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and outward enemies of the State. The latter were the savages, the former the Quakers; the energy expended by the early Puritans in resistance to the tomahawk not weakening their disposition to deal with spiritual dangers. They employed the same — or almost the same — weapons in both directions; the flintlock and the halberd against the Indians, and the cat-o’-nine-tails against the heretics. One of the longest, though by no means one of the most successful, of Hawthorne’s shorter tales (The Gentle Boy) deals with this pitiful persecution of the least aggressive of all schismatic bodies. William Hathorne, who had been made a magistrate of the town of Salem, where a grant of land had been offered him as an inducement to residence, figures in New England history as having given orders that “Anne Coleman and four of her friends” should be whipped through Salem, Boston, and Dedham.
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