallow candle that occasionally the dame proceeds to snuff.
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