Many such celebrations will there be at the home of Rufus Putnam, and at the little village on the hill. Ever more highly will New England estimate the place of old Rutland in her history; ever more sacred and significant will it become as a point of contact for the East and West; and in the far-off years the sons and daughters of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin will make pilgrimages to it, as the children of New England pilgrimage to Scrooby. [Illustration] [Illustration] SALEM THE PURITAN TOWN BY GEORGE DIMMICK LATIMER Salem is what historical students would call a _palimpsest_, an ancient manuscript that has been scraped and then rewritten with another and later text. By careful study of the almost illegible characters and sometimes by chemical treatment, great treasures of the ancient learning, such as Orations of Cicero, the Institutes of Gaius and versions of the New Testament, have been discovered under monkish rules and medieval chronicles. Such a charm of research and discovery awaits the historical student in this modern, progressive city. The stranger within our gates is at first impressed by the many good business blocks, the elegant residences amid beautiful lawns on the broad, well-shaded streets, the handsome public buildings, many of them once stately mansions of [Illustration: GOVERNOR ENDICOTT’S SUN-DIAL AND SWORD.] the old sea-captains, and a very convenient electric-car service that makes the city a famous shopping-place for the eastern half of the county. But here and there the visitor comes upon some memorial tablet or commemorative stone, some ancient cemetery or venerable building--faded characters of an earlier text--that brings to mind the great age of Puritanism or the only less interesting era of our town’s commercial supremacy; while if he enters the Essex Institute to see its large and valuable historical collection, it is modern Salem that is obliterated and the stern poverty and austere piety of the Fathers that stand out distinctly. With what interest he will look at the sun-dial and sword of Governor Endicott, at the baptismal shirt of Governor [Illustration: THE FIRST MEETING-HOUSE, 1634-39.]