It exaggerated all the dangers of their
earthly pilgrimage, and peopled the future with shapes of evil. Their
fear of Satan invested him with some of the attributes of Omnipotence,
and almost reached the point of reverence. The slightest shock of an
earthquake filled all hearts with terror. Stout men trembled by their
hearths with dread of some paralytic old woman supposed to be a witch.
And when they believed themselves called upon to grapple with these
terrors and endure the afflictions of their allotment, they brought to
the trial a capability of suffering undiminished by the chloroform of
modern philosophy. They were heroic in endurance. Panics like the one
we have described might bow and sway them like reeds in the wind; but
they stood up like the oaks of their own forests beneath the thunder and
the hail of actual calamity.
It was certainly lucky for the good people of Essex County that no wicked
wag of a Tory undertook to immortalize in rhyme their ridiculous hegira,
as Judge Hopkinson did the famous Battle of the Kegs in Philadelphia.
Pages:
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101