ca Nourse on the hill
where she perished, and her descendants have an organization which holds
annual meetings in commemoration of their hapless ancestor.

* * *

Notwithstanding harsh laws and their bitter enforcement, the habits of
the people were probably not much better than to-day in well-ordered
communities, and considerable depravity existed, especially in the
remoter settlements. Comer's Diary, which has never been published, but
which the writer of this work has examined in manuscript, shows a
condition of society far from exemplary, and it also shows that persons
whose position ought to have been respectable, sometimes took Indians
either as wives or in a less honorable relation. There is, perhaps, more
Indian blood in New England than is generally supposed, and the earlier
inhabitants of that section were probably less exclusive toward the
aborigines than is assumed in conventional history. Comer's Diary deals,
it is true, with the early part of the eighteenth century, but the
conditions it minutely and no doubt faithfully describes, must have
existed substantially in the seventeenth.[1]

[1] I was present at a meeting of the Rhode Island Historical
Society when President (then professor) Andrews, of Brown
University, reported in behalf of a committee, that it had been
judged inexpedient to publish Comer's Diary. I have since had the
privilege of examining the diary in the original, and can understand
the grounds of objection.--H. M.

* * *

The laws of Rhode Island were founded on the Mosaic system, like those of
Massachusetts, but entirely ignored the question of religion. The
penalties for immoral conduct were not so merciless as in the Puritan
colonies, and the Rhode Island colonial records indicate that the laws,
such as they were, were not rigidly enforced. The remnants of the Indian
tribes, having first been demoralized by unprincipled whites, became
themselves a demoralizing element, and Indian dances were, the records
show, a continual source of scandal and of vice, which the authorities
sought vainly to suppress. In connection with the principle of entire
separation of Church and State, on which Rhode Island was founded, it may
be of interest to mention here that I learned, in my examination of
Comer's Diary, that an attempt was made to establish a branch of the
Anglican Churc