The stranger is naturally drawn hence to the Court House, where, by calling a clerk from his routine in a room fairly lined and stuccoed with bundles of legal papers, he may get a glimpse of the famous "witch-pins." These are the identical little instruments which the afflicted children drew from different parts of their dress, in the trial-room, declaring that some one of the accused had just caused them to be sharply inserted into their persons. The pins are kept in a small glass bottle, and are thin and rudely made; and as one looks at the curious, homely little relics, it is hard to know whether to laugh at the absurdly insignificant sight, or shudder at the thought of what deadly harm they worked in the hands of the bewitched. So, while one is hesitating, one gives the bottle back to the clerk, who locks it up speedily, and at the next instant is absorbed in the drawing up of some document; leaving the intruder free to pursue his search for antiquities elsewhere. But the monuments and remains of the past are nowhere large enough, in our American towns, to furnish the pilgrim a complete shelter and make an atmosphere of their own. The old Curwin Mansion, or "Witch House," to be sure, with its jutting upper story, and its dark and grimy room where witch-trials are rumored to have been held, is a solid scrap of antique gloom; but an ephemeral druggist's shop has been fastened on to a corner of the old building, and clings there like a wasp's nest,--as subversive, too, of quiet contemplation. The descendants of the first settlers have with pious care preserved the remains of the First Church of Salem, and the plain little temple may still be seen, though hidden away in the rear of the solid, brick-built Essex Institute. Yet, after all, it is only the skeleton of the thing, the original framework set into a modern covering for protection,--the whole church being about as large as a small drawing-room only. Into this little space a few dumb and shrinking witnesses of the past have been huddled: the old communion-table, two ancient harpsichords, a single pew-door, a wooden samp-mortar, and a huge, half-ruinous loom; and some engraved portraits of ancient ministers hang upon the walls. When I visited the place, a party of young men and women were there, who hopelessly scattered any slight dust of revery that might have settled on me from the ancient beams, and sent the ghosts fleeing before their light laughter. The young women fingered the old harpsichords, and incontinently thrummed upon them; and one cried, "Play a waltz!" She was a pretty creature; and, as her gay tone mingled with the rattle of protesting strings in the worn-out instrument, one might easily have divined how dire a fate would have been hers, in the days when men not only believed in bewitchment, but made it punishable. Then a young man who had clung for guidance amid her spells to the little printed pamphlet that describes the church, read aloud from its pages,