assert that the devil had just fled from her in the form of a mouse, unable to endure the presence of the sacred works which lined the walls. Probably she had learned these things from the old dames of her native village, with their remnants of Teutonic folklore; but the strange part of the affair was that Cotton Mather, who tells us all these details, had no doubt whatever of the genuineness of the possession. If the accusers of Goody Glover were typical of the credulity and superstition of their age, Margaret Goodwin, with her shrewd ability to make use of the most salient tendencies and prejudices of her benefactor in order to deceive him, was a type of a certain other aspect of Puritanism which has not yet entirely died away--and never will as long as New England possesses individuality of human product. So that even the minx who fooled Cotton Mather to the top of his bent seems to be worthy of rescue from obscurity in this retrospect of the path by which American women have reached their present position and characteristics. It may be objected to the women whose names appear in this chapter that they were not typical New England women, but were only typical of phases of New England life in the early days of the colonies. Whether or not this allegation be just, we can assuredly learn from their stories and characters much of the atmosphere in which lived the New England woman of the greater part of the seventeenth century. She was at once a product and a producer, a cause and an effect, of her environment. There was constant action and reaction; she molded her time and her time molded her. She lived, as we have seen, if we have rightly understood that which we have read, in an atmosphere of religious turmoil and energy, of purity of purpose and integrity of faith, and of the darkest and most narrowing superstition. All these things acted mentally and spiritually upon the woman of New England. They entered into her life and character; she was energized as well as controlled and directed by them. There was of course no steadfastness, no persistence, of one straitly-hewn type; but there was an ever-recurring tendency, a gradual advance along the line of least resistance. Many were the faults of the Puritan woman: she was cold, she was hard, she was fanatical, she was credulous; but she was virtuous, she was truthful,--in higher sense than mere veracity,--she was faithful,--in deeper sense than mere constancy,--and she was strong with a strength that came to her from resistance to the influences which sought her downfall. And she was deep--deep with the depth of the sea and the forests and the universal spirit of the new land that had made her its child.