Gm and pv nostr 🌞 ☕️

I’m sitting in my Salem home, built in 1840, reading the House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne which was published in 1851. Feeling connected to scenes he displays, and age old questions he asked, is a special thing. In today’s time, I was struck by this passage:

“Old Matthew Mail, in a word, was executed for the crime of witchcraft. He was one of the martyrs to that terrible decision, which should teach us, among its other morals, that the influential class, and those who take upon themselves to be leaders of the people, are fully liable to all the passionate error that has ever characterized the maddest mob. Clergymen, judges, statesmen,—the wisest, calmest, holiest persons of entire day.—stood in the inner circle round about the gallows, loudest to applaud the work of blood, latest to confess themselves miserably deceived.”

Who today would follow under this influential class he speaks of? Truth in literature has no expiration date.