By Elizabeth Porter Gould.


"Mamma, where is the old Witch House? I met on the street this morning
Johnnie Evans and his mother, who came way down from Boston just to see
that, and Witch Hill, and some other places here in Salem that they had
been reading about together this vacation. Why, I haven't seen these
things, and I have lived here all my life. And they said, too, that they
were going to find the house where Hawthorne was born. Who was he,
mamma? I think Johnnie said that the house was on Union Street. Can't I
go there, too? I am tired of playing out in the street all the time. I
want to go somewhere and see something."

So said Reuben Tracy to his mother, as he came into the house from his
play one day about the middle of his long summer vacation. His little
eyes had just been opened to the fact that there was something in old
Salem which made her an object of interest to outsiders; and, if so, he
wanted to see it. As his mother listened to him, her eyes were opened,
too, to her want of interest, through which her boy should have been
obliged to ask this of her, rather than that she should have guided him
into this pleasant path to historic knowledge. But she determined that
this should not happen again. The vacation was only half through, and
there was yet time to do much in this direction. Her boy should not
spend so much time in idle play in the streets. She would begin that
very afternoon and read to him some stories of local history, and
impress upon his little mind, as Mrs. Evans was doing with her boy, by
visiting with him all that she could of the places mentioned. She
herself had not seen Hawthorne's birthplace; she would learn more about
him and his work, so as to tell Reuben, and then they would visit the