Perhaps the greatest incentive to ideal living in a changing world is the firmly held conviction that truth will finally vindicate itself. When this vindication is made apparent, as in the case of Rebecca Nurse, one of the most striking martyrs of the Salem witchcraft days of 1692, the cause of human progress seems assured. For it is thus seen that truth has within itself a living seed which in its development is destined to become man's guide to further knowledge and growth. This idea was impressed upon me anew as I stood before the granite monument, some eight and a half feet high, erected this past summer in Danvers,--originally Salem,--to the memory of Mrs. Rebecca Nurse, by her descendants. A carpet of green grass surrounded it, and a circle of nearly twenty pine trees guarded it as sentinels. The pines were singing their summer requiem as I read on the front of the monument these words:-- REBECCA NURSE, YARMOUTH, ENGLAND, 1621. SALEM, MASS., 1692. O Christian martyr, who for Truth could die When all about thee owned the hideous lie, The world, redeemed from Superstition's sway, Is breathing freer for thy sake to-day. I lingered a moment over these fitting lines of Whittier, whose charming home, "Oak Knoll," a short distance off, had just given me a restful pleasure. Then I walked around to the other side of the monument, where I read, with mingled feelings, the following words:-- Accused of witchcraft She declared, "I am innocent, and God will clear my innocency." Once acquitted yet falsely condemned, she suffered death July 19, 1692. In loving memory of her Christian character, even then truly attested by forty of her neighbors, this monument is erected. These last lines reminded me of the fact that the paper with its forty signatures, testifying to the forty years' acquaintance of the good character of Rebecca Nurse, was still in existence. Alas! why couldn't such a testimony of neighbors and friends have saved her? But it was not so to be. The government of the colony, the influence of the magistracy, and public opinion elsewhere, overpowered all friendly and family help; and on the 19th July, 1692, at the advanced age of seventy-one years, Rebecca Nurse was hung on Gallows hill.