: Classic French Course in English by Wilkinson William Cleaver - French literature History and criticism Language Education

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THE SALEM BELLE:

A Tale of 1692.

BOSTON:

TAPPAN & DENNET,

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1842, by TAPPAN & DENNET, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

INTRODUCTION.

The following letter addressed to the author, will explain the circumstances which led to the publication of this little work.

Cumberland County, Va., July, 1841.

DEAR SIR:

In compliance with your request, I now send you a manuscript which contains all the material circumstances of a remarkable legend, founded on the singular events of 1692. The original chronicle is lost, but its general features were strongly impressed on my memory, and I committed them to writing, some years since, and very soon after the discovery that the first manuscript was missing. I hope you will be able to make such use of these materials, as shall expose the danger of popular delusions, and guard the public mind against their recurrence. It is too late to revive the folly of witchcraft, but other follies are pressing on the community,--fanaticism in various ways is moulding the public feeling into unnatural shapes, and shadowing forth a train of undefined evils, whose forms of mischief are yet to be developed. In this state of things, our true wisdom is to take counsel of the past, and not suffer ourselves to be led astray by bold and startling theories, which can only waste the mental energies, and make shipwreck of the mind itself on some fatal rock of superstition or infidelity.

It is an age of boasted liberty and light, but it may well be doubted whether these high pretensions are any powerful defence against popular mistakes. It often happens that the moral plague spot is first seen in the walks of science. It was so in the days which this manuscript commemorates: men renowned for talents and learning gave countenance to a delusion which swept over the land, and will be known in all coming ages by its track of blood and death.

I am not opposed to innovations upon any vicious principle or habit whatsoever. I have no respect for any venerable theory, unless its claims are supported by the Bible and common sense; but how often is that noble edifice of Truth, which the Bible reveals to our eye, deformed by the additions and inventions of men! The Catholic church has for ages thrown up its battlements and towers on the heavenly structure; but these imagined ornaments have only marred its beauty, and hidden its real grandeur from the eye. Other sects have attempted to improve upon the divine Architect; and thus it has happened that the cumbrous scaffolding has fallen, and buried multitudes in its ruins. But if this Temple had been permitted to stand in its own native simplicity, its perfect symmetry, its unrivalled strength and glory, not one of the countless millions who have sought its mysteries would have thus miserably perished.

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