that he “was singled out alone to give his testimony for Christ, discovering Antichrist’s marks.”  “If any,” he cried out, “will be faithful for Christ, they must witness against Antichrist, which is self-love, and lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.  The witnesses are now slain, but shortly they will rise again,” &c.  He tried to get up “private Christian meetings,” to run an opposition to “pulpit preaching.”  After going about from house to house, declaiming in this style, denouncing all who would not fall in with his notions and act with him, and not succeeding in overthrowing things in general, he hit upon a new expedient.  As his neighbors had wit enough to let him alone, and did not suffer themselves to be tempted to resort to the civil power to make him keep quiet, he did it himself.  He instituted proceedings against the ministers and churches, on the charge, that, by taking the rule into their own hands, they were supplanting the magistrates and usurping the civil power.  This was not in itself a bad move; but the Court wisely declined to engage in the proceedings.  They neither prosecuted the case nor him, but let the whole go by.  They adhered severely to the do-nothing policy.  What a world of mischief would have been avoided, if all courts, everywhere, at all times, had shown an equal wisdom!  Watts was allowed to vex the village, torment the minister, and perplex those who listened to him by the ingenuity and ability with which he urged his views.  He continued his brawling declamations until he was tired; but, not being noticed by ministers or magistrates, no great harm was done, and he probably subsided into a quiet and respectable citizen.

The prominent place Giles Corey is to occupy in the scene before us renders an account of him particularly necessary.  It is not easy to describe him.  He was a very singular person.  His manner of life and general bearing and conversation were so disregardful, in many particulars, of the conventional proprieties of his day, that it is not safe to receive implicitly the statements made by his contemporaries.  By his peculiarities of some sort, he got a bad name.  In the Book of Records of the First Church in Salem, where his public profession of religion is recorded, he is spoken of as a man of eighty years of age, and of a “scandalous life,” but who made a confession of his sins satisfactory to that body.  It cannot be denied that he was regarded in this light by some; but there is no reason to believe, that, in referring to the sinfulness of his past life, the old man meant more than was usually understood by such language on such occasions.  He was often charged with criminal acts; but in every instance the charge was proved to be either wholly unfounded or greatly exaggerated.  He had a good many contentions and rough passages; but they were the natural consequences, when a bold and strong man was put upon the defensive, or drawn to the offensive, by the habit of inconsiderate