OLD SALEM TOWN 155 



forget the story of its tragedies which now they 

 are so eager to tell to the visiting stranger. 



Salem's golden days began a century or more 

 after the witchcraft delusion had burnt to ashes 

 in the fury of its own fire. Certainly the de- 

 scendants of the men who feared the devil and his 

 emissaries feared little else. He might be for- 

 midable dancing at night with withered crones on 

 the weird hills of Salem pastures, but they laughed 

 in his face when he came on the high seas with 

 shotted guns and foreign sailors outnumbering 

 their own guns and crews two to one. They beat 

 the devil and they outgeneraled him, those Salem 

 sailors of the seventeen hundreds, whether he 

 came in English privateer or French man-o'-war 

 or a score of feluccas or piratical junks, and they 

 brought great treasures home to Salem town. 

 They explored uncharted seas, visited ports un- 

 heard of before and carried title name and fame of 

 their home town the world over. The world has 

 made a great hero of Paul Jones, but there were 

 half-a-dozen young sea captains out of Salem in 

 Revolutionary times who did all that he did, and 

 more, yet did it so unostentatiously and so much 



