I have sometimes told you your famous Mr Norton once said at his own table before Mr Wilson, Elder Penn and myself and wife who had the honour to be his guests--that the wife of one of your magistrates, I remember, was hanged for a witch only for having more wit than her neighbors. It was his very expression; she having as he explained it, unhappily guessed that two of her prosecutors, whom she saw talking in the street were talking about her--which cost her her life, notwithstanding all he could do to the contrary. It would naturally be thought, from the affectionate and intense devotion of the colonists to the school which had just become “Harvard-Colledge,” that Mr. Nathaniel Eaton, the head-master of the freshly established seat of learning, would be a citizen of much esteem, and his wife a dame of as dignified carriage and honored station as any of her Boston and Cambridge neighbors. Let us see whether such was the case. Mr. Eaton had had much encouragement to continue at the head of the college for life; he had been offered a tract of five hundred acres of land, and liberal support had been offered by the government, and he “had many scholars, the sons of gentlemen and of others of best note in the country.” Yet when he fell out with one of his ushers on very slight occasion, he struck the usher and caused two more to hold the poor fellow while he beat him two hundred stripes with a heavy walnut cudgel; and when poor Usher Briscoe fell a-praying, in fear of dying, Master Eaton beat him further for taking the name of God in vain. When all this cruelty was laid to him in open court “his answers were full of pride and disdain,” and he said he had this unvarying rule, “that he would not give over correcting till he had subdued the party to his will.” And upon being questioned about other malpractices, especially the ill and scant diet provided by him for the students, though good board had been paid by them, he, Adam-like, “put it off to his wife.” Her confession of her connection with the matter is still in existence, and proves her accomplishments as a generous and tidy housewife about equal to his dignity and lenity as head of the college. It is a most curious and minute document, showing what her duties were, and the way she performed them, and also giving an interesting glimpse of college life in those days. It reads thus:-- For their breakfast that it was not so well ordered, the flower not so fine as it might, nor so well boiled or stirred at all times that it was so, it was my sin of neglect, and want of care that ought to have been in one that the Lord had intrusted with such a work. Concerning their beef, that was allowed them, as they affirm, which I confess had been my duty to have seen they should have had it, and continued to have had it, because it was my husbands command; but truly I must confess, to my shame, I cannot remember that ever they had it nor that ever it was taken from them.