A much more probable cause of the persecution of Mrs. Hibbins than either of the historians drew forth and rested upon, lurks in that language of "famous Mr. Norton," which says that she "having more wit than her neighbors, unhappily guessed that two of her persecutors, whom she saw talking in the street, were talking of her, which proving true, cost her her life." Upham, commenting upon that, says, "Nothing was more natural than for her to suppose, knowing the parties, witnessing their manner, considering their active co-operation in getting up the excitement against her, which was then the all-engrossing topic, that they were talking about her." Whence and how did the accomplished rhetorician learn that those two persecutors were active co-operators, or that they were in any degree concerned "in _getting up_" the excitement against her? How _know_ that their manner was expressive of any particular topic of conversation? How _know_ that she or her case was the then all-engrossing topic? He put forth assumptions as though they were historic facts. No ancient record is credited with them; none contains them that we have met with. He could not well know them to be true. They are fairly reasonable fictions; but we must doubt whether they are either known or knowable as _facts_. They would be agreeable amplifications if they did not tend to mislead and blind; they would be beauties, and not blemishes, if the soundness and sufficiency of their underlying theory or assumption were conceded. But it is not. Common sense cannot concede it. Boston was neither doltish enough nor wicked enough to generate and sustain _slander_ of such quantity and quality as would force one of her ladies of wit and high connections to die ignominiously on the gallows--never, never. Neither the temper of the woman herself, nor any combined baseness and malice that ever existed in the orderly and religious town of Boston, is admissible as the chief cause of that woman's execution. Her own _wit_ was the historic, and, when defined and illustrated, may appear to be the real cause. Whether Mrs. Hibbins received on that occasion, and might have been accustomed to get, knowledge by other than man's ordinary processes, and to such extent and of such kind as implied her possession of some faculties above or distinct from great powers at guessing, can best be inferred by looking at the views of her utterances which were taken by those who heard them. Their persecution of her unto death tells what those views were. Have historians made fair and full use of the very small historic basis extant, for accounting for the state and nature of public feeling among the neighbors of this woman? We think not. Her _wit_, the true corner-stone, has not been their basis of explanation.