would be a labor of love on which he could bring to bear his knowledge, conscientious endeavor, and historical training. It would have been a case of mutual benefit. He would be fortunate in securing such a position, and the Society might be congratulated on being able to get a man so peculiarly qualified for editorial work. But there was the question of Bourne's health. We both knew that he had been failing, but we were not aware that his case was hopeless. The President did not wish to present his recommendation to the Council until there was a reasonable chance of his recovery, and I undertook from time to time to get information from a common friend in New Haven of his progress. But there was no good news. While Bourne, with the help of his devoted wife, made an energetic fight for life, it was unavailing. In his death Yale lost an excellent teacher of history and this Society a candidate who, if he had been chosen, would have made an accomplished editor.

Roger B. Merriman was appointed to prepare a memoir of Mr. Dalton.

SAMUEL A. GREEN read the following paper:

Nearly forty years ago, at the meeting of this Society in June, 1870 (Proceedings, XI, 328, 329), I had occasion to speak of a forged letter which was said to have been written by Cotton Mather, and supposed to be among the manuscripts in this Library. The letter, dated September ye 15th, 1682," was published first in the Easton (Penn.) Argus of April 28, 1870, and was copied widely into other newspapers. It was signed "Cotton Mather," and purported to give the details of "a scheme to bagge Penne," on the part of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. In an accompanying statement it is said that the letter was found by "Mr. Judkins, the Librarian of the Massachusetts Historical Society, in overhauling a chest of old papers deposited in the archives of that body by the late Robert Greenleaf, of Malden."

In the interest of historical truth and in order to give an official denial to the story, at that meeting as Librarian I pronounced the letter a miserable forgery. The name of Mr. Judkins was utterly unknown at the Library; no such chest of old papers as is alleged to have been deposited here was ever

received, and no such person as the one said to have made the deposit was known to the members. Evidently the story was started for the express purpose to deceive the public and to create a prejudice against the early founders of New England. The letter, which was addressed to the Rev. John Higginson, of Salem, is as follows:

BOSTON, September ye 15th, 1682.

TO YE AGED AND BELOVED JOHN HIGGINSON.

There bee now at sea a shippe (for our friend Mr. Esaias Holcroft of London did advise me by the last packet that it wolde sail some time in August) called ye Welcome, R. Greenaway master, which has aboard an hundred or more of ye heretics and malignants called Quakers, with W. Penne, who is ye Chief Scampe at ye hedde of them. Ye General Court has accordinggely given secret orders to Master Malachi Huxett of ye brig Porposse to waylaye ye said Welcome slylie as near ye coast of Codde as may be and make captive ye said Penne and his ungodlie crew so that ye Lord may be glorified and not mocked on ye soil of this new countrie with ye heathen worshippe of these people. Much spoyle can be made by selling ye whole lotte to Barbadoes, where slaves fetch goode prices in rumme and sugar and we shall not only do ye Lord great service by punishing ye wicked but we shall make great gayne for his ministers and people. Master Huxett feels hopeful and I will set down the news he brings when his shippe comes back. Yours in ye bowells of Christ.

COTTON MATHER.

This spurious production appears periodically in the public prints, and often has been exposed as a miserable forgery, but it will not down. Like a planet it seems to have an orbit of its own in which it moves, and at regular intervals is printed in the newspapers. At the time of its date Mather was only nineteen years old, which fact alone would be presumptive evidence that he was not connected with any such piratical scheme. There are other ear-marks in the letter which tell against its authenticity. The word "scampe" was not in use two hundred years ago, and Mather would never have used the phrase "ye coast of Codde." The name of the Cape was given by Gosnold, and no one in this neighborhood ever called. it anything else but "Cape Cod." The old Puritan minister was a scholar and, according to the standard of his day and generation, he knew how to spell, and never would have been. guilty of the foolish orthography there used. Moreover the

writer's subscription alone would be enough to condemn the letter. Mather had sins enough of his own to answer for without ascribing to him the crude absurdities of this forgery. In every community there is a certain number of persons always ready to adopt opinions which are in accord with their own feelings. The instances are many where evil-minded men have thus played upon the credulity of the public and so started false reports and gross slanders.

The letter has been reprinted so often, and I am called upon so frequently to answer questions concerning it, that I set about tracing the origin of the story to its source. After some correspondence I found that it was written by the late James F. Shunk, at one time editor of the Easton Argus, in the columns of which it originally appeared during his connection with the newspaper. He was a man of distinguished ancestry, his two grandfathers having been governors of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, - but with a strong prejudice against the Puritans. The letter was written in a spirit of hostility to New England people; and it was evidently the writer's intention to throw discredit on them, and to a certain extent he was successful. Mr. Shunk, the author of the forgery, died in 1874, at the age of thirty-six years.

Professor HART spoke upon the southern question in the light of a recent visit to remote parts of the South:

I found the conditions in the South on the whole encouraging; materially that section has never been so well off and so progressive as at present. The large cotton crops and the high prices of the last few years have brought about a large surplus, a part of which has been saved, as is shown by the increase in the bank deposits from about $200,000,000 in 1896 to more than $600,000,000 to-day. This accumulation has been so large and so agreeable that southern writers have been misled into supposing that the South is the most prosperous part of the Union; but comparisons made between various groups of southern States and similar north western agricultural States of equivalent population show that the advance in the South has been more than matched by the advance in the Northwest; and that in all the material measures of civilization-valuation for tax purposes, estimation of

real values, bank deposits, bank clearings, value of agricultural products, value of manufactured products, amounts spent for schools, etc. the Northwest has from two to two and a half times the worth of the South, and its annual increment is greater than that of the South.

The white race is rapidly improving, so much so that the old-fashioned miserable poor white is hardly to be found. In very remote parts of the country people are comfortable and are building better houses, raising more money for public purposes, and providing better schools. A great educational movement is going on in the South, which is shown by the advance in the colleges, by the great number of secondary schools, and particularly by the growth of the common school system.

The negro race appears also to be more slowly gaining. Of the ten million negroes in the South at least two million, and perhaps more, are reasonably thrifty; but there are immense masses who make little progress. One reason undoubtedly is that they have had wretched schools, holding sometimes not more than sixty days in the year, with poor buildings, poor teachers, and poor appliances. Nevertheless three-fourths of the negro children can read and write, and that proportion is increasing. The negroes are not going back to barbarism, and there is hope for the race; although no one who compares groups of the rural negroes with the rural whites can fail to be struck by the inferiority of the negro race.

The race question is obscured by the existence of two different elements among the whites: the first is made up of the ruder members of the white race who live in juxtaposition to the negroes, including assistant managers of plantations and such people, and the rough young men in the towns and cities. These people are distinctly hostile to the negro, and from them come the riots and lynchings; and a spirit of resentment and distrust which gains ground among them. On the other side are the responsible whites in the South, the most highly educated people of the professional classes, and the plantation owners and employers of labor, who see that both from a humanitarian and a material standpoint it is necessary to raise the negroes as far as they will go; and that the welfare of the South depends on efficient labor, and there is no other available supply of plantation hands. That class feels more

kindly to the negro and is determined that he shall have a chance.

The future of the South depends on which of these two elements shall prove the stronger. At present the forces of fair dealing to the negro and encouragement to the well-doers seem in the ascendant.

Remarks were made during the meeting by the PRESIDENT, ROGER B. MERRIMAN, BARRETT WENDELL, SAMUEL A. GREEN, ARTHUR LORD, CHARLES C. SMITH, and WILLIAM R. THAYER.