20 OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY 
her ample hoop-skirts in a graceful courtesy. In such 
matters our keener historic sense has become exacting. 
A few years ago, when I visited one of the Alaska 
missions, my attention was called to a large picture 
of the Adoration of the Magi, painted by a young 
Indian. It was a remarkable piece of work, and had 
some points of real merit, but it was noticeable that 
all the faces—those of the Virgin and Child, of 
St. Joseph and the Wise Men — were Indian faces. 
This red man’s method was the primitive method. 
The age of Louis XIV. had not quite outgrown it. 
But the change since then has been like the change 
from coaches to railways., History is made to serve 
the arts, and in turn has pressed the arts into her 
service. Sculptor and architect, painter and poet, 
must alike delve in the past for principles and for 
illustrations. We have even known the conscientious 
poet to set public opinion right on a matter of history. 
One of the commonplaces of history, one of the things 
that everybody knows, is that Cotton Mather was one 
of the chief instigators and promoters of the witchcraft 
horrors in Salem; yet, like many of the things that 
everybody knows, it is not true. The notion started 
in a Slanderous publication by one of Mather’s 
enemies, and was repeated parrot-like by one his- 
torian after another, including the late George Ban- 
croft, until it occurred to the poet Longfellow to take 
some of the incidents of the Salem witchcraft as the 
theme of a tragedy. In order to catch the very spirit 
of 1692, the poet studied with his customary critical 
thoroughness the original papers relating to the affair, 
until he perceived that Cotton Mather’s part in it was 
not an instigating but a restraining part, and that if 
